I know the readers of this site well-enough. They have properly refined film tastes; sniff-testers who can tell between crass entertainment and well-made escapism. They know exactly what Godzilla Vs. Kong” is all about. It’s a mass-marketed product to appease to the doldrums. Simple as that.
Yes, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the epic showdown between these two movie monsters will be released both in theaters and on HBO Max in just a month’s time. It’s the kind of monster mash-up nobody needed, another installment in the MonsterVerse series that started with Gareth Edwards‘ “Godzilla,” the franchise’s first film, which came out back in 2014. And then, in “Kong: Skull Island,” (a perfectly decent movie) , released in 2017, the same Monarch scientists from “Godzilla” traveled to an uncharted island in the Pacific during the Vietnam War and bumped into Kong and his buddies, which then led to the misbegotten 2019 “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.”
“Godzilla Vs. Kong” isn’t being released without an issue of delays. Production wrapped in April 2019, COVID pushed back the film’s initial March 2020 release date to May, then November, and finally to May 2021. Shortly after the HBO Max/Warner Bros deal, “Godzilla Vs. Kong” received its current release date: March 26.
The film is directed by Adam Wingard, a good filmmaker, whose best stuff came from indie genre fare like “You’re Next” and “The Guest,” it’s Wingard’s highest budgeted film to date. In fact, the bigger the budget, the worse his films have been. Wingard is the kind of filmmaker whose creative juices go high-speed when the budget is limited and the imagination is rampant. That’s why his last two (“Blair Witch” and “Death Note”) have been such duds. After seeing the trailer “Godzilla vs. Kong,” his losing streak has a good chance of contuing