Part Two – Godzilla Minus One: Strengths and Stupidities

 

By Joe Gibson

 

If you are unaware, I am currently in the process of releasing a Godzilla Minus One review here and to our YouTube page. I explain it in more depth in the previous part (https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2025/06/godzilla-minus-one-strengths-and.html), but the video will be more complete, and the review in blog post form is unfolding this way to advertise the video but also to give you this written option if you would prefer to read than listen.

 

The Ocean Battle Analyzed

 

 

The scene of the dossier on the moving Godzilla seems directly inspired from Godzilla 2014 (noted inspirations for the imagery of this movie are Gareth Edward’s 2014 film as well as the Spielberg films that inspired that one, and the above picture is of Takashi Yamazaki with Edwards after the fact), but, once we get to the first ocean battle against Godzilla, some shots will be almost direct reproductions of those in Godzilla vs Kong’s ocean battle, just transplanted to a different context with different stakes. I should mention that this Godzilla is territorial, and the shots of his pathing as well as GvK allusions indicate that territorial nature.

 

General MacArthur stops directly short of appearing in this movie, declaring that if the U.S. were to get involved in stopping Godzilla, that might exacerbate tensions with the Soviets. Though it is true and acknowledged in this very film that the United States helped Japan to rebuild after the war to the point where despite the nuke, we have been allies for decades, the particular thematic edge to this film lies in how those Japanese citizens affected by the war, both veteran and civilian, have to work to rebuild. The Japanese government, as cynical Akitsu will comment on, does not care about the people, will not stop Godzilla and will keep Godzilla secret because information control is their specialty. The U.S. government too does not have the interests of Japanese citizens at heart in this film for the story it is trying to tell. And, once the film gets to May 1947, near the uninhabited Ogasawara Islands, the Japanese government has sent Noda and his team to use the ocean mines to stall Godzilla until the Takao arrives after Godzilla destroyed a boat in that area. (This also justifies why our main characters are specifically the ones on the scene, which we would not have questioned as an audience but the movie cares to show this to us.)

 

Both Shinsei and Kaishen Maru look on at the destroyed ship, but Shikishima recognizes the type of destruction and the deep sea fish, telling the others about Odo Island. As far as everyone else is concerned, U.S. island hopping forces took out Odo’s garrison, and this speaks to the information control Japan utilizes that Akitsu comments on later. Noda shares his own trauma, and Shikishima tells him how scary it was to be around Godzilla before. Shikishima and Noda try to convince Akitsu to flee, but Akitsu steps up, saying that even though he does not like the government order, if they do not stall for time til the Takao shows up, who will? The destruction of the Kaishen Maru changes his mind understandably, and, yes, there was a fifty fifty shot there Godzilla surfaces to kill our main cast or the extras. That is just a lucky coincidence that he chose the other ship, but coincidences happen in real life as well, so I will permit that. Nothing is contrived here. Godzilla just chose poorly.

 

 

The Shinsei Maru has two mines to use, and the first, landing at the dorsal fins, does nothing. Shikishima starts trembling in the hands as he had on Odo Island, but Noda has the idea to put the remaining mine in Godzilla’s mouth. This has the unintended but realistic consequence that Godzilla’s teeth cut the line to the mine so Shikishima has to shoot it for it to explode. The explosion splinters the edge of the Shinsei Maru but more importantly explodes Godzilla’s left cheek and eye. Unfortunately, he heals from that and stands up to roar, but the Takao has arrived. You could argue this is coincidental timing that the Takao is right on time to save the characters from Godzilla, but one way we can judge coincidences and contrivances is how it affects the story if it does not happen. If the Takao were to be 5 seconds later, Godzilla would still be roaring. Godzilla had not started to lower himself into the water to swipe at them yet, nor had he started to charge up his atomic breath, which would have taken longer than another roar. The Takao could have arrived any time within the next 30 seconds, and the scene would not change. The Takao has also been en route for the entire scene, so there is no issue with their specific timing. The film plays out the same regardless.

 

Godzilla dives beneath the water in a shot like GvK, and starts ripping at the Takao. This is where the main caveat on my issue with the soundtrack lies. The track, called Divine, with the bell sound effects that comes out every time from here on that Godzilla does something significant is quite melodious and iconic. In any case, Godzilla changes strategy and uses his atomic breath for the first time in the film. After the initial beam, it leaves behind a mushroom cloud. 

 

As I mentioned before, the ocean battle homages GvK, most especially in the way Godzilla fires his atomic breath under a ship and then emerges to gaze at the main characters before swimming away. The context is very different however in a way that I find brilliant because it perfectly accounts for the resolution of this battle in a different way than GvK. As you can see from the burning all over Godzilla’s body after he unleashes the atomic breath, it hurts him too. It will be a major part of the final battle that Godzilla has to heal after using it, and that is the reason why he pulls it out rarely, also the reason why it marks the end of his Ginza rampage later, but, even though he has won this battle and the Shinsei Maru is at his mercy, he still has to retreat to heal his wounds. That alone justifies the survival of the characters in this scene and makes the stakes that much more palpable because it is possible to survive against Godzilla in attrition. Also, consider this. Not even Godzilla can misuse nuclear power in this movie without consequences. Godzilla, who was the first victim in this movie of nuclear power, feels pain every time he uses it again.

