The fifth film in Legendary’s “MonsterVerse” is now out. The movie is called “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.” This film is an absolute blast to watch, and while some details make almost zero sense, it’s still a fantastic movie to watch if you want to have fun.

This movie begins after the events of “Godzilla vs. Kong,” where Kong is now in the Hollow Earth, a subterrestrial world under Earth’s surface. Godzilla remains on the surface to keep order. The opening scenes show both of our main titans doing daily activities in their respective locations, where Kong is searching for more of his kind, and Godzilla is keeping the peace on the surface by stopping other titans, such as the titan Scylla, whom Godzilla kills in the opening scenes.

This opening sequence tells a lot to the viewers about the movie, as it focuses more on the titans rather than in-depth stories like some of the previous movies tried to do.

In the Hollow Earth, a Monarch outpost, the organization who studies the titans, catches a signal coming from the Hollow Earth, which also somehow gets picked up by a Iwi tribe survivor, Jia. Jia begins to have weird hallucinations and visions. Godzilla also senses the signal and immediately starts attacking power plants to absorb radiation and gain power.

Back to the Hollow Earth, Kong finds a sinkhole opened near his home and goes to investigate. He finds another uncharted area of the Hollow Earth where a child, Kong relative appears. Kong is then attacked by three other titans of his kind. In a hilarious scene, Kong uses the child, named Suko, as a weapon to hit the other three titans and subdue them. Kong then uses Suko to lead him to the rest of his kind.

These scenes are great character development for Kong. Despite him not speaking, he shows a great amount of emotion through his facial expressions.

Suko leads Kong to the lair where all the other titans of Kong’s kind are. Here he meets one of the main villains, Scar King, who resembles an orangutan. Kong and Scar King face off for the first time here, and Scar King gets the upper hand using his whip-like weapon made from a spine.

At the end of this whip, there is a crystal which is revealed to be controlling an ancient titan known as Shimo. This crystal is an example of something that does not make much sense in this movie, as it is never explained to the audience how it works.

Kong survives the encounter with severe frostbite on his arm, and he loses his axe. Later, the main cast of characters went to the Hollow Earth to investigate the signal from earlier, where they found Kong. It just so happens that Monarch has a secret project that is stored in the Hollow Earth, called the Bio Enhanced Anatomech Seismic Thunder (B.E.A.S.T) which is a gauntlet that straps onto Kong’s frostbitten arm and injects a steroid into his arm to heal the frostbite. This also gives him a boost in strength as the gauntlet uses some mechanism to enhance the power of Kong’s punches.

This gauntlet, while incredibly cool, leaves a plot hole with how it was put into the Hollow Earth, and how it coincidentally was near where Kong was resting after he was frostbitten.
The main humans in the movie find an ancient Iwi tribe in the Hollow Earth, meaning Jia is not the last Iwi. Here Jia awakens Mothra, who comes into the plot very soon.

While this happens, Godzilla goes to another titan’s lair, Tiamat, where he kills Tiamat and absorbs the radiation in Tiamat’s lair. This new radiation turns Godzilla’s dorsal plates a bright pink color.

Kong goes to the surface and arrives in Egypt, where he calls to Godzilla to try and get him down to the Hollow Earth. Godzilla interprets this call differently and attacks Kong instead. Right as Godzilla is about to use his atomic breath on Kong, Mothra knocks Godzilla over with a sonic blast and gets Godzilla to ally with Kong.

Just as Scar King and Shimo arrive in the Iwi tribe’s place, Godzilla and Kong come crashing down in an amazing scene where the two sides run straight at each other. Right before they clash, the Iwi activate some anti-gravity in their place using these two crystal pyramids, made of the same material as Scar King’s crystal. This scene is one of the best in the movie as a bunch of titans fight in zero gravity, including the main four and even Suko.

The fight goes to the surface world, and Shimo freezes the sky as Scar King wreaks havoc in Brazil. Soon Godzilla and Kong arrive and start the brawl again. During this fight, my favorite scene of the movie happens, as Godzilla winds up his atomic breath in the same way as Vegeta from Dragon Ball, by spreading his arms out wide and screaming.

As soon as Scar King loses his crystal, the fight turns in Godzilla and Kong’s favor as Scar King cannot control Shimo. Kong throws Scar King in the air, Godzilla hits Scar King back towards Kong with his tail, then Kong holds Scar King up with his gauntlet.

Scar King tries to get Shimo to attack Kong, but in a very silly scene, Shimo looks at Godzilla, who is winding up another atomic breath attack and chooses to freeze Scar King instead. After Scar King is frozen, Kong shatters him into many pieces.

After this, Godzilla goes to Rome where he sleeps in the Colosseum, Mothra goes to the Iwi tribe’s home to repair the damage caused by Scar King and Shimo, and Kong, along with Suko, head back to the group of other primate titans.

Kong takes control of the group along with Suko as his adopted son in a way. Shimo is also with Kong, but now follows Kong just as a dog would follow their owner, which is endearing.

“Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire” is an amazing movie, as many fans rate it highly at 91% on the Rotten Tomatoes site. Critics are less fond of this movie. However, in my opinion, they should not be listened to, as they are often hypocritical and tend to compare this movie to “Godzilla Minus One.” Both of these movies are completely different as “Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire” is an action-packed monster movie, while “Godzilla Minus One” is a more story-driven movie with more impactful social ideas.

In previous MonsterVerse movies, critics have often said that there were not enough scenes that include the actual titans themselves, but this movie does have the titans as the main focus, and it has the titans for nearly the entire screen time. Critics complain that there are too many monsters and that they are on screen for too long.

If you watch this movie, do not expect to see intricate plot lines and strong motifs; just have fun and enjoy the action.