It’s been a wild ride through the wastelands for the Mad Max franchise.  Began in 1979, Australian filmmaker George Miller created an icon with his shoestring budgeted original film.  And every movie since, he has upped the ante, making his world more dystopian and mythic in process.  The franchise helped to make a star out of Mel Gibson, and both he and Miller would continue to build their world with the even zanier sequels The Road Warrior  (1982) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985).  After Thunderdome, Miller spent a long while figuring out where he wanted to take the adventures of Max Rockatansky next.  It would be another 30 years before the Wasteland would be seen once again on the big screen.  In that time, Miller spent his years dabbling in more family friendly fare like Babe: Pig in the City (1998) and Happy Feet (2006), but all the while he was continuing to brainstorm his next move with Mad Max.  Entering the 2010’s, he finally found the road he wanted to take, and he got Warner Brothers to bankroll his bold new vision for this classic action franchise.  But, there were going to have to be some changes.  For one, Mel Gibson had aged out of the part over the 30 plus years, in addition to a number of scandals that had diminished his star power.  In addition, the story would be less focused on continuing Max’s ongoing story and instead would be geared more around building the world around him into something far more epic and surreal.  It would still be a Mad Max movie, but it was about far more than one man’s journey.  And in particular, George Miller found himself becoming more intrigued about the possibilities involving a wholly new original character named Furiosa.  As we would soon discover, this new heroine would be the shining star of a new future for the Mad Max franchise.

The 30 year wait proved to be worth it, as Mad Max; Fury Road not only made a healthy gross at the box office but was also critically acclaimed as well.  Many even began to herald it as one of the greatest action films of all time, and it accomplished the unexpected task of earning 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, of which it ended up winning and impressive six total.  As far as action films go, Fury Road became a new high water mark for the industry, with audiences being wowed by it’s impressive stunt work and practical effects, as well as just the overall creative world-building throughout.  To create the film, Miller and his team spent months filming in the remote Namibian desert, which allowed them to create these massive scale stunts in a remote and desolate environment on a scale unseen before.  It very much invigorated the franchise in the way that George Miller had hoped for.  In addition, audiences loved the performances from the leads, with Tom Hardy filling the role of Max adequately and easily helping audiences get over the replacement of Mel Gibson in the role.  Charlize Theron brought an intensity to the role of Furiosa that made the character an instant favorite for both longtime fans and new ones as well.  It’s very clear that Furiosa and Mad Max are both the main character’s of Fury Road’s story and that Miller spent as much time figuring out her narrative as much as he had his iconic hero.  During all those 30 years in the process of making Fury Road, Miller had also spent years developing Furiosa’s backstory, including going so far as to writting a full draft of a movie that would have centered around her.  In his words, he wanted to fully understand her character before he made her such a central part of his new direction in the franchise.  After seeing Fury Road succeed as well as it did, Miller decided it was time to take another look at his script for a Furiosa movie, and he suddenly became interested in bringing it to the big screen as well.   It would take nearly another decade for that project to also become a reality, but now we George Miller making his return once again to the franchise that define his directorial career with this prequel adventure, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

The story begins many years before the events of Fury Road, where we find a young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) living in the peaceful oasis known as the Green Place.  Outside of the Green Place is a vast desert known as the Wasteland, where the remnants of human civilization are scattered across as warring nomadic tribes.  One such tribe of motorcycle riding marauders invade the Green Place and kidnap Furiosa.  They take her back to their camp, where she meets their fearsome leader, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth).  Her mother, Mary Jabassa (Charlee Fraser) tries to save her from the camp, but the valiant attempt at a rescue ultimately fails, and Dementus ends up executing her in front of Furiosa, an act that the young girl would hold a grudge over for many years after.  Eventually, Dementus and his gang arrive in a part of the Wastelands that is lorded over by a man named Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), who resides in the fortress called The Citadel.  Immortan Joe’s forces, including the cult like faction know as the War Boys, prove too overwhelming for Dementus, but the ambitious madman decides to make more trouble by capturing the important stronghold known as Gastown, which supplies The Citadel with all it’s fuel.  Dementus and Immortan Joe strike a truce, but part of the deal involves Furiosa remaining within The Citadel as a future bride for one of Joe’s sons, Scrotus (Josh Helman) and Erectus (Nathan Jones).  Furiosa initially escapes her new captors, and lives anonymously in The Citadel, eventually becoming one of the mechanics.  Grown up Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) eventually develops a partnership with The Citadel’s top rig driver, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) who helps her gain the skills she’ll need to survive in such a dangerous world.  But in all this time, her heart is set on two main goals, to get her revenge on Dementus and return home.

There’s no doubt that following up the success of Mad Max: Fury Road was going to be hard, even with George Miller still firmly holding the reigns.  Fury Road is considered an all time classic and one of the most celebrated movies of the last decade.  Still, you can feel the desire with George Miller to tell this story in particular, leaving out the namesake action hero we all know in favor of exploring someone else’s tale in this same world.  It’s a risk to be sure, but also one that does fit within the greater narrative that Miller wants to tell.  Furiosa was undoubtedly the breakout star of Fury Road, and many fans agreed that she was a character capable of carrying a film all on her own.  So, with the work already done before cameras even rolled on Fury Road, Miller had the story he needed to deliver on the promise of Furiosa’s own movie.  Now, going into this film myself, my expectations were perhaps a bit different than most other people.  It may shock you, but I’ve been a bit more lukewarm on my opinions of Fury Road.  I certainly liked it a lot, but I fell a little short of believing it to be this unassailable masterpiece that stands among the greatest movies of all time.  To me, it was an above average action film that certainly impressed me with it’s creativity and craft, but not much else.  For me, I found it a bit light on story, or at least lacking in a story that I could latch onto and make me want to revisit it countless times after.  So, heading into Furiosa, my expectations were certainly not low, but were also hedge a bit, and after seeing the movie, I’d say that it hit about where I thought it would.  Just like Fury Road, I found it to be an impressively mounted and fairly entertaining movie, but nothing that is going to stand out to me as a masterpiece of cinema either.  It is neither a step down from Fury Road, nor does it exceed expectations.  It accomplished what it needed to do and nothing more.