 

Act Two

 

 

With the appearance and retreat of full sized Godzilla, Shikishima waking up in the hospital arguably propels us into act 2. Shikishima seems to have a concussion, Mizushima has a broken arm, and the government of Japan has elected not to tell the mainland about Godzilla to avoid a panic. Akitsu criticizes them for this, and Noda has more diplomatic phrasing to explain he agrees with Akitsu and a now frantic Shikishima but that they cannot do anything to oppose the situation at that time.

 

Noriko finally asks Shikishima about what is tormenting him. The specific timing could be construed as coincidental, but Shikishima presumably is dealing with his trauma worse now that Godzilla is back, so it makes sense she feels like she has to ask him now. He confesses his backstory, including Godzilla’s role, and the soundtrack is back to repeating chords that again do enhance the moment but also do not feel like songs. I probably should stop harping on the soundtrack until we get to the older tracks they brought back. I am out of my depth when it comes to music theory. The acting is quite good consistently in this film, but I will highlight this scene, the aforementioned one where Noriko tells Koichi that everyone who survived the war is meant to live. Ryunosuke Kamiki as Shikishima consistently sells the trauma and pain of this surviving kamikaze soldier, and Minami Hamabe’s portrayal of Noriko exudes the compassion necessary for this interpersonal dynamic and the care for each other they have. I have been watching the original Japanese version of the film and not the dub, because dub Shikishima sounds like a mildly less deadpan version of the adult cartoon character Archer.

 

Shikishima ends the scene by breaking down again, speculating that this new life is a dream, and Noriko pulls him to her chest to let him feel her heartbeat again. We do not see it, but I suspect right after this scene is where Shikishima and Noriko have the conversation about settling down together. Later on, we learn definitively that the care they have for each other is romantic and that they would like to love each other except that Koichi’s war is not over yet, and, contextually as well as elevating their intimacy and vulnerability with each other, this scene is the latest it could have happened timeframe wise and most open conversation they have had these last two years.

 

When Shikishima awakes the next day, he sees Noriko feeding Akiko a radish, and he wants to live again with these two as his family. Tragically, this also seems to be the day Godzilla makes landfall in Japan for his rampage in Ginza…where Noriko works. Any future they have, they must fight against Godzilla for. Shikishima learns of the news when he is playing with Akiko after Noriko has left.

 

People run in the streets as Godzilla throws a train down an alley and steps, with just his foot on the screen. As best as I can determine, because it really is one to one, that shot homages Godzilla vs Kong when his foot comes down in the Hong Kong streets. Anyway, a section of train hurtles toward the train Noriko is on and, unless Godzilla picked up the train car after he threw it, that means these vignettes are happening contemporaneously. The rest of the homages in this scene will be to the 1954 Godzilla’s attack on Ginza, as he rips apart the buildings and Noriko’s train. 

 

The ground breaks under Godzilla’s feet as he plods his way over to the train and lifts it up by his mouth. Classic Godzilla music plays as Noriko holds on for dear life and the train car falls apart.

 

 

Now this is actually the worst scene in the entire film. Noriko has the core strength to survive this initial scenario, and Godzilla moves conveniently over some water she can fall into without taking damage. That is fine; the suspense comes from the danger she is in, so the film should maximize it, and again I allow for coincidences for the water being there. Godzilla killing the journalists is a little less passionate than it was in 54, but that is because this is him expanding his territory not delivering retribution, and actually the special effects are much better here than in 54. The track Mahara Mothra plays for some reason, and that’s weird but not an issue. Okay what really breaks this scene is what happens next with Noriko and Shikishima. Everything else is amazing, including the rendition of Godzilla’s Theme that plays during the destruction.

 

Noriko finds herself in the crowd of people fleeing Godzilla, knocked over by the stampede, and Shikishima somehow finds her. I do not have an issue with this part, and actually it was based on a true story. It is lucky that Shikishima is able to find her, but he should know roughly where to look as they have not moved too far from where her train actually fell. Again, I am fine with this plot point in isolation (stacking this on top of her train survival is starting to strain credibility), but I know my mother finds that to be the broken premise so I will acknowledge it is debatable. However then, Shikishima and Noriko, moving slower than the people around them, very luckily happen to narrowly be the farthest people back out of reach of Godzilla’s tail swipe. Tanks fire on Godzilla as the pair reach the alleyway of a couple of buildings. Godzilla finally unveils his atomic breath dorsal plate charge (in this one, they all push out one by one as they glow and eventually collapse inward to push out the beam, it is very impressive.) The atomic breath has a mushroom cloud and acts like it is a nuke dropped on Ginza, vaporizing most of the people and sending out a shockwave to destroy every building. Noriko just narrowly pushes Shikishima between the only two buildings that survive the shockwave. I like what this does for the characters; she gets to save his life and demonstrate to him that he deserves to live, but he should be dead too right now. Buildings behind them also got levelled. If this were to play out logically, the rest of the movie would not happen!

 

 

The conclusion of the Ginza setpiece and apparent loss of Noriko strikes me as the structural midpoint (huh mathematical midpoint too what do you know) of the film to push Shikishima into his darkest moment at the end of act 2 before the climax of act 3 where he will make a choice either to live as Noriko wanted (and seemingly gave her life for) or die as Shikishima thinks the ghosts of his past and society as a whole want him to do, so this is not only just a scene in the movie but one of the most important ones for how the rest of the movie plays out. Consequently, I think this part of the film deserves closer inspection, and it does not work, I am sorry.

