The MonsterVerse erupted in 2014 with Godzilla and continues with Godzilla x Kong, so we’re ranking all of the movies in the series.
This weekend, “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” stomps into theaters, giving our plus-sized heroes a dangerous new foe.
It’s enough to make us check in on the MonsterVerse, the collection of inter-connected films (and two television series, which we will not be evaluating here).
So which MonsterVerse movies are king? And which should be left to rot in the Hollow Earth? Read on to find out.
MonsterVerse movies are like pizza – even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good. This is certainly the case with 2019’s “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” which had the unenviable task of being a direct sequel to 2014’s “Godzilla” while also establishing a platform to further expand upon the idea of the so-called MonsterVerse.
But here’s the thing – they mostly pull it off. The sequel, which was originally to be helmed by “Godzilla” director Gareth Edwards before eventually being assigned to “Krampus” filmmaker Michael Dougherty, was always meant to be a monster-palooza, as they had gotten permission from Toho to use Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah, aka Monster X, alongside Godzilla (There are also a bunch of new-to-you kaiju conjured just for this film).
Sadly, the human part of the narrative is severely lacking, although there is a moving send-off for Ken Watanabe’s Serizawa (fun fact: he’s the only human character in any of these films to touch Godzilla) and Kyle Chandler is a compelling enough monster-chaser. The film’s big moments of pure mayhem are, of course, sublime, with the introductory sequence featuring Rodan facing off against a bunch of fighter jets in Mexico among the very best sequences in any “Godzilla” movie ever. And that’s saying something.
“Let them fight” was a line uttered in the very first “Godzilla” by Ken Watanabe. But it more accurately fits the mood of “Godzilla vs. Kong,” which would pit the giant monsters against each other for the first time since 1962’s agreeably crummy “King Kong vs. Godzilla” (directed by the great Ishirō Honda).
A pretty direct continuation of “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” with Millie Bobby Brown serving as one of our heroes (along with brief contributions from Kyle Chandler), “Godzilla vs. Kong” wisely chooses to frame the movie around an “E.T.”-style creature-and-human relationship, this time between Kong and Jia (Kaylee Hottle) a deaf girl and orphan from Skull Island.