It will be interesting to see the overall reactions that will follow this movie.  I imagine most people will react to it the same way that they did with Fury Road, because if there is one thing that George Miller certainly hasn’t lost his touch with it’s his ability to film an engaging action sequence.  But, there may be many out there that will come away disappointed and that’s solely because they hold Fury Road in such high regard and expected too much out of this follow-up.  One thing that may drive some of the division on this movie is that it is very much a different kind of movie than Fury Road.  Fury Road by all accounts is one long action sequence stretched across the entire length of the movie, which was the most thrilling aspect of the movie for many people, but for others like me it was what made the story feel a little flimsy.  In this regard, I feel like Furiosa improved on it’s predecessor a bit, because here we actually get a deeper storyline that actually explores the world of the Wasteland much more, including telling us more about the cultures that have formed in this dystopian world.  There are still some impressively mounted action set pieces, but they are supported by more character developing moments.  We even get more involved back stories with Fury Road characters like Immortan Joe and his followers, making them much more interesting as a result.  Though strangely enough, while so much more of the world gets richer detail in Furiosa, the main character herself kind of gets overlooked in the story.  I feel like George Miller used all of his best character development for Furiosa in Fury Road, and gives little to work with in this film.  She really has nothing more to her character than just acting tough and being a survivor.  We know her motivations, but Miller doesn’t give us any time to see what’s going on inside her mind; at least not as much in this film as he did with Fury Road.

Despite the lack of character in the way that Furiosa is written, she still manages to make an engaging protagonist thanks to Anya-Taylor Joy’s intense performance.  She certainly has big shoes to fill, as Charlize Theron was so iconic in the role.  But what makes Ms. Joy’s performance work so well is how she acts non-verbally in the movie.  Furiosa is actually a character of very few words in the movie, but with the expressions that Joy can deliver through her very expressive face, as well as cold-dead stares through those large distinctive eyes, she makes Furiosa a very intimidating presence.  She also holds her own in much of the film’s complex action set pieces.  You can tell this was a demanding role for her physically, even with the aid of stunt performers.  Going back to the early days of Mad Max, Miller always wanted his actors to be as involved in the action as much as possible, from Mel Gibson all the way up to Tom Hardy.  It’s a testament to Anya-Taylor Joy that she does as much on-screen stunts as she does on this film.  She also is backed up by an excellent ensemble of the best Aussie character actors in the business, many of whom have been in George Miller’s circle for years and have appeared in a number of his other movies.  Credit certainly is due to Lachy Hulme who took over the iconic role of Immortan Joe from the late Hugh Keays-Byrne, and doesn’t miss a beat.  But, the whole film truly belongs to Chris Hemsworth who creates a scene-stealling iconic performance as the villainous Dementus.  He delivers one of the most cartoonish villains in recent memory and he is just a blast to watch through the entire film.  It seemed like George Miller just told him to ratchet up Chris’ Australian accent to 1000% and he went to Crocodile Dundee and beyond.  Dementus is such a great character to watch and Hemsworth’s performance is worth the price of admission alone.

One other thing that I liked about this movie is that Miller is expanding upon the world that he has built for this franchise.  His Wasteland feels even bigger and more epic than we’ve ever seen before.  We do revisit the iconic location of The Citadel from Fury Road, which we see slightly more of in this movie.  But, Miller also finally shows us locations that were hinted at in the previous movie, but are now fully realized here in Furiosa.  In this movie, we finally see Gastown and the Bullet Farm, which are incredible set pieces in their own right. They also help to give the film a grander sense of scale that seems to find George Miller at his most ambitious level to date.  Fury Road was certainly big, but not particularly expansive in it’s world building.  The one thing that I do think Fury Road does have over Furiosa is that the action sequences had a bit more authenticity to them.  There was a lot of DIY action filmmaking going on in Fury Road, with the film accomplishing a lot in camera.  In Furiosa, in order to create this more expansive view of the world, Miller also makes more use of CGI to create the action set pieces.  Most of it still looks good, but you do still lose some of that remarkable practicality in the process.  I do like however the way that Miller’s style comes through in the editing of the film.  There are several moments where Miller will suddenly speed up the film itself on certain shots, which creates this fun disorienting effect.  He uses this a lot especially with zoom in on his characters when they are behind the driver’s seat of the the many different hot rod vehicles in the film.  It’s something that he carried over from Fury Road, and it’s nice to see it still being utilized well here.  It definitely shows that Miller has a lot of trust in his crew, as many of them are returning from their work on Fury Road, including Oscar winners like costume designer Jenny Beavan, production designers Colin Gibson and Lisa Thompson, as well as the nominated Visual Effects team and composer Tom Holkenborg (aka Junkie XL), all of whom once again deliver the goods here.  Even while a lot of things still look and feel the same, I do appreciate that this movie is not simple retread of the Fury Road formula.  Many people returned to work with George Miller again on this film, but they also did their best to add something new to the mix too.

Overall, like Fury Road there is a lot to admire about Furiosa, but it also doesn’t rise to the level of all time greats, at least in my opinion.  In general, I see Furiosa as a slight improvement, but it’s also a movie that feels less focused than it’s predecessor.  Furiosa comes pretty close to feeling a bit bloated at times with it’s lengthy 2 1/2 hour run time, making it by far the longest movie in the franchise.  Fury Road’s story may not have been a deep one, but it was a tightly constructed 2 hour story.  At the same time, I do appreciate that George Miller uses that extra time to give us a bigger scope of the world itself.  There are some spectacularly mounted sequences in this movie that Miller gives the right amount of time to.   The movie also features one of my favorite villainous characters in quite a while with Chris Hemsworth’s gloriously demented role as Dementus. Again, the movie is worth seeing just for him alone.  Anya-Taylor Joy does a pretty great job too in the title role, though I feel like the best Furiosa moments still belong with Charlize’s performance in Fury Road.  While it may not be what I consider to be the peak of action filmmaking (honestly I’ve been more impressed recently with the John Wick and Dune movies in that regard) it is still something that I would recommend seeing, just for the big screen spectacle of it all.  If you were a huge Fury Road fan, I would imagine that this film will deliver what you’re looking for.  Just don’t go in expecting the same kind of movie.  Furiosa is a different animal of a movie, one focused more on character and world-building than action set pieces, so hedge your expectations around that.  For me, it delivered about what I was expecting.  For a more lukewarm appreciator of the Mad Max franchise, I generally was pleased by what I saw, but it’s not going to be one of those movies that I’m going to necessarily revisit over and over again.  But one thing that I do find enormously impressive is that at the age of 79, George Miller is still delivering massively entertaining action films on this kind of scale without losing any of his edge.  He’s continuing to hold action film-making to a high standard, and even teaching the younger generation a thing or two.  For a veteran filmmaker like him, it’s inspiring to see him continue to be a fury road warrior at a time when most other filmmakers fall off into the far horizon.

