The New Empire doesn't exactly shed itself of all the issues I've had with the MonsterVerse movies so far but it thankfully lessens the things I've been frustrated with and it made for quite a fun ride.
Don't get me wrong the characters still aren't up too much. I don't think they're that deep or particularly memorable but they are likeable. They have genuinely good chemistry and even if I felt the film could've taken itself a bit more seriously at points, I still found it a lot funnier than it had any right to be. There's also significantly less of them compared to King of The Monsters and Godzilla Vs. Kong and it does wonders for the pacing.
Since they're not trying to balance so many characters and subplots it makes the whole thing feel much more streamlined and I can honestly say I was never bored, which was not my experience with the last films. It's very fast paced but more importantly it always felt like there was something important happening. Don't get me wrong it's no masterpiece of writing, the dialogue is still bland and the story non-existent but for what I needed from this film it hit just the right sweet spot.
I also loved the fact that there were whole sections devoted exclusively to Kong. In past instalments this time probably would've gone to boring human characters but this is much more along the line of what I want to see. The kills are brutal, the action's fun and even if it devolves a bit too much into CGI noise in the 3rd act I still thought it was fun with some actual sense of scale.
After very little anticipation from me in a long stretch of these movies that I haven't really enjoyed this was quite a pleasant surprise. It's not immune to all this series flaws but it's been more than refined enough to create for an enjoyable experience. It's no Minus One but it's a lot more fun than I ever would've expected.
Don't get me wrong the characters still aren't up too much. I don't think they're that deep or particularly memorable but they are likeable. They have genuinely good chemistry and even if I felt the film could've taken itself a bit more seriously at points, I still found it a lot funnier than it had any right to be. There's also significantly less of them compared to King of The Monsters and Godzilla Vs. Kong and it does wonders for the pacing.
Since they're not trying to balance so many characters and subplots it makes the whole thing feel much more streamlined and I can honestly say I was never bored, which was not my experience with the last films. It's very fast paced but more importantly it always felt like there was something important happening. Don't get me wrong it's no masterpiece of writing, the dialogue is still bland and the story non-existent but for what I needed from this film it hit just the right sweet spot.
I also loved the fact that there were whole sections devoted exclusively to Kong. In past instalments this time probably would've gone to boring human characters but this is much more along the line of what I want to see. The kills are brutal, the action's fun and even if it devolves a bit too much into CGI noise in the 3rd act I still thought it was fun with some actual sense of scale.
After very little anticipation from me in a long stretch of these movies that I haven't really enjoyed this was quite a pleasant surprise. It's not immune to all this series flaws but it's been more than refined enough to create for an enjoyable experience. It's no Minus One but it's a lot more fun than I ever would've expected.