 

Allegedly, the novelization calls Shikishima’s survival in Ginza a miracle, and I'm sorry, but while absolutely true, that is still a copout answer, and the only way I would accept his survival as logical is comprehensive blast radius calculations or perhaps exposition about those two buildings being reinforced (though it would be still be lucky he made it to them when he and Noriko were close enough to Godzilla to only narrowly evade the tail swipe).

 

 

Godzilla gazing on his destruction and roaring triumphantly while Shikishima screams in the black rain; those parts work on a deep primal level, and, once again the film has Godzilla retreat here to heal from using the atomic breath, but Shikishima literally should not have survived this. The story needs him to, and this is a break from cause and effect to benefit the story when otherwise the storytelling and cause and effect were lockstep together closer than almost any other Godzilla film. 30,000 were killed or injured, and pieces of Godzilla’s flesh peeled off. That is important to keep in mind as we proceed to Noriko’s ultimate fate. She is within the number of dead AND injured, and Godzilla cells are in play.

 

Noda, Mizushima and Akitsu all join Shikishima and Sumiko at his house to take care of Akiko, and Shikishima goes back to the pictures of the soldiers and what they represent about his depression. Noda, to console Shikishima, tells him about the civilian veteran force to defeat Godzilla, the special disaster countermeasure meeting. All of the veterans salute Captain Hotta when he emerges, but he will be quick to remind them later on that he no longer pulls any rank over them. They have negotiated to use four naval destroyers initially intended for turnover to the United Nations, and Noda unveils his plan to destroy Godzilla with the power of the sea (place freon tanks around his waist and sink him to the depths to allow the sudden pressure changes to kill him. If that fails, bring him up suddenly with inflatable rafts to subject him to explosive decompression). The imagery of the freon bubbles sinking Godzilla borrows from that of the Oxygen Destroyer in 1954, but this is a fundamentally different type of attack, more down to earth and realistic.

 

Some of the veterans meet Noda’s ideas with pushback. Shikishima is actually the most passionately adversarial and almost storms out of the room, but his respect for Noda and want for revenge against Godzilla makes him stay. That very public display of begrudging respect probably helped many of the veterans stay longer, but some of them do end up leaving because Hotta does not intend to force anyone to stay, and they have their families. Some brave extras do step up and inspire the rest to stay.

 

In a discussion that turns somewhat hostile, Shikishima suggests flying around in a plane to distract Godzilla (this will be crucial to their ultimate victory), Mizushima suggests using the Destroyers to pull Godzilla out of the water (weirdly enough, this too is crucial to their victory), Akitsu shouts at Shikishima for not appreciating Noriko, and Shikishima reveals that he actually does love Noriko but his war is not over yet, implicitly not until he or Godzilla or both are dead. As this is a moment of revelation and minor emotional release, I will call that the end of act 2, but it is sometime around this point that it switches into act 3 in any case.

 

 

Consequently, that is where I will end for today, but if you would like to be fully caught up for part three of this review in the next few days, I would like to encourage you to watch this video that premiered at the start of this week, a debate between myself and Doug Gibson about if Minus One or Godzilla 1954 is the better film.  Though the review allows me more time to lay out my thoughts, I will reference parts of the debate in my review, and, if you are enjoying this content so far, why not check out the debate in the meantime?

https://youtu.be/bjGSaU7H4TE?si=tuZ5HX-j2oTnmfna

 

March Godzilla Film Releases Ranked, Jun Fukuda Part Two

 

 

By Joe Gibson

 

Welcome back to Plan9Crunch, where, previously we gave a brief overview of the March Godzilla film releases, especially how they intersect with one man, director Jun Fukuda. Indeed, being directly responsible for the majority of the 70s Godzilla film releases, he incidentally made three March Godzilla films, with Honda’s March Godzilla film Terror of Mechagodzilla directly following up on Fukuda characters and plots and Wingard’s two wacky Godzilla and Kong March movies being spiritual successors to the themes and aesthetics. Consequently, March is the best time to unpack the influence Fukuda had on this franchise for better or for worse, and the best way to do this is to rank these March movies. (Note: I have also previously ranked the Gamera movies and refer to my thoughts there as analogies for some of the relationships of these movies. Reading that post will not be crucial to understanding this one, but I will provide a link.)

 

Link to Fukuda Overview: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2025/03/introduction-to-jun-fukuda-plan9crunch.html

Link to Gamera Film Ranking: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/11/joes-gamera-film-ranking-worst-to-best.html 

 

6. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla 1974 directed by Jun Fukuda

 

In Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, the core human ensemble uncovers an artifact linked to an Okinawan end times prophecy that teases the return of King Ghidorah but is actually about a robotic version of Godzilla disguised in a skin suit that defeats ankylosaur Anguirus before being stopped by a teamup of Godzilla and new monster related to the artifact King Caesar (an Okinawan Shisa dog lion hybrid that protects a specific royal family).

 

Having Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla this low is definitely a hot take. This is a favorite of many and, at first, appears to be a very strong film and showcase for Fukuda. As his last Godzilla film, he would know what works and what does not, and, for the most part, it is a great demonstration of his vision. The spy action is at its most thrilling and constant, there is genuinely great chemistry in the cast, and the campy underdog Godzilla is at perhaps his most compelling when Mechagodzilla makes him bleed the most he ever has. There are just a few practicality and plot considerations that make this a broken premise for me.