Rating: 8/10

The Planet of the Apes franchise has had one of the most interesting histories in Hollywood.  When the original 1968 film that launched the series first premiered, it was heralded as a landmark in science fiction, famous for it’s groundbreaking make-up turning human actors into simian characters as well as it’s infamous twist ending.  But, what was groundbreaking in it’s time would lose it’s luster the longer the series went on.  The studio behind the Apes franchise, 20th Century Fox, continued to release more movies throughout the 70’s, and each one saw diminishing returns and dwindling budgets, before ultimately being shelved after the mediocre box office of the fifth movie, Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973).  As the films began to feel antiquated in the blockbuster era that followed, Planet of the Apes became something of a punchline of how not to make a science fiction movie.  But the original film remained an untouchable classic to many, and it would remain an influential film for a new crop of filmmakers coming into Hollywood.  One such filmmaker, the visionary Tim Burton, tried to give the Planet of the Apes franchise a refresh in 2001.  Unfortunately, despite having some fairly impressive and more realistic looking make-up for his cast, Burton’s remake couldn’t hold a candle to the legacy of the original.  It would take another decade before there was another serious attempt at bringing the franchise back to it’s former glory.  With the release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Fox managed to find renewed life in the series with a much more effective tool at their disposable; motion capture computer imaging.  The technology could effectively mimic an actors performance into a CGI sculpted model and have that digital creation feel authentically lifelike.  The rubber masks of the old Planet of the Apes were now obsolete, because an actor could now embody their characters fully within the skin of a real looking ape.

Of course, it also mattered who was in the digital monkey suit.  One of the reasons why the newer Planet of the Apes movies worked as well as they did is because they featured a standout performance from an actor who has made his whole career through excelling in motion capture performances.  Andy Serkis, who had also famously brought the creature Gollum to amazing life in The Lord of the Rings trilogy through the same motion capture process, helped to push the boundaries of this technology even further.  Each film in the most recent batch of Apes movies keeps improving on the technology to where the seams between the digital characters and the live action environments are pretty much seamless, and Andy Serkis is so comfortable performing with the technology that every subtle gesture gets perfectly translated.  And it helps that the story and characters are compelling enough to get us invested in the movie’s narrative.  For Andy Serkis, he couldn’t have asked for a better character to embody than the ape Caesar.  While Rise certainly laid the groundwork for a strong return of the franchise, it wasn’t really until director Matt Reeves took the helm that the franchise found it’s core strength and achieved it’s greatest success.  Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) were critically acclaimed epic adventures that really showed off the potential that this franchise had long promised.  With Serkis’ passionate performance, outstanding visual effects work, and intense action film-making, the Caesar Trilogy as it is now called has helped to bring Planet of the Apes  back to the high place it once had in the annals of great science fiction.  But, the Caesar trilogy also was a story with a definitive end, as the franchise also put to rest it’s central character in War with a heartfelt heroes exit.  For the franchise to continue, things were going to have to start fresh, especially after the Fox/Disney merger has shaken up things even more.  Still, 20th Century Studios knows the value of one of the marquee franchises, and a new era begins this weekend with the release of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes takes place many generations into the future.  The remnants of human civilization have been reclaimed by nature, and the memory of Caesar has now evolved into the legend of Caesar.  Various tribes of Ape cultures now roam the planet, all with their own customs and beliefs that guide their internal societies.  We meet a young ape named Noa (Owen Teague) who belongs to a tribe of apes that have trained and domesticated eagles.  As part of a rite of passage, Noa must care for an unhatched eagle egg, but through an accident he has ended up smashing the one that was in his care.  Hoping to retrieve a replacement, Noa leaves his village in the middle of the night.  But on his way to the nesting grounds, he stumbles upon an ambush from another ape tribe, who are heading for his village.  He returns to find his home set afire and his whole family taken away as hostages.  With nothing left, Noa leaves his smoldering village behind to track down the marauding apes in hopes of rescuing the rest of his family.  Out in the wild, he stumbles upon the encampment of an old sage ape named Raka (Peter Macon), who devotes his life to spreading the teachings of Caesar to any civilized ape society that he can.  He agrees to help Noa on his quest, using his knowledge of the wider world to give them a better sense of where they must travel.  On the road, they discover that they are being followed by a human girl (Freya Allan).  Roka names the girl Nova, as he does for all humans, and Noa observes that she is smarter than most of the other humans that he has encountered.  Human kind has turned feral after the same virus that gave apes intelligence also took away their ability to speak, but Nova seems more aware of what the apes are saying to one another.  The trio of travelers soon find where Noa’s tribe has been taken.  They are being held at a makeshift fortress made out of old tanker ships, which is lorded over by a tyrannical ape lord named Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), who keeps an intelligent human companion by his side named Trevathan (William H. Macy).  Can Noa save his family and stop Proximus from seeking more ultimate power as the ape lord attempts to open up an ancient human bunker?

One of the smart things that this movie does is that it doesn’t try to give you too much homework to digest upfront.  If you have never seen any Planet of the Apes movie before this, you’ll be able to catch on pretty quickly.  This is a complete refresh of the franchise, putting it somewhere in between the Caesar era where the origins of the Planet of the Apes started from and the far futuristic era of the original classic, allowing this movie to exist as it’s own thing.  Sure, if you have followed along with the franchise from the beginning, there are plenty of legacy call outs in the movie that will be fun Easter eggs for longtime fans, but they never take away from the story that this one is telling.  And as far as both a continuation of what’s come before as well as a kick off for what’s to come next, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes does an excellent job accomplishing it’s mission.  What I especially love about this movie is the world building.  Director Wes Ball previously worked on the Maze Runner series, and despite what you may think about the storytelling of those YA adaptations, the one thing that Ball does excel at is giving his worlds a very lived in feel.  In particular, he is excellent at blending the natural world with a mechanical one.  Here, this style is used effectively to convey a world where human civilization has fallen and all the infrastructure that we left behind has turned into ruin.  The way that Ball visualizes this is striking, with things like skyscrapers and bridges appearing as these silent sentinels in dense jungles the same way that we view the Mayan temples and the Pyramids of Giza today.  A lot of it is subtly placed in many scenes, as what looks like a cliff face at first glance reveals itself to be the wall of what once was a tall building.  The mix of the natural world and the crumbling remains of the modern world is effectively immersive in this movie and the overall effect helps to make the story all the more engaging.  It does make me excited about what director Wes Ball has next for us, as his next project will be a live action adaptation of The Legend of Zelda video game series; a job that I believe he is well suited for given what he has done here.

