Looking for a way to beat the boredom of staying indoors during COVID-19? How about turning on some classic monster movies. Our Communiqué resident movie reviewer Noah Napolitano recently watched some of them and weighed in on how they measured up.

Godzilla vs Kong (2021) 

It’s now time for the true conclusion to Monster Movie March, even though I’m writing this in April. I ended up seeing this movie while celebrating my 19th birthday, in my parents’ apartment in NYC. Also, there is a King Kong statue in a theater near my parents’ apartment in Brooklyn. (I sadly couldn’t see it this time around, however.)

On to the review, with a minor spoiler warning: This movie features two main plot points with each having their own teams. We have one group trying to get Kong to the Hollow Earth with the help from the company, Apex. This team has Alexander Skarsgård as Nathan Lind, who used to work at Monarch; Rebecca Hall as Ilene Andrews, who is a Monarch scientist who watches over Kong; and Kaylee Hottle as Jia, a deaf girl who was a native on Skull Island. They are a pretty enjoyable group of human characters. The relationship between Andrews and Jia was heartwarming and enjoyable to watch.

The other group includes Millie Bobby Brown as Madison Russell, who we saw in “Godzilla: King of the Monsters”; Brian Tyree Henry as Bernie Hayes, a podcaster who is trying to expose the company Apex; and Julian Dennison as Josh Valentine, who is a friend of Madison. We also have the return of Kyle Chandler’s character Mark Russell. This team was less interesting to me. I enjoyed some of their interactions, but I didn’t find it especially interesting.

Now onto Godzilla and King Kong themselves. King Kong (now much taller) was very interesting as the movie was more focused on him than on Godzilla. We see Kong’s interactions with Jia, which make Kong feel very human. We also get to see how Kong actually thinks, and that was very entertaining to watch.

Godzilla is more of a straight-up monster. Despite having less screen time, he still makes his presence known and is quite entertaining. This movie gives you exactly what you want — a giant monster fight.

The fights between Godzilla and Kong are the highlights of the film. We have four-ish fights between the two, and each is more entertaining than the last. The final fight (which includes a character I don’t want to spoil) was probably the best part of the whole movie.

With that said, this movie wasn’t perfect. My first complaint is that the villain is supposed to be the son of a character from a former movie, but they never bring it up and it’s kind of confusing. Also, the movie briefly talks about a pretty major event that happened off-screen, and they don’t bring it back up or show why, or how, it happened.

I also surprised myself by being disappointed in the lack of human drama. Usually, the human storylines are boring to me, but I have enjoyed the human characters in this current “Monsterverse” series and was disappointed in the lack of focus on these characters in this film.

I don’t want to spoil the movie, but I highly recommend it. Despite its flaws, “Godzilla vs Kong” was just a fun monster movie where a giant ape and lizard fight it out. The future of the “Monsterverse” is unknown, but I look forward to what comes next.

After spending a month watching and writing about nine movies from the past and present with Godzilla and King Kong, I was very excited for this film, and this was one of the most enjoyable things I have done. Until my next movie reviews in the fall, just remember: same bat-time, same bat-channel.