 

Least importantly, Godzilla and King Caesar have negligible chemistry and cooperation in the final fight in such a way that I honestly think is a detriment to both of their characters. Similarly, the “I have to rescue my brother” Fukuda staple is at its least compelling and most obligatory here (the lead’s brother gets kidnapped late in the movie and rescued very quickly). Next least important, the idea of a Mechagodzilla is such a bizarre thing for a smart and technologically advanced faction that it does require some suspension of disbelief (even stranger to first put it in a skinsuit that prevents it from using most of its arsenal). More importantly, there is a switcheroo with the artifact that results in the lead risking his life and literally almost dying just to procure a fake statue that he made and no one else knew about. The character survives due to outside intervention by a flamboyant James Bond named Nanbara and otherwise would have died for incredibly stupid reasons. That shatters much of the plot already. Most importantly, by the end of the movie, Godzilla defeats Mechagodzilla by turning himself magnetic, which he is only able to do because lightning happened to strike him earlier and for some reason it did not hurt him like lightning was established to do in previous films. This is a Gamera vs Viras situation where the movie is really good in many categories but has intense low points too. The next one is a bit more like Gamera vs Zigra (completely inept) but far more fun to watch in a way akin to Plan 9 From Outer Space through how bizarre it is.

 

5. Godzilla vs Megalon directed by Jun Fukuda

 

In Godzilla vs Megalon, nuclear tests anger underground Seatopians, who wage war on the surface with their monster Megalon but also humanoid agents that abduct Goro Ibuki and his kid brother to reprogram inexplicably size changing robot Jet Jaguar into guiding Megalon. Godzilla’s friend Anguirus falls into a sinkhole, so he makes friends with Jet Jaguar, and the two battle Megalon and a returning Gigan (we’ll get to his film soon enough). Here is a link to some video thoughts on how bizarre this movie is: https://youtu.be/1HMV1hMPgzs?si=eRpmfGNYJ78gxfVJ 

 

This is a movie that does not make sense scene to scene. Goro Ibuki and the aliens espouse and act on information that the audience learned from different scenes where they were not present, Jet Jaguar somehow changes size and the Seatopians somehow know the Nebulan aliens whose whole gimmick was that they were trying to help destroy humanity to inherit the Earth (they’re cockroaches; it surprisingly makes more sense than this entire film). So why is this film higher than Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla? That is a good question. Really, I could go either way on this, but it comes down to the fact that Godzilla vs Megalon is the culmination of bizarre genius that, like all the best cult films, takes on new meaning from its bizarre tendencies, while Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla is almost a really strong film that just was not able to stick the landing.

 

4. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire directed by Adam Wingard

 

If you need a refresher, Godzilla x Kong is the story of Kong finding others like him in the Hollow Earth, including one evil dictator Skar King, whose control over an army of apes and an ice dragon Shimo prompt a tripartite pact and teamup of Kong (protecting a baby ape named Suko he found), Godzilla and Mothra. Also, the humans have a subplot. You can listen to my review here: https://youtu.be/AI_FMxtTlIk?si=zwQoHpnG9JKFEoEx or read my review by following the links here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/07/part-three-nuanced-deconstruction-of.html 

 

Having argued GxK to be a four (or five) out of 10 in three Plan9Crunch articles and a video, it might be surprising to have it up this high. I am indeed the kind of person that thinks there are more good Godzilla films than bad, but I am uniquely situated in my poor evaluation of Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla 1974 (and I think of Godzilla vs Megalon as more of a pleasant fever dream than a movie). This is a movie that starts really strong, but the cathartic moments in acts 2 and 3 come at the cost of the storytelling’s internal logic…except for the stuff pertaining to the baby Kong called Suko who has a believable redemption arc in ways that enhance the characterization of villain Skar King and hero Kong. The movie excels in its visual storytelling to an almost unprecedented degree, but, as the creative team themselves articulated, they stopped caring about the logic of certain plot payoffs and worldbuilding details midway through production, consequently an uneven Best Worst Movie.

 

3. Godzilla vs Gigan directed by Jun Fukuda

 

In Godzilla vs Gigan, cockroach aliens seek to create “absolute peace” on earth through constructing an amusement park that doubles as an attack command post. When a Scooby Doo team forms to stop them (and Godzilla and his ankylosaur friend Anguirus arrive to investigate), the aliens’ arsenal includes beam launching Godzilla Tower, a new cyborg chicken Gigan and the return of King Ghidorah (last seen when he died in a movie canonically set after this one but which came out four years earlier).

 

If you are keeping track, Godzilla vs Gigan was the last chance for Fukuda to top this list, and it honestly could have if not for a couple of features. While a simple and streamlined film grounded in the perspective of a Scooby Doo team consisting of a young manga artist (with the manga aesthetic extending to speech bubbles from Godzilla and Anguirus), his karate girlfriend, a corncob wielding hippie (I will not elaborate, just watch the movie) and a young girl trying to find her missing brother, it falters in its Nebulan alien villains who constantly reveal aspects of their plan very stupidly (this is still vastly better than the contrivances in Godzilla vs Megalon). Also, despite great characterization for Godzilla and Anguirus in codifying their friendship dynamic, the technical problems with the film are quite distracting, and those include the stock footage changing a fight scene from night to day to night again, the Ghidorah suit/puppet being unreasonably stiff, and the Godzilla suit literally falling apart on screen (with the Anguirus water suit not looking much better). This is the kind of movie that I think would work perfectly for me to review, so just let us know if you want a more in depth review of Godzilla vs Gigan.