The film’s narrative is also effectively told, if at times a bit predictable.  One thing that I do like is that the movie keeps the focus small, even though the setting is epic.  Like the Caesar movies before it, Kingdom doesn’t try to telling a grander, global story and instead focuses on the the journey that our central characters take.  The previous films gave us a sense of the greater world conflict through just the eyes of Caesar, and this movie does the same with Noa.  It is ultimately his story, and the movie works best when it allows the world to unfold through his experience.  What I thought was especially surprising in this movie was the fact that it had some interesting things to say about religion.  We see both the good and the bad influences that religion can have on a society, especially one that is still in it’s infancy like those of the apes.  In this movie, Caesar has become something of a Christ figure to the apes, and their attempts at proto civilizations on the foundations of their newly enlightened consciousness seem to circle around their creation of a new faith.  In some cases, there are apes like Roka who take the teachings of Caesar and try to use them to seek peaceful ways of life.  Then there are others like Proximus who use the name and words of Caesar to justify his own evil deeds.  You can see the hallmarks of early Christianity in these different followers of Caesar, and I thought that it offered a very interesting subtext to the movie.  It also plays well into Noa’s story, as his journey begins without him being aware of this new religion to begin with.  By movie’s end, he soon learns that the apes view much of Caesar’s example through his own growth as a leader.  The movie also delivers this subtly, as it doesn’t try to hit you over the head with any obvious Christ allegory.  This is still a Planet of the Apes movie after all, and most of the film still centered around a lot of action, which can sometimes feel like overkill as it’s just adding more run time.  Still, allegory has also been a trademark of the Apes franchise, so it is still in character for the franchise.

With the story starting fresh, it is definitely important to create engaging characters for us to follow along with.  The issue that this movie had to overcome was that it was going to be missing the character of Caesar, who has been one of the most captivating characters in recent cinema history.  Andy Serkis also set a high bar when it comes to how to act through motion capture, as his performance was so nuanced and powerful even through the CGI transfer.  Thankfully, the cast of this movie manages to rise to the challenge.  It really shows how far this motion capture technology has advanced to where the filmmakers can confidently fill nearly all the roles with actors performing through CGI avatars.  As the newer Planet of the Apes movies have come along, the ratio of live action to motion capture characters has completely flipped.  Now the humans are greatly outnumbered by the apes, with only two major roles given to the humans this time around.  The most daunting assignment was to have a character to stand out in the place of Caesar as the new protagonist.  Thankfully, Noa is a compelling enough character to carry this movie.  It helps that he’s a bit more juvenile than Caesar was, only just reaching manhood and not as confident in his abilities from the start.  He’s a character with a lot of room to grow and that he does throughout the movie.  Owen Teague also does a fine job of making him a well rounded character as a result, and he perfectly picks up from where Andy Serkis left off in creating that balance between simian and human.  Peter Macon also brings some wonderful levity into the story as Raka, the one character who’s able to bring optimism and humor into an otherwise bleak world.  And though he doesn’t factor in until late into the movie, Kevin Durand is an effective menacing presence as Proximus.  Sadly it’s the human characters that feel the least fleshed out.  Freya Allan does the best she can as the human girl Nova, and she does convincingly shares her scenes with her digital co-stars, but the script sadly makes her character a bit too much of an enigma.

The film’s visual are also impressively realized.  I already talked a bunch about the world-building, but the reason why it works so well is because the film balances it’s visual and practical effects to perfection.  The practical elements work because there are actual actors interacting in natural environments.  The motion capture technology allows for actors to still perform their scenes on set with special tracking suits, and the technology has improved to the point where they can actually do this effect outdoors without the need for a controlled digital environment.  That’s why these Planet of the Apes movies have been the best showcase for this technology, because it’s been the best testing ground for every new challenge for the digital artists.  The CGI models for the apes are also becoming more impressive with each movie.  At times, even in fully sunlit scenes, the ape characters hold up really well and maintain their integrity to the point where you really believe that they are there.  The visual effects also do a great job of giving this movie an epic feel.  This movie definitely feel like the grandest we’ve seen so far in this series, and this is a movie that demands being seen on the biggest screen possible.  There’s also a lot of other things to like about the presentation of the movie, including the musical score.  Longtime Planet of the Apes fans will appreciate the call backs to past musical scores in the franchise, including an especially noticeable reference to the original film’s theme written by the legendary Jerry Goldsmith.  The new composer John Paesano clearly is familiar with the soundscape of this franchise, and this is one of the most ambitious sounding scores we have heard yet.  Overall, it elevates the Planet of the Apes  into a different register, and it’s a clear sign of the new direction that the series wants to take in the future, going from the camp of the original movies, to the grittiness of the Caesar Trilogy, to what is likely going to be a more epic adventure in what is anticipated to be a whole new trilogy.

Regardless of where the franchise goes next, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is still a great stand alone movie on it’s own that both honors it’s legacy but also lays the groundwork for something special yet to come.  It shows that this half century old franchise still has a few tricks up it’s sleeve left to play.  What has really worked to the franchises favor is it’s embrace and practical use of motion capture technology.  The series knows how to make the best use of this tool by having it be no more than just the extension of the actors performance.  If the character and the actors portraying them weren’t compelling, no one would care and it would be just a gimmick.  But actors like Andy Serkis have shown that you can not only give a captivating performance through motion capture, you can even make it Oscar worthy, and it’s characters like Caesar that have proven how best to work with this kind of technology.  Kingdom shows us that we can now fill a whole cast of characters with actors performing through this technique, and that indicates some very promising new horizons that could be possible in the future for cinema.  Even still, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is still a worthy addition to this long running franchise, and it is well worth seeing, especially on a big screen.  It’s lush world building and surprisingly philosophical story also make it a richer film experience than you would expect.  It may not consistently reach the emotional heights as some of the Caesar Trilogy movies, but there are still plenty of exciting and memorable moments to help make this more than just your average popcorn flick.  I certainly am excited to see where the series goes from here.  Will it actually dove tail into the events of the original classic? Imagine if all of this is going on while Charlton Heston’s astronaut is still lost in deep space.  I’m happy that this movie is dependent on trying to tie all the lore together, but rather is more interested creating new bits of lore to expand upon.  In any case, we have an exciting future to look forward to with this new chapter in the Apes franchise and Kingdom is an adventure worth taking this summer at the movies.

