Godzilla vs. Kong (04.16.21)

When RKO released the cultural touchstone that is King Kong in 1933, the titular titan served as a dire warning of how man should not exploit nature or attempt to control it for selfish reasons. When our other favorite giant beastie, Godzilla, showed up 21 years later, he was a dark, serious metaphor for nuclear annihilation (a fear that was very much in the zeitgeist of the Japanese people at the time for obvious reasons). These monsters instantly struck a chord with the public, and fast forward however many years and countless movies later, we get the two meeting in a feature film for the first time (or since 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla, anyway). Here, in Legendary Picture’s Godzilla vs. Kong, the rich tradition of these kaiju conveying deeper themes is continued by asking the thoughtful and important question, “What would happen if giant monkey fought giant lizard?” Without a doubt, I can say that… well, yes. This happens.  

Look, you know this movie isn’t a masterpiece, even if you haven’t seen it or never plan on seeing it. It’s not like the transformation of the two franchises from serious art to silly-but-fun popcorn flicks was sudden and something that Godzilla vs. Kong pioneered. In the last movie in Legendary’s thoroughly okay MonsterVerse, Godzilla gets dropped from space by King Ghidorah, and we find out that the earth is hollow. Godzilla vs. Kong was never going to be art. What it is instead is a middling action movie that suffers from the same thing that other movies in the MonsterVerse are guilty of: too much time with boring human characters who mostly exist to spout exposition. Godzilla vs. Kong has some great actors in it, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, and Brian Tyree Henry, to name a few, but it is hard to take any of them seriously when all they do is give bland backstories, quip, shout techno babble, and quip some more. Can we just get back to giant monkey fighting giant lizard, please?  

Because despite the billing and the fact that the movie gets right into things without pausing to explain who these human characters are--a mixed blessing, it turns out, as no one really cares (and a situation that might be remedied if one has seen all of the previous three movies in the continuity, which I have not)—it still drags in places. The two titans don’t even meet each other until roughly forty minutes in. And sure, Kong gets plenty of screen time (and to a slightly lesser extent, Godzilla, even though Kong is clearly the focus here) before then, but I still found my attention wandering whenever the two weren’t beating the crap out of each other.  

But when there is action, there is action. Monkey and Lizard have never looked cooler, and their battles are something to behold. Godzilla vs. Kong is the latest Warner Bros. movie to be released on both HBO Max and in the theaters simultaneously, and if you have the chance to see it in theaters, make sure you take it (while taking all the necessary precautions, of course… we’re still in a pandemic, people). It might be worth your time if you go in expecting no more than some cool surrounded by a whole lot of stupid.  

Godzilla vs. Kong is now available on HBO Max.

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on April 16th, 2021.

The Lost Pirate Kingdom (04.02.21)

When the Magic Kingdom first opened in 1971, there was one Disneyland attraction that was conspicuously missing: Pirates of the Caribbean. According to park lore, this was done because it was initially believed that Floridians would be less charmed by pirates thanks to their proximity to the Caribbean itself. This turned out to be a miscalculation as one thing became clearer over the years: that everyone loves pirates. Disney World would get its Pirates ride in 1973, and nearly five decades later it and its brethren in Anaheim, Paris, and Shanghai remain some of the most popular attractions Disney has to offer. There is something undeniably appealing about the adventurous lifestyle that these rogues lead, but who were they as people? What is the truth behind the legends? Netflix’s new docuseries The Lost Pirate Kingdom wants desperately to give viewers these answers, but just might end up making them seasick instead thanks to its laughable reenactments, mind numbing repetitiveness, and lack of good history.   

An ugly hybrid between documentary and historical drama, The Lost Pirate Kingdom is an absolute chore. The talking heads are periodically interrupted here by bad actors in bad costumes who try their darndest to conjure up the high seas excitement of a Pirates of the Caribbean film, all the while accompanied by a score that sounds like discount Hans Zimmer. These reenactments are not entertaining, nor are they necessary, as everything the actors do and say is just a repeat of what the historians themselves said five seconds ago. And speaking of unnecessary, this documentary is R-rated. As in, there are multiple f-bombs and more than one topless prostitute. Why? Because this is Netflix, and our documentary is going to be spicy, dammit! If The Lost Pirate Kingdom would have worried less about being a gritty low budget Pirates of the Caribbean movie then it would have had more time to show some actual historical depth, but as it is the information conveyed is shockingly shallow. What was the War of Spanish Succession and what did it have to do with the rise of piracy in the eighteenth century? Don’t worry about it! Here’s a love scene between Sam Bellamy and a woman that may have not even existed!   

This leads me to the other gripe that I had with The Lost Pirate Kingdom—the  passing off of speculation and hearsay as fact. If there is one thing I have learned about the pirates of the Golden Age in my reading throughout the years, it’s that their history is often very difficult to nail down because men like Blackbeard and Benjamin Hornigold were not exactly the diary-keeping types. Historians have to fill in a lot of blanks, and this series does a very poor job of acknowledging that. If you do not have some prior knowledge of these people and events already then it will be impossible to know what is historical fact and what is historical speculation.  

Skip this one and get your pirate fix elsewhere. I personally recommend The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down by Colin Woodard (who happened to be one of the talking heads in this series). Here in The Lost Pirate Kingdom, there be only monsters.   

The Lost Pirate Kingdom is now available on Netflix.   

 

This review was first published in The Keizertimes on April 2nd, 2021.