 

2. Godzilla vs Kong directed by Adam Wingard

 

In Godzilla vs Kong, the two title monsters fight but also shady humans manipulate events on each monster’s subplot to arrange events to line up to their endgame. You can read my review of it here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2023/06/review-godzilla-versus-kong-2021-remake.html 

 

I recommend you read my review of Godzilla vs Kong so that you can be on the same page about my thoughts on the movie. To make things short, the movie makes a lot more sense viewed through the implications of its visual language (i.e. Nathan Lind is the Carl Denham of the movie because he is introduced through Denham University and thus his climactic moment with Kong is the point of his story, which wraps back around to his previous moments of characterization in pinch points which do actually correspond to him gradually learning to take responsibility for and protect Kong. Also, Mechagodzilla’s eye must be the consciousness of Ghidorah deliberately luring Godzilla around because we see it glow whenever he attacks, and dialogue from Walter and Ren confirms they are not the ones responsible). 

 

However, this type of reading must note the constant coincidences that Lind and Walter Simmons both rely on, and, while I have argued that to be an intentional juxtaposition of how much each character is willing to sacrifice for the others around them once they are out of luck, I understand if you are reticent to adopt that. Moments like Godzilla digging through the Earth into the Hollow Earth cave that just so happened to be underneath where the action was happening are unfortunate and should count against the film. I will defend the team Godzilla trio, but I do have to admit that the trio at the heart of Godzilla vs Gigan’s Scooby Doo team (the protagonist, corncob hippie and young girl looking for her brother) carries out a more intelligent and better defined investigation. It was very close between Godzilla vs Gigan and Godzilla vs Kong for me. If Godzilla vs Gigan’s technical side were stronger, it might have gotten this spot, but really the only bad effects moment in GvK is Kong’s shoulder clipping through a building, which affects nothing.

 

1. Terror of Mechagodzilla directed by Ishiro Honda

 

Terror of Mechagodzilla is the direct sequel to Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla where the Simeon aliens and Mechagodzilla return but also with the help of a disgraced scientist, his cyborg daughter and new monster Titanosaurus. This is also notable for a moment where Godzilla’s suit catches on fire while he is running through Mechagodzilla’s full barrage, not a scripted moment but one that suit actor Toru Kawai salvaged for an iconic moment.

 

While I understand the optics of putting the one Ishiro Honda film above all the Fukuda and Wingard films on this list might be a little poor (and is the main reason I would like to conclude this trilogy of Fukuda posts with a YouTube ranking of just his movies), Terror of Mechagodzilla is just that good. One of the main criticisms of movies like Godzilla 2014 or Invasion of Astro Monster/Godzilla vs Monster Zero 1965 is the small amount of Godzilla screentime. While Monster Zero absolutely lacks Godzilla screentime (though the romance is strong enough to completely offset that), G14 actually has more than its sequel Godzilla King of the Monsters, despite the latter movie feeling like Godzilla is more relevant. This is all to say that the posturing and buildup of Godzilla in any movie is equally as important as his presence, and no film handles the expectation of Godzilla showing up better than Terror of Mechagodzilla.

 

After Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, we know the stakes of the Simeons returning, and, with not only a stronger Mechagodzilla but also the new freakishly strong monster Titanosaurus, those stakes are even higher. Godzilla has long been the superhero by this point, and so the audience knows that once Godzilla shows up, everything will be alright. But then Godzilla does not show up, and our human hero is not a Fukuda esque Scooby Doo hero but frankly a pathetic man that gets overpowered and outmaneuvered by the villains, so we need a hero that we are not getting, which makes us more invested. The hero and love interest are in a tragic romance that is debatably better than that in Monster Zero but at the very least serves to humanize these stakes and show the cost of defeating the aliens. Indeed, in a sense, the success of Terror of Mechagodzilla is in reversing and deconstructing a Fukuda movie. It is not doing so maliciously because it still does keep Godzilla as this symbol of children’s hope when it would have been so easy to retcon him back to what Honda would have wanted, but Terror of Mechagodzilla respects the corners of the franchise that birthed it all while responding to the 70s Godzilla formula. (It is interesting that Mechagodzilla itself is also in three of these movies, one from each director.)

 

Conclusion

 

In conclusion, the Godzilla films of March are very diverse all while being encompassed in a type of vision of Godzilla. Here at Plan9Crunch we appreciate all the different types of Godzilla there can be and likely will focus some attention over to Godzilla Minus One once we have the space and time to carry out such a review. But in the meantime make sure to catch our upcoming video where we rank all of Jun Fukuda’s Godzilla films together with no Wingard or Honda films to get in the way. Stay tuned for that.

Part Three - A Nuanced Deconstruction of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

By Joe Gibson

The following is the third part of a larger Godzilla x Kong The New Empire review focused on act three.  You can read the first two parts here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/06/a-nuanced-deconstruction-of-godzilla-x.html and here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/06/part-two-nuanced-deconstruction-of.html

 

One-Eye reaches Skar King, who then mobilizes his army in the same amount of time it takes Trapper to examine Kong’s arm.  Trapper will then run to the HEAV, fly that to Outpost One, find Project Powerhouse, hook it up to a M.U.L.E., fly back in the M.U.L.E., hook Project Powerhouse up to Kong’s arm, evacuate the Iwi, fly back to Outpost One in the M.U.L.E. to retrieve the HEAV and then use that HEAV to find Vertacines and bring them back to Malenka in the same amount of time it will take Skar King’s army to go to Malenka.  Much of that happens after Suko sees Skar King and Shimo at the sinkhole.  That is bad.  It would be possible to re edit this to make more sense, but that did not happen.  I will not go over every moment that Skar King should have arrived, but just keep in mind that Jia has a costume change, the Iwi awaken Mothra, and Godzilla and Kong have a whole rematch as Skar King and his army cross a distance One-Eye could in the time it took Trapper to walk down to Kong and look at his frostbitten arm.