Rating: 8/10

It’s no mystery that we are in polarizing times.  With online discourse fanning the flames of mundane disagreements into profound cultural wedges, it’s as difficult as it has ever been to discuss anything civilly anymore.  This is especially true when discussing media, as too many people are quick to project their own prejudices upon any new TV show or film without ever having seen one second of it.  Sometimes you’ll get a film that can rise above the “culture war” attacks, like last year’s Barbie (2023) did, but too often a new movie that tries to shake up the normal formula will be subjugated to attacks from purists, or people who are just looking to stir up controversy just for the clicks.  While online discourse is tiresome when it delves into “culture war” discussions, there is also the growing anxiety that is rising from the lack of accountability in our media coverage.  We are at a point where accountability can not keep up with the quickness of viral social media, and misinformation has become rampant in our culture.  Before the truth wills out, the misinformation will sadly have taken hold with too many people, and this has led to the rise of radicalization which leads to increasingly tense situations in our society.  Worries about rising violence in our communities are becoming ever more a concern in today’s age, and that makes many people wonder if our union as a nation is heading toward a cataclysmic end.  With that worry circulating in our culture, it makes one wonder how movies of this era will document the moment we are living in.  Given how “culture war” discussions have become so toxic in recent years, any movie or show that tries to take it head on is likely to face a heavy bit of scrutiny and resistance.  And stirring up controversy is something that the major movie studios are keen to avoid.  Luckily there are risk takers out there like A24 who are willing to stick their necks out and make a movie that at the very least tries to put some perspective on what a moment like this could lead us towards.

Into this tumultuous time comes a new film from Writer and Director Alex Garland.  Garland first gained notoriety for his gritty and grounded screenplay for the zombie flick 28 Days Later (2002), which was directed for the screen by Danny Boyle.  Garland would contribute a number of other celebrated screenplays before ultimately stepping behind the camera himself.  His directorial debut, Ex Machina (2015) was lauded for it’s subtle, grounded portrayal of the perils of unchecked A.I. implementation, and how it could wreck havoc by blurring the lines between reality and artificiality.  It also won a surprise academy award for it’s visual effects, which did a remarkable job of transforming actress Alicia Vikander into a humanoid robot.  Garland’s follow-up, Annihilation (2018) was even more of a mind-trip, bringing a new twist to the alien invasion subgenre of Science Fiction.  He left his Sci-Fi comfort zone with the horror thriller Men (2022), which is his most divisive film to date, as well as his least successful at the box office.  Coming off of that, he is embarking on his most ambitious film yet as a filmmaker with a scenario that feels eerily timely.  Civil War (2024) imagines a scenario where the United States of America has broken out into a second civil war.  It’s a risky type of movie to make  because in this kind of climate, especially in an election year, too many people are going to try to project their own political views upon the movie, which could either drive people away or be misinterpreted as something it is not.  Before the movie even was released, some pundits were poking holes in the premise of the movie, noting that the U.S. government in the film is at war with an alliance of the states of California and Texas, which of course is not something that could happen today given that both of those state’s governments are polar opposites in their political make-up at the moment.  But, Alex Garland is not telling a story about America as it is now, but is instead imagining an America that could exist and telling us a story about the people who would be caught up in the chaos that a modern Civil War could bring.

The subjects of Alex Garland’s Civil War are not the main players in this nation at war with itself, but rather the people who are risking their lives trying to capture the memory of it.  It’s a story about a rag tag group of journalists who risk their lives in order to capture the brutal reality of the war as it happens.  We meet Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and Joel (Wagner Moura), two Reuters affiliated documentarians who are partnered up as they cover rioting in the war torn city of New York.  Lee is a celebrated veteran photographer who has seen one too many wars in her lifetime, while Joel is an interviewer who craves the adrenaline rush of combat.  While they make rest in their hotel, they have a conversation with a veteran New York Times journalist named Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), who was once a mentor to the two.  They let it slip to Sammy that their next goal is to head to Washington D.C. and get an exclusive interview with the President of the United States (Nick Offerman).  Sammy tells them it’s a suicide mission, as the Western Forces of California and Texas have advanced far into the Government’s territory and are now encircling the Capital.  And if they even make it past the frontlines and into D.C., the President’s army has been ordered to shoot all intruders, including journalists.  Lee and Joel still remain determined, and they even offer Sammy a ride knowing that he has the same goal that they do.  Before they make their treacherous trip southward, the team takes on another passenger, a young freelance photographer named Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) who looks up to Lee and wants to get her first taste of combat coverage.  The four passengers head out on a Heart of Darkness like journey through the depths of the once prosperous nation now brought to ruin through conflict.  Through it, they experience the extremes of both sides of the battle, and even have run ins with psychopaths who thrive in the chaos of war.  And as they get closer to Washington, D.C., the more violent and dark the world becomes.

Suffice to say, Alex Garland’s Civil War is not an easy movie to watch.  The film is very blunt about the atrocities of war and how it is often impossible to decipher who are the good and bad guys in the moment of battle.  It’s a very smart move on Garland’s part to not make the movie about the politics of the the two warring sides, but instead center the movie on the journalists who put their lives on the line in order to document the events that take place.  Now the movie is not entirely apolitical; the film does portray the President as a despotic dictator who has committed atrocities in the past against the American people as a means to hold onto power, and the timing of the story puts the conflict in it’s final days where the Government is on it’s last legs, showing definitively who the victors in this war will be.  But that’s all background noise.  Garland’s movie doesn’t try to hold up a mirror to our current political climate, but rather makes us the audience understand the gruesome nature of war by showing us an all too realistic portrayal of modern combat in a setting which hasn’t seen combat on it’s soil since the first Civil War.  The movie’s message is that there’s nothing glamourous about fighting in a war, and that the hard work of wartime journalists is terrifying but also essential.  And that’s what makes the movie such a profound experience that really needs to be experienced.  If anything, this is a more essential movie than anything that would have carried a more pointed political argument.  Anyone who trivializes the nature of war and thinks that another Civil War fought in this country would be an ideal outcome in order to silence those who disagree with them should be required to watch this movie and see what a folly that would be.  It’s a profound statement that I’m happy to see Alex Garland make.

Despite working with a bigger canvas and budget, Garland’s Civil War is still just as grounded as most of his other movies.  Garland’s directorial style is not flashy and remains centered and precise, giving us a very you are there feel.  This helps very much with the world building of the movie.  The America in this film is not some post-Apocalyptic hellscape, but rather a country that still looks familiar and somewhat in tact, but has been scarred by battle.  One of the things that this movie reminded me of is the recent Best Documentary winner at this year’s Academy Awards, 20 Days in Mariupol (2023), which was a movie compiled of footage from real war journalists who captured the early days of the Ukraine-Russian war in 2022 in the titular war torn city.  Having seen that documentary and the horrible things that it shows, you see the desperate ways that people try to hold their cities together even as war is trying to tear it apart.  Places that were once peaceful suddenly become devoid of life and littered with the reminders of war, like the wreckage of a helicopter in a mall parking lot, or an apartment high rise turned into a swiss cheese like ruin through constant shelling.  In Garland’s film, he juxtaposes those images in profound ways that constantly reminds you of how fragile peacetime can be, and how things we just take for granted can be taken away suddenly.  Suddenly, a routine gas station stop could turn into a life or death situation depending on how you interact with the locals.  There are times in the movie where I do feel Garland’s imagination does exceed the limitations of his budget, as some of the rendering with the visual effects do look a little cheap and it breaks the illusion, but thankfully these are rare as the movie presents the majority of the action in ground level depictions of combat.  And this is definitely a movie that benefits from a robust sound system as the battle scenes are loud and intense.

