Transformers

• Seventy years after his first appearance in the 1954 Japanese film Gojira, Godzilla has become a global star.
• Meanwhile King Kong, his gigantic Hollywood counterpart, has been circling the globe for a shade over 90 years.
• The two come together in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire for the second time in the MonsterVerse film franchise, this time as unlikely partners protecting the Earth.

Nuclear Godzilla

• But by contrast, in the MonsterVerse, nuclear power stations and bombs are used routinely to “power up” Godzilla.
• Godzilla not only absorbs the nuclear radiation from a power plant, but also turns quasi-cannibal, killing the sea-serpent Titan Tiamat to absorb its power.
• Tiamat’s signature colour is pink, and so for the second half of Godzilla x Kong, Godzilla shines with rosy radioactive hues.

Kong goes subterranean

• In Godzilla x Kong, King Kong is in Hollow Earth searching for his lost species.
• In this way the film is something of a sequel to director Adam Wingard’s 2021 Godzilla vs Kong.
• In it, Kong discovers an enslaved giant ape community near the heart of the Hollow Earth, under the control of the Skar King.
• The city is burned, frozen and stomped on as Godzilla and Kong face off against their enemies.

Humour in Godzilla x Kong

• Among the beloved national landmarks reduced to rubble is the Coliseum, which becomes a giant cat bed for Godzilla.
• Aside from the Titans, Godzilla x Kong is largely populated by secondary characters from previous films, along with broadly drawn characters like Trapper, a dentist and vet for Titans (Dan Stevens on scene-chewing form).
• However, in Godzilla x Kong it seems like the Titans are finally the main attraction in their own movies.
• As Godzilla and Kong make themselves at home in semi-flattened cities all over the world, the global power of the MonsterVerse is hard to argue with.

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Rayna Denison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.