 

The novelization attempts to fix this pathing inconsistency by having the Iwi give Trapper an escort, but we have no reason to think that they would do anything except slow him down.  Within the Mothra temple ruins from earlier in the film, Trapper noticed that only the top steps were lacking moss, presumably due to use.  If the Iwi ever have any reason to leave the barrier of Malenka, it makes sense they would go as far as their irrigation system for water and also because that irrigation system leads back to their city if they get lost.  Whether or not you read into Trapper smelling rotting flesh in the tree mimic as there being previous Iwi prey caught in there, there is either no evidence the Iwi can navigate the flora fauna or evidence to the contrary.  Far more likely is a displaced Wartdog or any other animal is the carcass Trapper smelled, and, again as no one else smelled it, he might be psychic anyway. The novelization also lampshades the convenience of the armory being intact with an intact M.U.L.E. out front by having Trapper worry about it on the way over.  That does not fix that contrivance. 

 

I cannot tell which arm the blueprint of Project Powerhouse is supposed to be, so it may not be that they happened to make the correct arm needed so much as that they made both.  As for the material attributes of the Glove, Monarch would have been able to observe Kong’s ineffective punches against Godzilla and makeshift shields in the axe and that circular piece of building in Hong Kong, so there is not a great issue in the B.E.A.S.T. Glove being both a punch-enhancement and makeshift shield.  It is contrived that the Project Powerhouse B.E.A.S.T. Glove contains the necessary fluids to cure his frostbite, though, to be in best faith as possible, I will acknowledge that the only other time Monarch would have observed Kong near snow and ice was in Antarctica in GvK when they were confident he would not last long there (he did, in fact, start shivering very quickly), so it’s just an absurdly contrived failsafe rather than impossible.

 

I want to explain that there is a difference between Trapper, amid contrivances, bringing Project Powerhouse to Kong, and Nathan Lind in the previous movie detonating the last HEAV to revive Kong.  The latter came as the final escalation to a character arc based on attributes of the HEAV established at the beginning of the film, but the former comes in conveniently with very little buildup disconnected from any of the character arcs.  They are similar only in aesthetic and mark a noticeable downgrade from Wingard film to Wingard film.

 

In any case, the B.E.A.S.T. Glove and accompanying injections take Kong from a wounded, beaten animal back to a pumped up battle-ready warrior.  In the same way it got us on Kong’s side to see the Skar King win unfairly, it is very cathartic for the audience to see Kong returned to full health and strength, do better against Godzilla than before, and win the final battle against Skar’s forces.  That said, the arrival and utilization of Project Powerhouse this abruptly and riddled in contrivances weakens the structural integrity of those great moments.  This raises the question: would the film improve if Kong remained weakened through the end of the film?  In a way, this is almost the Titan Avengers or Justice League.  Skar King’s army would be an extraordinary threat for any individual monster, but Kong and Suko have already thinned out the available Red Stripes to a more manageable number with Evolved Godzilla and Mothra also available to help our good apes, this team-up stacking the odds against our villains and making the heroes look impressive.  Since Skar King is already weaker than Kong, a weakened Kong fighting him while Godzilla takes Shimo and Mothra keeps the other apes webbed up would carry more tension than the actual final fight in Rio (wherein during the scramble for the crystal, Skar King actually starts to strangle Kong, but the latter ape actually starts to get out of the chokehold, meaning he would have won regardless of Suko’s intervention) while circumventing the associated plot issues.  Trapper, as a simple Titan vet, could still just diagnose and attempt treatment of Kong to keep his character relevant (because of the previous gravity manipulation scenes, the Iwi organizing a makeshift sling for Kong would be feasible and help show this series’ previous theme of coexistence with the Titans).  Just because simple fixes are available does not mean we can afford to accept them, because the filmmakers chose not to implement them.

 

Kong goes to bring Godzilla down into the Hollow Earth, roaring at Godzilla, who hears it on Gibraltar, in Egypt.  Godzilla makes the trip to Egypt in record time, and they fight.  This would not make much sense without Godzilla King of the Monsters, which established Alpha calls by Titans can be heard across the world and that Godzilla uses a system of interconnected fast track tunnels to get all over the Earth quickly.  Just disregard that those tunnels were said to be the Hollow Earth in that film and that those tunnels have never showed up on the full Earth scans showing Hollow Earth.  Godzilla King of the Monsters underperformed in 2019, mostly due to the film’s competition, and, since Godzilla vs Kong was both in production at the same and incurred many reshoots, that film pivoted away from a lot of KOTM’s story beats.  I may write an essay about this eventually, but KOTM was full of incredibly ambitious concepts to put into the universe right before the team-up, so I find it forgivable that Wingard dropped them, especially because this new film is acknowledging them. 

 

As well as the aforementioned plot points, the KOTM “17 and counting” Titans are back including Mothra, Scylla and Tiamat (whose CGI model in this film originated in 2019), and the hints toward conflict between Monarch and the world’s governments are back (even though KOTM’s ending credits implied rather speedy resolution).  I am not sure whether or not it counts as a hint to the future of the franchise if the film is just paying lip service to previous sequel teases, but we should watch with interest in the upcoming seasons of the Apple TV+ spinoff shows and the movies to see if these ideas get further elaboration.