The staging of the battle scenes are definitely the highlight of the movie, as Alex Garland puts you right on the ground in the midst of it all.  You really experience the battles in this movie the way that the war journalists would.  One thing that I really liked in this movie is the emphasis it puts on capturing moments in combat that will inevitably be what the war leaves behind and frames it’s history.  This is shown in the film as snapshots taken by the characters of Lee and Jessie.  As the battle scenes play out, you see the characters aim their cameras and then the movie pauses for a second and displays the still photo that they just took, with the sound also being paused in that scene to emphasize the singular documentation that has been made.  It makes you think of the war photographs that have survived throughout history and how those brief moments have shaped our understanding of what the wars were, from something triumphant like the flag raising in the Battle of Iwo Jima to something horrific like the pained faces of the survivors of the My Lai Massacre.  A picture can say a thousand words, and this movie puts an emphasis on what it means to capture a moment that matters in a battleground photograph.  Jessie even uses an older model camera that runs on film, and she is able to capture her subjects in an even grittier black and white image.  While the movie is limited in budget, it nevertheless feels big when viewed through the eyes of the characters in this movie.  This is especially true in the climatic battle in Washington D.C. at the end of the film.  The movie doesn’t try to be epic in it’s depiction of a fortified D.C., but rather shows us what it likely would look like in a realistic sense, meaning crude barricades quickly built in an urban setting.  The battle scenes are still shot in an impressive way by cinematographer Rob Hardy where you do feel the scope of the conflict as it’s happening, and it’s definitely the type of movie that benefits from the biggest possible screen.

A lot of the success of the movie comes down to the authenticity of the performances in the film.  We know very little about the characters other than what their jobs are, and they only give us the briefest of backstory.  Mainly, it’s up to the actors to define these personalities, and the cast assembled does an outstanding job.  Kirsten Dunst does an especially great job of conveying a person who is just numb to all the violence that surrounds her.  There’s a great moment in the movie where she is just silently staring off in the direction of a battle that is glowing in the distance under a night sky, and her face just reads this hardened, jaded lack of optimism that tells you so much about her character.  But Kirsten also does a great job of showing those brief moments of warmth, especially when Cailee Spaeny’s Jessie manages to crack through that wall with her more upbeat personality.  Spaeny also does a great job of portraying that spunky, novice personality within Jessie that you watch get broken down as she gets into increasingly hairier situations.  Wagner Moura provides the movie with some of it’s brief moments of levity with his gun ho adrenaline junkie portrayal of Joel, who often is the one that has to break the ice in tense situations.  Veteran character actor Stephen McKinley Henderson also does a wonderful job of rounding out the quartet with his soulful portrayal of the seasoned and wise journalist Sammy.  Nick Offerman, who only briefly appears in the movie, still leaves a strong impression as the lightning rod of a President at the center of the conflict, wisely choosing to not emulate any specific familiar political figure and instead making him one that eerily feels too normal, hiding the fact that in the context of this movie that he’s committed horrible atrocities.  What the movie also does a great job with is make all of the minor characters stand out as well.  Each new encounter the characters make along the way adds to the tension of the movie, and all the supporting actors do a great job of creating these civilians who are barely hanging on, often through brutal and desperate means.  One particular standout is a cameo from Jesse Plemons as a white supremacist mercenary that becomes an especially terrifying obstacle for the main characters.

I don’t know if this is the kind of movie that will change hearts and minds with regard to the divisive cultural situation we are in right now.  But, as a cinematic experience, it’s an exceptional piece of work that know doubt will leave an impression on it’s audience.  There will be some who will try to frame the movie in a way that fits their own agenda; you would have to think that the movie is courting that a bit by calling itself Civil War.  But, upon watching the movie, you’ll see that there is a universal story about survival in here and also about fighting to capture the truth in the moment so that it can be preserved and remembered for future generations to learn from it.  Alex Garland and the actors in the movie have said in interviews that this movie is meant to be a love letter to journalism, and specifically to front line journalists who put their life on the lines to document the truth.  At a time when so many politicians and media personalities are trying to gaslight people into believing an alternate reality that suits their fortunes through misinformation, the work of these independent, battlefront journalists is even more essential than ever and Civil War does an excellent job of showing us the important role that they play.  We are seeing the important work of these journalists making an impact right now with conflicts happening in both Ukraine and the Gaza Strip.  What makes Civil War feel so impactful is that it is bringing that unimaginable situation home and showing us how fleeting our domestic peacetime situation can be.  We trivialize the idea of a domestic civil war, and in some grotesque cases even fantasize about it, but if one were to break out here in America it would have devastating effects that ruins the lives of everyone involved, and this movie does an effective job of communicating that bleak scenario.  Hopefully it makes audiences more aware of how devastating modern warfare is on those countries that are living through today.  It’s not a perfect war film; some of Garland’s creative choices do undermine the impact of the harshest scenes, especially some needle drop choices that feel a bit out of place.  But as an overall experience, Civil War is harrowing and thought provoking in all the right ways, and in many moments hauntingly beautiful to look at.  And to see wartime journalism at it’s finest, please also seek out the Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol, though prepare yourself first for some harsh, graphic content as part of the experience.  Civil War may be a dramatized depiction of war through a scenario very much separated from our current political situation, but there is a lot of truth in the story that it is telling with regards to the people who live through such times as depicted in the movie, and it hopefully acts as a cautionary tale for us as we grow more and more closer to having our own petty conflicts flare up into something much worse.

