Control Review: Godzilla x Kong (and a little Ghostbusters talk)
I, Dalton Lewis, self-published author, watched Godzilla x Kong and enjoyed it. The movie was an unapologetic fun blockbuster with bombastic action, thumping classic rock tunes, silly comedic undertones, and a side of heart.
In the movie, Godzilla powers up to fight a huge enemy. Kong ventures deep into Hollow Earth, a realm in the middle of Earth which is not a dark cavernous place but a vast underground bright jungle. Kong is looking for his home — his family. He doesn’t find what he wanted to find — he finds bad news when he searches for his family.
Godzilla is an angry water monster, and Kong is an angry giant primate. They both wreck countless enemies during the film. The movie favors lots of kaiju action over everything else, and the action is large and exciting.
Still, there are human characters. There’s a smart researcher, Dr. Andrews. She is raising a girl who is deaf who taught Kong sign language. The girl, Gia, has visions that draw her deep into Hollow Earth looking for…something. There’s a podcaster/conspiracy theorist who cracks jokes. There’s a doctor/veterinarian who takes care of Kong when he gets injured and, yes, cracks jokes. The plot continues as they explore more of Hollow Earth and find a paradise there…which brings a set of problems. Do they hide it from the world? Does it need help? Do they get along with the natives? Why did the natives send for them? Does someone want to stay with the natives? These questions are answered (mostly) during the movie.
Kong’s relationship with the other giant apes — and his anxiety that they aren’t all noble like him — gives him an interesting conflict to deal with. Kong is clearly the lead of this movie, and he has to teach his people to be moral and innocent and not to bow to tyrants. That makes for an interesting challenge for the giant primate.
I felt a little jealous watching this movie. This isn’t a grand work of art with complicated irony and symbolism or anything, but it tells a good surface story with entertaining monster action. Why can’t I write a crowd-pleasing story like this?
Why does this story get an A-minus Cinemascore and an $80 million first weekend for the box office when Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire gets barely more than half the box office and a worse Cinemascore grade? There are fewer fights and more characters in Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters does have some interesting character bits, but they only really bust a ghost in the beginning and a ghost in the end. The drama between the characters is more personal teen angst — and the teenager in Godzilla x Kong is a less whiny and more confident, powerful character than the super-genius, do everything Mary Sue in Phoebe from Ghostbusters. Why is the character more impressive when she is believable and doesn’t do everything but has a vital role on the team?
There are a lot of inane fight sequences that don’t mean much in Godzilla x Kong. That’s okay. Everything doesn’t have to add up to a cohesive whole and add to the themes of the story. There can be fun action scenes for the sake of fun action scenes. By contrast Ghostbusters tries to have scenes for a dozen characters and fails to have arcs for any of them.
Mild spoilers…
There’s a lot of plot happening in Ghostbusters and less plot happening in Godzilla x Kong, but both involve a potential ice age created by a frost monster. There are sympathetic elements to the bad guys and very villainous elements to the bad guys in both stories. Both stories have conflicted bad guys who don’t want to work for their terrible, evil, beyond comprehension vile bosses.
I’ve written books which are essentially space opera action books and didn’t get an A-minus score. I got worse than that. Why? I think that I did not have a concrete, linear through plot with clearly defined characters. I did not have a lot of bright and interesting action scenes. I needed to show more and tell less and describe things more effectively and have better dialogue. That would improve many of my writing problems.
Ghostbusters had a lot of likable situations and characters and storylines and didn’t put it all together somehow. It was pretty good. I know — it’s the eternal story problem — to be damned with faint praise. I’m so sorry to say that the movie did everything pretty well but pulled its punches and therefore didn’t do anything too big or great. Godzilla x Kong, however, tried to be a big, fun, popcorn movie with giant monsters fighting, and it succeeded in a big way. People cheered in the theater last night when I watched the movie with a friend. That doesn’t happen in a movie anymore, but it happened last night. I can only hope that I can try to write a story which makes people root for the good guys to stop the bad guys in a similar manner.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
