Director: Adam Wingard
Writers: Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty
Stars: Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall
Run Time: 1 Hour, 53 Minutes
Synopsis
On Skull Island, King wakes up and goes about his morning deal. He showers, has breakfast, and goes to meet his friend, a little girl with a Kong doll. Kong throws a gigantic spear into the sky— and breaks the holographic projector of the giant cage that he’s locked inside.
The scientists explain that outside of captivity, Godzilla would come for Kong, since two Alphas can’t exist. Leaving him outside would be a death sentence. As the credits roll, we see brackets, as in a tournament, of all the monsters both Kong and Godzilla have defeated.
Bernie, a whistleblower with a podcast goes into Apex Cybernetics to expose everything. They do robotics and artificial intelligence. He downloads a bunch of secret files, some of which pertain to something on level 33. Suddenly, an alarm goes off; has be been discovered? No. It’s a Godzilla attack! Bernie spots a strange electrical device in a secret room when Godzilla blows up the building.
Madison, from the previous Godzilla movie argues with her father, who works at the Monarch relief camp in Florida. Who provoked Godzilla? Was it the evil robotics lab?
Dr. Lind believes the Earth is hollow and the source of all the titans. Simmons, the head of Apex comes to him and wants him to find the energy source that powers the center of the Earth and the secret core. “It’s a habitable environment down there,” he explains. Lind lost his brother down there. Apex has designed a “Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicle” or HEAV. Lind agrees to go find the power source. “I have an idea, but it’s crazy,” he explains.
Dr. Ilene Andrews is called “The Kong Whisperer,” and her deaf daughter is the little girl who befriended Kong. Lind and Andrews want to send Kong back to the center of the Earth so Godzilla doesn’t kill him. They drug Kong and put him on a ship back to Antarctica to release Kong into the opening to Hollow Earth there. Maya Simmons, daughter of the boss, is put in charge of the mission. They are carefully avoiding Godzilla’s known territories. Kong throws a tantrum, but the little girl, Jia calms him down; yes, Kong knows sign language.
Madison and her quirky-but-still-randomly-annoying Aussie friend hop in his geeky, antenna-covered storm tracker van to go and help Godzilla. They bribe a guy at the Dollar Store’s bleach aisle to spill the beans on Bernie’s identity. Bernie talks about the “suspicious tech” that he saw.
Jia senses Godzilla’s approach through vibrations in the ship’s hull. Shortly after, Kong senses him too. The ships and fighter planes attack, but you know how that goes already. Godzilla capsizes the ship, and they finally release Kong to defend himself. The two titans fight, with nothing to stand on but warships. The most unbelievable thing about the fight is the size and toughness of those ships. They fight to a draw.
Meanwhile, Bernie, Maddie, and the weird friend sneak into Apex, which suddenly has no security. The strange tech thing is no longer there. They go to level 33, where they find skull-crawler eggs. The pod-thing they are in then goes to Hong Kong in the biggest, fastest, most secret subway ever.
Kong, meanwhile, has been flown to Antarctica and is lowered into the entrance to the Hollow Earth. They can’t take him home, and he can’t survive in the snow. They tell Kong he may have family down in the tunnel. Everyone hops into the HEAV and follows him down. There’s some kind fo technobabble about gravity inversions that makes no sense- it looks like they flew through a black hole.
Still, they do make it to the bottom, and they land down where looks a lot like Skull Island, only much bigger. It’s all very beautiful— until the dragons attack. The dragons are, of course, impervious to missiles, but Kong beats them to death with his fists. There are lots of strange creatures there, and some of the rocks glow with a strange blue light, and some of the rocks float in the sky. Kong can fly here too, since there are paces with strange gravity.
Bernie, Maddie, and weird friend enter a huge room where they are testing… Mechagodzilla. They release a skull-crawler for the machine to fight. Mechagodzilla blows it away with it’s laser-breath-thing. It then fails at only 40% power. Their power problems will be over when they find the source of the real Godzilla’s power. This is why Godzilla attacks Apex, because they are trying to replace him (how would he know that?).
Kong finds a kinda of temple at the center of the Earth, and even his old axe. This is his real home, and he remembers it. King Kong literally sits on a throne here. His axe is the power source for everything. He activates it, and a pattern in the floor that looks like Godzilla lights up. Maya gets a sample and contacts the surface and her father to transmit details.
Maddie and the others find the skull of Gidorah, Monster Zero, and they are doing something with its DNA to make a supercomputer from it and control the Mechagodzilla. Outside, the real Godzilla attacks Hong Kong, where the Apex base is. They finally receive the details of the power source, and now they’re ready to fight the real Godzilla.
Except the real Godzilla has decided to blast a hole all the way down to where King is in the center of the Earth. Kong and the heroes fly up the hole toward Hong Kong.
Maddie, Bernie, and Comic Relief finally get captured. Kong climbs all the way up to the surface of the Earth and starts fighting Godzilla in downtown Hong Kong, which is apparently made of 100% neon lights. Kong stops the Godzilla blast with his axe. Kong gets his butt kicked, so Simmons throw the switch on Mechagodzilla.
The pilot is immediately disconnected, and the brainless skull of King Gidorah takes over. Since all the neon in Hong Kong has been destroyed, the sun comes up and we get a daylight battle between the two Godzillas. Kong is laying there dying, but Lind detonates his HEAV on his chest to give him a jumpstart. Jia then talks Kong into going back to the fight, but he’s definitely getting too old for this stuff.
Massie’s comic relief friend tries to hack into the computer/Gidorah/Mechagodzilla hybrid. Godzilla and Kong have to team up to beat the Mechagodzilla. Godzilla shoots and charges up Kong’s axe, allowing Kong to pulverize the machine. Afterwards, Godzilla goes back to the ocean, and Kong and the scientists go back to the center of the Earth.
Commentary
Three-quarters of Hong Kong is blasted to ruin with three giant monsters doing battle, and we do not see a single human die. Kevin commented on the huge body count, but there really isn’t a big body count of individuals. Masses of people are killed in wide swaths of anonomity.
This film may have literally the worst science of any film I’ve ever seen. It’s not a fantasy world like Lord of the Rings or something; this is supposed to be the real world, only with monsters. It’s a fun action film, but don’t even try to think about any of it. Some of the technology here would put Star Wars tech to shame. With technology like this, they can’t defend against a giant lizard? The further the film gets, the more sci-fi/fantasy it gets, to the point of ridiculousness.
That said, it looks good and it never gets boring. Suspension of disbelief is a real issue here, and we both said, “No Way!” and “Seriously?” and laughed a couple of times during the story. At some point, however, you have to just give up and go with it.
This is the dumbest movie that still manages to be really good that I can remember.