When I was about to watch “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire”, my physical condition was rather exhausted, and I sincerely hoped that I could be energized by whatever it would serve me during the next two hours. Unfortunately, the movie was not that good enough for galvanizing my weary mind, and I simply observed all those big monster fights and the accompanying mass destruction from the distance without much care or attention.

No, I did not expect at all anything which can be regarded as something, uh, artistic. After all, I finally overcame my remaining snobbishness as totally surrendering myself to the grand finale of “Godzilla vs. Kong” (2021), though I must confess that I do not remember much except lots of fights between Kong and Godzilla on the screen. Therefore, I was willing to embrace and enjoy another big serving of massive spectacles from the two main star monsters of the MonsterVerse, but, folks, I ended up checking the time more than once during my viewing.

The reason why I was not engaged or entertained enough is pretty simple; the movie takes a bit too much time before Godzilla and Kong finally join together for fighting against their common enemy. For more than the half of its running time, the movie merely slouches from one narrative point to another as trying to set the ground for their eventual big battle, and it also often trudges whenever it pays attention to its human characters, who are still the least interesting parts of the film. Once both Godzilla and Kong get together in action, the movie surely attempts to be as spectacular as possible, but, to my disappointment, the result feels rather hurried instead of being overwhelmingly exciting like “Godzilla vs. Kong”.

At least, the movie amused me to some degree with more preposterous stuffs on the way. While Godzilla occasionally makes a big news around the world just for reminding the world that who the boss is, Kong freely explores his vast underground world called “Hollow Earth”, and we get a little humorous moment when it happens to have a dental problem, which is later fixed by those dedicated employees of a big global organization called Monarch.

One of the key figures in Monarch is Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), and she and her colleagues including Trapper (Dan Stevens) go down to Hollow Earth due to a mysterious signal coming from somewhere inside Hollow Earth. Incidentally, this signal is also received by the mind of Dr. Andrews’ young adopted daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), and Jia, who was once closely connected with Kong, is also willing to go down there along with others for finding what is really going on inside Hollow Earth.

On the other side, the movie follows Kong’s accidental journey into a certain uncharted region in Hollow Earth, where it encounters several big apes who look like the leftover extras from the recent Planet of the Apes movies. After defeating all of those aggressive opponents, Kong becomes determined to get to the bottom fo the situation, and then he gets guided by a smaller ape who sometimes feels like a cross between that house elf character in Harry Potter movies and Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies.

Meanwhile, as the other star monster of the film, Godzilla gives us a series of destructive moments here and there in the world after also noticing the signal coming from Hollow Earth. At one point, it goes to a remote area in the Arctic region for getting more power for himself, and we surely get another monster fight scene as it goes all the way for the enormous power source inside some other monster.

Of course, all these narrative lines will converge together during the last act, but the movie still did not hold my attention enough even at that point. The eventual alliance between our two monster stars is quite contrived as hurrying them too quickly into the finale, and the following action sequence feels too scattershot at times as busily juggling many different story elements.

Furthermore, the subplot involved with the strained relationship between Dr. Andrews and Jia is redundant without much depth. I know well that human depth is the last thing I should expect from a Godzilla/Kong movie, but I could not help but notice how the human cast members of the movie often struggle with their thankless cardboard roles. While Rebecca Hall does not have much to do except being frequently required to deliver a lot of exposition to other characters as well as us, Dan Stevens and Brian Tyree Henry acquit themselves well in their deliberately broad acting, and young actress Kaylee Hottle holds herself fairly well even when she has to share the screen with Kong.

In conclusion, “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” did not bore me much, but it did not satisfy me enough for recommendation either. While Director/co-story writer Adam Wingard, who previously directed “Godzilla v. Kong”, and his crew members present a competent product to be consumed, the movie does not reach to the level of goofy grandeur of “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” (2019) or “Godzilla v. King”, and now I become more interested in checking out Japanese film “Godzilla: Minus One” (2023), which recently won a Best Special Visuals Oscar but has sadly not been released in South Korean theaters yet. After all, Godzilla is more fun to watch when it brutally roams in Japan, isn’t it?