So after finally catching this yesterday, I can safely say this is one film you absolutely have to be in the right frame of mind for. No, I'm not talking in the 'switch your brain off' kind of frame, its a much more.......western frame of mind. One that usually sees us having to know everything about everything to be able to even remotely accept it.......
The opening scene sees so many questions start to bubble up in that tiny brain of mine......how......what.......why? We're fed one line of explanation as to why this absolute Titan now finds himself sulkily playing charades with a ten year old girl and stropping about before its gone, we've left it behind before yet another scene has you asking the same questions......wait......what? Why? Er........WHY?????
And then it hit me.........having watched an awful lot of the Heisei and Millennium era Godzilla films recently, this is exactly that kind of film. You don't question 'how' or 'why' in those films, you just grab on for dear life and prey your tiny mind can keep up with what's pummelling your senses. And once I'd cottoned on to that, the film just washed over me and I was properly able to just go with it. In those films, I'm singing the praises of such random choices as tiny singing alien fairy twins, yet in these western films, I'm questioning the logic of how do they get Kong onto a ship? Not very fair that, is it?
Some of the more, er, questionable plot points suddenly were just there - exactly like in those classic era Kaiju movies and even in the classic 70's films of Kevin Connor (The Land that Time Forgot, The People that Time Forgot and Warlords of Atlantis. I remember never once having a burning desire to ask good old Doug McClure why no one had ever come across these lands before given they were hidden behind usually just a slightly lumpy iceberg.....). And that's what this is.....less serious socially conscious comment on the human condition wrapped up in lashings of mega budgeted CG, more a complete knockabout romp designed purely to entertain with the most insane things it can imagine to put on screen.
Sure, there was still some lazy narrative that even in that right frame of mind proved a little difficult to shake off (murderous gravity vortex coming one way through the earth, but not when leaving the other side? Wait......what?) and it had far too many characters than it knew what to do with (I like Julian Dennison but what exactly was he needed for?). But on the whole this was a return to the romp of Skull Island (not least in the hilarious soundtrack and song choices), a long way away from the earnest, po-faced seriousness of the previous Godzilla films.
Great, big fun. But make sure you stop asking 'those' questions as soon as possible otherwise it will be a long watch......