Rating: 8.5/10

It’s not an easy time for a franchise like the Legendary Pictures “Monsterverse” to be around in theaters.  Audiences in general are growing tired of interconnected movie “universes” are are more interested now in movies that feel fresh and diverse.  Hollywood is having to adjust accordingly to this shift after spending much of the last decade milking audiences with promises of mega-franchises based on interconnected IP.  Marvel certainly was the trend-setter with their massively successful Cinematic Universe (MCU), but even they are seeing the writing on the wall and are reigning in their universe expansion in order to make their films more successful.  Other franchises are either re-booting completely, like DC, or were just abandoned completely before being fully matured, like Universal’s Dark Universe.  But unlike all of those, the Monsterverse, a franchise built around iconic kaiju beasts like Godzilla and King Kong, has managed to defy gravity and keep growing with every new film.  It helps that the franchise didn’t exactly explode right out of the gate.  2014’s Godzilla, a modern day reimagining of the iconic monster’s debut directed by Gareth Edwards (Rogue One) was a bit of a disappointment for many.  It was visually impressive, but ended up taking itself far too seriously and as a result became something of a bore.  What a lot of critics rightly pointed out as the strengths of the movie were the brief moments where we actually saw Godzilla fighting other monsters, and that this should have been the focus of the movie all along and not the bland human characters.  While the sequel, Godzilla: King of Monsters (2019) basically fell into the same trap of boring subplots with cool looking monster fights, it was clear that Legendary Pictures were taking in the feedback and were looking at different ways to make their franchise work.

One of the answers came in the response to their debut of their other marquee movie monster; King Kong.  Kong: Skull Island (2017) was radically different in tone from the first two Godzilla movies; with a more relaxed and comical flavor to the human storyline.  It showed that the franchise worked better when it didn’t take itself too seriously and actually leaned on it’s more absurd elements.  This shift in strategy came an an opportune time because what awaited next for the Monsterverse was the highly anticipated crossover of the two icons.  Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) was a matchup that everyone had been eager to see happen, in many cases for decades.  The last time these monsters shared the big screen together, they were played by guys in rubber suits.  Now, with the full arsenal of CGI tricks at their disposal, Legendary was able to create a showdown between these titans that could truly feel as massive as the monsters themselves.  But, at the same time, Godzilla vs. Kong was a movie that demonstrated the lessons that Legendary had learned in building their franchise, giving the monster fights the spotlight, and keeping everything in between light and entertaining.  In the end, the movie accomplished it’s goal.  Released into theaters and on streaming at a time when the pandemic was still raging was risky, so it’s a real testament that Godzilla vs. Kong flourished even in those conditions.  It was the movie we really needed in that time, a good old-fashioned crowd pleaser that was worth taking the risk to see on a big screen.  Another smart move made by Legendary in their franchise plan was to accompany their new phase of the Monsterverse with a world-building spin-off series on Apple TV called Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which gives back story to the in universe agency that monitors and sometimes protects these colossal monsters.  Overall, Legendary has successfully managed to maintain steady growth in their franchise while so many others have fallen off in recent years.  And the next chapter of their story comes in the second film teaming up the franchise’s two marquee stars with the awkwardly titled Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.  The question remains whether the Monsterverse continues to reign supreme, or is it going to crumble like so many other cinematic universes.

The movie picks up shortly after the events of Godzilla vs. Kong.  After Godzilla and King Kong put aside their rivalry to defeat the more dangerous Mecha Godzilla, they agree to settle with both remaining as from from each other as possible, ensuring harmony for the human civilization that has continually been in their crosshairs.  Godzilla will live on the surface world and ensure his dominance over other titans there, while Kong will live in the freshly discovered hollow earth world beneath the surface of the planet.  Meanwhile, the Monarch agency keeps tabs on both of these rivals and watches their activity closely, with bases even set up in the Hollow Earth.  On one particular observance, the Monarch team picks up mysterious electro-magnetic signals coming from deep within the planet, even beyond Kong’s domain.  The signals even trigger the young tribal girl Jia (Kaylee Hottle) who had befriended Kong on his Skull Island home.  Jia has been in the care of Monarch agent Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), and Jia is worried that the signals are going to trigger another war between Kong and Godzilla, as both monsters are again converging on the surface world.  Andrews seeks additional help in trying to understand what may have triggered this mysterious event, so she seeks the advice of conspiracy theorist and hollow earth expert Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), who figures out that the signal seems to be a distress call; but from where?  Andrews enlists Hayes’ assistance, as well as the help of an old colleague and current titan veterinarian named Trapper (Dan Stevens) as they embark on a journey into Hollow Earth to see where the signal may be coming from.  Meanwhile, Kong digs deeper into a deeper part of Hollow Earth that has been revealed from an earthquake.  There he finds an unexplored country with even more diverse wildlife.  And as he soon finds out, he is not the only titan sized ape in existence.  Is the signal meant to warn of an even greater danger hidden deeper under the surface of the Earth, and is it a big enough threat to make King Kong and Godzilla reluctant allies once again.

The thing that made Godzilla vs. Kong work so well is that it knew exactly what it needed to be and delivered.  We paid to see those two monsters fight, and the movie did not disappoint on that front, not wasting any time getting to the nitty gritty with the matchup happening as early as the first act of the film.  It had to live up to that title and director Adam Wingard understood the assignment.  Was it silly and ridiculous, yes, but that was part of the charm.  Godzilla vs. Kong was not afraid to lean into the absurd, especially when it came to the human characters and their part to play in the movie.  It was refreshing after the misplaced pathos of Gareth Edwards’ depressing Godzilla.  Did Adam Wingard, who returns to direct A New Empire, manage to repeat that balancing act with this new movie.  Well, let me just say that when it comes to the plot and character writing of this movie, this is probably the dumbest film in the franchise to date.  There are so many plot contrivances and non-sensical motivations on the part of the characters.  The dialogue is also heavy handed and loaded with exposition.  But, is the movie still a load of fun to watch even with all those shortcomings?  Absolutely.  What ultimately works in the movie’s favor is that it still understands what the big draw of this movie is, and that is getting to see giant monsters fighting each other, and director Wingard rightly puts the emphasis on that first and foremost.  The only thing that works against that this time around is that the movie takes a bit more extra time to get started.  The first act of the movie is honestly hard to get through, as it focuses primarily on catching up with the human characters, which as we know are the weakest element of this franchise.  But once the movie shifts it’s focus towards the monsters themselves, the movie does pick up and thankfully keeps building.  Unfortunately, the sluggish first act does keep the movie from truly being a great film and makes it a lesser follow-up to Godzilla vs. Kong.  But, if you can make it through that opening, the rest of the movie is one wild and entertaining ride.

