Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is an incorrect equation.  I am not math major, but Godzilla times Kong equals pointless movie.  That is a criticism I do not like to often use.  Many accuse me of not liking any film I see.  I will admit to being critical, but not overly so.  It is important to be discerning with everything, including your entertainment choices, hence why I started The Legionnaire.  I could repeat every time I see a bad flick that it is “pointless.”  It is a tired word used by many in exasperation over whatever it is they had viewed.  It is also not always a correct assessment.  For example, I have a soft-spot for 2011’s Sucker Punch, but the old man I once lived with thought it “utterly pointless.” Sometimes, this assertion is simply a matter of personal taste.  With Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, I am convinced that it is objectively true.  May the rest of this review reveal why this is the case.

You meet the second half of the titular duo in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire first.  For reasons that I am sure are explained in whatever movie came before this one, Kong has come to “Hollow Earth” (their words, not mine) to find other massive apes.  Force of habit compels me to describe him as such even though practically everything in this fantasy land at the center of the planet is the size of an apartment building.  It does not look like he is having any luck, and as the opening credits kick off, we have Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) cutting in to give the faintest of exposition as to the current state of titans around the globe.  While Kong is on his subterranean sojourn, Godzilla is hunting down any other giant monster that pop up around the globe, and sleeping it off in the Roman coliseum when he is finished.  If you were a several stories tall, fire breathing, nuclear powered lizard, who is going to stop you?  There is also something said about Godzilla being the guardian of nature, and Kong the protector of humanity, though I have no idea how any of what we actually see supports this statement.  Indeed, the humans seem more apt to help Kong, such as when he comes to the surface because, and I am not making this up, he has a tooth ache.  Conveniently, he plops down near the facility headed by Dr. Andrews, who appears to have experience with Kong.  More specifically, it is her adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle) who has an affinity with the oversized simian.  She gets him to lay down and allow himself to be sedated by the suddenly appearing Trapper Beasley (Dan Stevens), who just so happens to know how to pull a giant infected primate tooth and replace it with a fake.  Everyone is on edge during this operation, not so much because of what Kong might do, but because they are worried that Godzilla will show up and they will renew their city wrecking rivalry.  As it turns out, Godzilla is still on the prowl, but not for Kong.  Instead, Godzilla is taking on other titans in order to prepare himself for a call for help that is coming from somewhere.  We actually learn this bit of information, but we find this out later.  For now, it is coming through as a mysterious signal that is interfering with the company monitoring titans, Monarch, particularly at their base in Hollow Earth.  In seeking answers to this phenomenon, Dr. Andrews turns to . . . a podcaster named Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry).  I am being flippant, but if you do not have any familiarity with this franchise, you might be puzzled by this choice.  He had been tracking Godzilla in previous installments, so whatever.  Anyway, Dr. Andrews, Bernie, Jia, and Trapper, along with Monarch mercenary and pilot Mikael (Alex Ferns), accompany Kong back to Hollow Earth . . . and then they do not see their towering ape friend for an hour.  Kong goes off to continue looking for others like him and encounters what I am going to term Kid Kong.  He is an adolescent of apparently the same species as Kong, and living in a still deeper part of this hidden world, along with a number of other similarly sized primates.  We do not see any other children among them, but whatever.  After some initial hostility, to which Kong responds with a wealth of patience, Kid Kong leads his new friend to where the others live, near an active volcano, no less.  They are led by a legendary simian known as the Scar King.  I say legendary because as Kong journeys in this direction, our human characters stumble upon a temple built by Jia’s people.  They have the same telepathic abilities as her, and it is them who have been putting out the call for help.  This is because, as far as I can tell, they are afraid that the Scar King is going to come to trample them?  I think?  Again, it just so happens that Jia answers the call, the one person prophesied to come to their city of glowing crystals and unleash Mothra, who can defeat the Scar King.  Well, this is sort of what happens.  Before Jia completes the ritual, Kong heads to the surface, having been outfitted by Trapper with a new metal arm no less, in order to bring Godzilla down to fight the Scar King and his enslaved titan.  This last one is basically an albino Godzilla that shoots a freeze ray instead of fire, or whatever it is that Godzilla breathes.  Godzilla and Kong renew their animosity, and take down the Great Pyramids with them, until Mothra intervenes.  Insert humongous monster fight that spills over to Rio de Janeiro, but in the end, the good(?) titans win.  Godzilla goes back to sleep in the Coliseum, and Kong heads to the ape kingdom to become King Kong, I guess.

If you can divine a plot from what I just wrote about Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, then you are a better man than I, Gunga Din, to quote Rudyard Kipling.  In order to have a story, the structure of which is called the “plot,” you need to have characters that are given a challenge, overcome it, and gain insights along the way.  One could make the argument that it is Kong, but what does he discover about himself along the way?  It would also be nice if he could speak.  He does appear to know sign language, but he uses that once in the entire film to say three words.  I will grant you that he overcomes the problem he has at the beginning of finding others like him, but that is incidental to almost everything else that happens in the movie.  Okay, if Kong does not work as a protagonist, what about Jia?  There are a couple scenes early on of her trying to fit into the larger world outside of her tribe, her being the last one of her people.  You can imagine, then, how excited she is when she finds others like herself in Hollow Earth, or inner Earth, or whatever it is called.  Once more, however, this is not the focus of the proceedings.  What this side story does is make it possible for the makers of this fever dream to give audiences Mothra.  You remember, right, how audiences have been clamoring for the giant flying insect to make an appearance?  No?  Then again, I am probably the wrong person to be making such judgements.  What all these things underscore is what I believe the producers banked on when they were making this film: that you will not care about a story as long as it has monsters fighting each other.  To me, that is as big a yawn as these creatures.

Speaking of these monsters, as a practicing Catholic I found myself being slightly triggered while watching Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.  It was not just the threat of these titanic struggles to sites sacred to my Faith, like the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro, or the Vatican in Rome.  It is also the catastrophic destruction wrought by these battles that is concerning.  Please know that I understand that this is all fake, and that the buildings crumbling to the ground with every Godzilla gash or Kong kick is the result of computer-generated images (CGI).  Despite being not real, the shots of people running in terror as their homes are swept away from them is haunting.  It reminds me of a scene in Captain America: Civil War (2016) when a mother whose son was killed while the Avengers were saving the world confronts Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.).  Was her son’s life worth their heroics?  Dr. Andrews faces a somewhat similar dilemma when asked about Godzilla’s activities in Rome.  Her answer is to say that things could have been much worth if their monster defender was not there to take care of the invader.  What these scenes bring home to me is the notion that for some, especially those making these disaster flicks, life is cheap.  Yes, they are just pixels on a computer screen added in post-production, but I am with that mother who questions why it is necessary?  Fortunately, we have a God who loves us and can redeem our souls, and eventually our bodies, if we have faith in Him.  How we meet our demise will not matter, either.

The ultimate clue as to how bad is Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is when as they are getting ready for the final battle, Trapper says that he is going to do what he perceives everyone else doing: throwing crap at the wall and seeing if it will stick.  I imagine this is how the entire film was made.  If you are in the mood for a good monster-on-monster fight, watch Pacific Rim (2013).