The fight itself is mostly well done with Kong fighting defensively and intelligently.  Both Godzilla and Kong knock each other out once and, the sand terrain saves Kong from getting his heart stopped by Godzilla stomping on him, and Mothra saves Kong from Godzilla’s atomic breath, appearing at the exact right moment.  Now, it took some time for Jia to recreate Mothra, with the bug seemingly rematerializing out of energy (the last time we had seen full-sized Imago Mothra she had dematerialized into energy to give Godzilla his Burning power-up, so not following up on the very minor KOTM end credits Mothra egg tease is forgivable), but I think it is strange that they took the time to dress Jia in Iwi garb before resurrecting their Goddess. Was it really part of the prophecy that the Iwi girl from Skull Island (undoubtedly a slightly different culture based on how long they’ve been separated) would have to fully assimilate the Hollow Earth Iwi before she could raise Mothra? Kong almost dies because Mothra did not get there sooner.  Once she is there, the three monsters stand together, making a tripartite pact against the Skar King.  There has been some confusion about the subtitle of this movie: The New Empire.  The ape kingdom is neither new, nor an empire.  It is this alliance here: Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Mothra, God Queen of the Iwi and Kong, eventual King of the Apes all aligned together.  And, of course, while we are here, people complain that Godzilla is only looking at Jia, not Mothra, when he and Mothra have deep relationship in this universe.  Godzilla does actually squint and look at Mothra after recognizing Jia, but Godzilla also had a connection with humanity in KOTM that other fans complain this movie ignored, so I am forced to conclude that to a certain extent and not even because of this film’s flaws, people will complain about it no matter what it actually does.

 

Bernie explains the Iwi gravity manipulation, and it seems feasible the way he says it.  A human society left alone long enough with gravity oddities would find a way to harness them (especially since for the past recorded history, Mothra would have been on the surface in stasis, unless this is a different Mothra, which we have no reason in film to believe).  Even so, there are larger issues with the film.

 

Skar King finally reaches Malenka and has Shimo destroy part of the organic barrier. To buy everyone time, Trapper has brought a herd of Vertacines with the HEAV, and they emerge from somewhere in Malenka.  I do not know how Trapper brought them through the organic barrier, given that both they and the barrier are bio electric.  I can only assume he navigated them through whatever hole he would have made with the M.U.L.E. (however, there is nothing at all to suggest that the Iwi didn’t just open it for him with the wheel with the B.E.A.S.T. Glove, and they cannot have done that now since Malenka is being evacuated, taking us right back to the question of how this happened).  The Vertacines are effective, but animal lover Trapper has just murdered a large population of animals by putting them up against Shimo.  There is no sense of regret for doing this, and he just continues to quip, ever the fun character.  So, at this point, I will say it.  Trapper isn’t just “not a serious person,” he is not a person.  His established attributes are expressed inconsistently, simply to keep a sense of fun in the film.  He has no arc to ground our perception of him in a lesson, and he cannot represent a wholly good paragon or mentor character because of his moments of irresponsibility that betray his character, such as the mosquito and these Vertacines.  He is arguably the worst character in this film, and it’s not necessarily close either.  Dan Stevens is a good actor with a good rapport with Adam Wingard and the rest of the cast; I just hope his writing can improve if he ever comes back. 

 

Because humor is entirely subjective, the way that I evaluate comic relief characters is if their actions and dialogue naturally come from their characters and are things they would say and do based on what we know.  Bernie is a consistent character in that he primarily reflects his conspiracy interests but also can express other emotions the way a human would (it also helps that Brian Tyree Henry based a lot of Bernie’s character on Adam Wingard’s style and mannerisms, so even the subtle parts of Bernie’s characterization have some thought behind them); whereas, I still cannot tell you what Trapper knows about the creatures he loves, how much he values them and how much that changes his actions.  Based on the idea of Trapper as the animal lover with a vested interest in Hollow Earth who knows the HEAV controls and also might have some psychic powers, he should have stayed in Malenka, while Bernie, the guy only down here to bring back proof for his blog and who has been consistently uncomfortable with the flora, fauna and even Malenka, should have been the one to leave at the end of the film (as I’ve alluded to earlier, Bernie has some semblance of the first two thirds of an arc where he realizes he doesn’t have to provide proof for his blog and becomes enamored with Malenka’s gravity manipulation, but it does not finish, meaning he remains the character that would be most likely to leave).

 

The gravity trap activates, and Kong, Shimo, Skar King and Godzilla are all thrust around.  The HEAV also malfunctions, and Trapper has a very imprecise reaction to what has actually happened to the point where I question whether or not he is skilled enough at flying the HEAV for these scenes to work.  Nathan Lind was able to fly HEAVs in the previous movie because he had been studying Hollow Earth entry as his life’s work, and he does not pull off time sensitive maneuvers.  Trapper is a dentist, who should not have even entered Hollow Earth before, least of all have a dedicated seat in the HEAV for him to control the biomimicry.  (As for how he flew the HEAV and flipped the biomimicry switch in the backseat at the same time, it is not impossible, just something that would take more time than it is given.  The editing solution is to have his Vertacine save come much later in the anti-gravity fight.)