What I found to be especially effective are the moments when the human characters are away and we just focus on the kaiju themselves.  The title of this movie is a bit misleading because this is primarily Kong’s movie.  Godzilla is little more than a supporting player, only playing a major part towards the end in the film’s climatic battle.  Thankfully, Kong himself is able to carry the movie on his own.  The movie is at it’s best when we focus on his story.  In fact, there are a surprisingly abundant sequences of this film where we follow along with Kong on his journey and there is no dialogue throughout those scenes.  The movie becomes a bit of a silent movie at this point, with Kong entirely conveying character non-verbally through pantomime.  We see him encounter the other giant apes in the underground world, and though we can’t understand what they say through their grunts and screams, we still are able to read the scene through their gesturing.  Honestly, it would be a neat cinematic experiment to have a kaiju movie done entirely like these moments, without a single word of dialogue.  Something tells me that the thought has crossed Adam Wingard’s mind, and this movie seems to be a test of sorts for if they could do a Monsterverse movie entirely through the perspective of one of the titans, with no human characters at all.  There’s no doubt that these are the most captivating moments of the entire movie, and it’s a real testament to the effectiveness of this Monsterverse franchise that we actually care that much about a character like King Kong at all.  The only thing that would’ve made it better is if more attention was paid to the character development of Godzilla as well.  Godzilla is no more than the brutish, atomic breath spewing monster that we are all familiar with, and not much else is made of his, which is probably why the filmmakers chose to sideline him for most of the movie.  Thankfully when he does enter back into the story it’s a triumphant moment.  But, it’s understandable that Kong is given the lion’s share of screen time, because he is the one grounded mostly in the human world.  He has that connection to civility, and that helps to make him a highly expressive and even introspective character.

So, what about the troublesome human characters.  Well, the script of course doesn’t do the cast any favors.  It’s to the actors credit that they can make the most out of the often clunky dialogue that they are given.  I think another plus of the Monsterverse movies is that they don’t clutter up their films by focusing on too many characters.  It is interesting how many times they establish new characters to this ongoing franchise and then just abandon them without much explanation.  None of the characters from the original 2014 Godzilla made it very far in this franchise.  The only carry overs to the sequel were the Monarch agents played by Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins.  Watanabe’s character does die on screen, but Hawkins’ character has been dropped completely out of the story.  In King of the Monsters, it looked like actress Millie Bobby Brown was being set up as the new main character, and while she did play a minor part in Godzilla vs. Kong, she is now completely absent in The New Empire with no mention of her character anywhere.  Instead, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry and Kaylee Hottle are the sole carry overs.  In a way, that works to the movies benefit having a smaller cast because it allows for the human story to be as brief as possible so that the parts with the monsters can take center stage.  The actors are fine, and though he’s a bit of a cheesy character overall, Dan Stevens does make for a colorful addition to the series.  It’s not really necessary to include a continuation of the human storyline at all, as these monster movies have never really been about continuity before.  But it definitely works towards making Monarch a constant fixture in this franchise, one in which all of the world-building revolves around.  While the human characters will come and go, Monarch as an organization will be the thing that connects this whole universe together across all the films.  Again, this movie knows where to put it’s focus with regards to balancing the human and monster storylines.

One of the other elements that really shines in this movie are the visuals.  Hollow Earth has been one of the best creations of this franchise so far, and The New Empire does a great job of expanding on what we’ve seen so far.  The movie also has a sense of scale that is impressive, making the titan creatures feel appropriately massive.  I also commend the CGI animators for bringing so much character into the character of Kong.  He is incredibly expressive throughout the movie and that helps to make the lengthy sequences of just him without the humans around all the more captivating.  He is a fully rounded character and given that we can only get that through non-verbal communication with Kong is a pretty good indication of the strength of the animation that was used to bring him to life.  Godzilla is a bit more limited when it comes to expressions, but the movie does a fine job of making Godzilla a believable presence as well.  What I also think is a key factor in this movie is the excellent sound design as well.  I watched this movie in an IMAX theater with the loudest sound system possible, and this movie definitely makes great use of it’s soundscape.  Every time you hear Godzilla’s iconic screech of a roar, it is something to be feared.  The sound design also helps to give you a sense of the scale of these creatures, as there is a weight to their presence, especially in the heavy uses of bass in their actions.  Even just listening to Godzilla sleep is chilling as every breath he takes in slumber sounds like rolling thunder.  Kong’s massive presence also benefits from the sound design, especially in the punches he dishes out as well as the ones he takes.  There’s also a beautiful use of color in the movie, especially when the film ventures deeper into the lost world found within the chasm discovered in the Hollow Earth.  Also, Godzilla sporting a pink color scheme after an atomic power up is a nice visual idea that really helps to set this movie apart from others in the franchise.  It’s a sign that the Monsterverse is a franchise willing to take some creative risks and more importantly not be afraid to get a little weird as well.

The one downside to this movie is that it doesn’t have the same beginning to end level of fun as Godzilla vs. Kong had.  The sluggish first act does weigh it down unfortunately.  But, one it finds it’s rhythm and manages to let loose, The New Empire can actually be a lot of fun.  It’s just the right amount of stupid without crossing into the insufferable.  The movie could’ve easily have been mishandled, especially if it took even more time trying to catch up with everything that has gone on with the human characters.  The movie knows that the humans are the true B-plot, and it just gives us enough about them to care a little about their journey while not letting it distract from the main attraction which are the monster fights.  There are some great battle scenes in this movie, with Kong especially showing of some incredible moves.  The movie also rewards audiences who have followed along with the whole Monarch linked elements of the franchise, while at the same time not making it confusing for audiences coming to this with fresh eyes.  The movie may unfortunately fall prey to changing audience tastes, especially after long time monster movie fans fell in love with last year’s Godzilla Minus One.  That film, made by original Godzilla creators Toho Studios, showed us what a monster movie could be when the human story is actually made to be captivating on it’s own.  It’s a rare example where a studio managed to make a prestige film centered around Godzilla of all characters.  That movie also won critical acclaim (and even a Visual Effects Oscar) in a way that this Monsterverse movie will fall well short of.  But, I really do feel that both of these can stand out well on their own.  Godzilla Minus One and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire are intended to be different kinds of animals.  One takes the franchise back to it’s original roots as a dire reminder of the trauma placed on the nation of Japan after a nuclear bomb was dropped on them.  The other is just popcorn entertainment done very efficiently and with some really engaging monster mayhem on screen.  Both kinds of movies are valid in their own way.  So, yes Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a dumb action movie, but those have value too just as long as they remember to be fun, and this one is indeed fun.  I was dreading sitting through the full movie if it continued to be as lanquid as the opening act, but by the film’s end, I had a smile on my face, and that’s what a good action movie should leave you with.  Whether you are Team Kong or Team Godzilla, this movie offers just enough thrills and fun to make it worth seeing.

Rating: 7.5/10