Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
I was looking forward to seeing life-like monsters and their battles generated by state of the art CGI. In that respect the film was a bona fide winner, with phenomenal design and construction. It must have taken months of technical work to create the monsters and city settings to put this movie together.
The story, however, was all over the map; not incoherent, but there were too many elements jammed into one narrative. IMO the combination of live monsters and sci-fi seem to cancel each other out
It’s understandable that the producers strove for something different for the 36th Godzilla and the 12th King Kong picture. However the nature of the story does not allow for memorable acting performances. Of the cast, Rebecca Hall did a workwoman-like performance, and was able to represent the most appealing range of emotions. Alexander Skarsgaard did okay as the unwitting and ill-fitted semi-milquetoast scientist (a stronger character would have been appreciated). For the first half of the film every time Millie Bobby Brown appeared, I wondered what she was doing off the set of Stranger Things. There was only a fleeting glance of Lance Reddick from Bosch fame. One assumes that some of his part was edited out, letting his fee accounting flutter to the floor.
The big star of course was Kong. His construction, design, movement, facial expression, et al was wonderful. Kong was given a much wider “acting” range than was Godzilla. There was an interesting collaboration of the two at one point against a common enemy. But at the end they parted ways, all set up for another sequel.
Doc’s rating: 4/10 story, 5/10 acting, 9/10 CGI