 

Godzilla swims through the air, which makes sense (Wingard’s Godzilla crawled like a crocodile at the end of GvK; he would thrive in a simulated ocean environment).  He smacks apes with his tail (the same tail that has evolved to have Stegosaurus-like thagomizers.  This would have been the opportunity to show those off, and the film did not).  We see Kong and Skar King figure out how to fight here, and Mothra webs up apes and saves the HEAV crew.  Now, there is no indication that any of the three apes she webs are supposed to have died. (Unlike the disappearing ape from the 4 v 1, there is no indication they would be able to break out of Mothra’s webbing.  King Ghidorah only could by having the head that got the least of it start unraveling the webs, and, even then, Godzilla still had to barrel through the building he was webbed to.  The other apes are much weaker than Kong to the point where a single point blank punch could knock a guard out in act two, and Ghidorah is stronger than Godzilla, who is stronger than Kong.)  One-Eye and Suko square off, and One-Eye is implied to die because when everything starts falling, Suko kicks him underneath a very large crystal that may or may not also be falling (even if that crystal was stationary, they are higher up than the other apes were with debris falling around them).  Shimo freezes Godzilla, and Mothra saves him, the two female monsters acting according to their best interests and Godzilla for some reason not spamming his beam.  For some reason, everything is falling slowly, so I doubt anyone is falling fast enough to inherently kill them via terminal velocity because our four lead monsters are able to swim through the vortex.

 

The monsters land in Rio, where Skar King and Shimo make it out first and start attacking.  The surface is too bright for Skar King’s cataracts, so he orders Shimo to block it out with a storm.  Godzilla and Kong arrive shortly after, and the fight is mostly Skar King vs Kong and Godzilla vs Shimo with Skar King occasionally using Shimo to get Kong on the backfoot.  Shimo swings Kong around and throws him more powerfully than Godzilla did in Hong Kong and yet Kong’s shoulder is not dislocated this time.  There is an excuse for why Godzilla chest stomping Kong in Egypt was not as effective as it was in GvK (sand as a softer terrain), but there is no such apologetic here: the monsters are not being treated with the same weight of GvK anymore (a film where Kong could jump between naval vessels). At one point in the fight, Godzilla runs through a building to tackle Shimo, and, even one film ago, going through buildings hurt Godzilla substantially but not anymore.  Godzilla, in this film, is generally impervious, meaning the stakes are somewhat lacking in all of his fights.  The film will actually show Godzilla knocked out in a moment, but it is not the focus of the scene and is not treated with more weight than his Egypt knockout to the B.E.A.S.T. Glove.

 

Shimo knocks Godzilla out by throwing him very far, so the B.E.A.S.T. Glove has to hold off Shimo’s ice breath until Godzilla wakes up and destroys the whip holding Shimo’s control crystal.  I am not convinced the glove would do better than the axe at protecting Kong, but that is what the film decided.  Based on what we can see, the glove has a lot of exposed areas, and metal itself should not do that well against cold.  There is a potential fix: when Trapper put in Kong’s tooth replacement, he talked about the strength of it being great because it was made of the same material as the vehicle heat shields.  It is very strange to me that they would design a tooth with that great of an insulator and not the glove.  If Trapper would have namedropped Project Powerhouse alongside the vehicle heat shields, that would have both given the exposition that Powerhouse exists to Trapper’s knowledge (if you add in an awkward look from Andrews towards the Vortex, also the knowledge that it is in the Hollow Earth and everyone else is more reticent than Trapper with it) and given relevant feats to the B.E.A.S.T. Glove.  Again though, it is not our place to write the film for the writer, and having Kong’s part of the final battle consist of the weapon he logically should not have received hold off the weapon that previously hurt him to a sustained degree that should be impossible rather than having Kong use his intelligence once again is contrived and actually very lazy.  I think most of the complaints against this fight are mere matters of opinion, but it does not live up to the potential of the previous fights in this film and franchise, when it easily could have been the best.

 

Skar King evades Godzilla similarly to Kong in Hong Kong, and he is very expressive when he gets his crystal back.  Suko, using Kong’s axe, is the one to destroy the crystal, finally defeating the regime that stifled and abused him.  Skar King goes right back to abusing Suko by strangling him, so Kong saves Suko, Shimo freezes Skar King, and Godzilla clears away all of Shimo’s ice with a very warm beam.  Now that the crystal is gone, it is worth saying that it needed to be better explained.  A weaker villain having a crystal that controls a dragon is a well-established trope, but in a story where said crystal is the only reason the villain wins the early encounters and is a significant part of the final fight, its parameters needed to be better established. 

 

I have not seen people make the following argument for the crystal, but I think it is inevitable, so I will address it here.  If a later film is so inclined to explore and explain this crystal, those explanations will not fix the issues with this film.  That seems obvious to me, but I also have an example.  The Heisei Gamera trilogy is regarded as the best kaiju trilogy ever made, but the second film abruptly introduces a new power for Gamera to win against Legion at the end.  Technically, the film’s context allows for that to be less damaging than the crystal here, and the third film devoting a good deal of time for that explanation keeps the trilogy’s worldbuilding intact, but on a film by film basis, it is a massive Deus ex Machina and blemish on an otherwise perfect script there.  If a later film explains the Shimo control crystal, that will help the larger Monsterverse, not this film. 

 

I have alluded to the Monsterverse’s worldbuilding and lore consistently being inconsistent as both caveats attached to praise and deflections of criticism for this film and think the topic deserves its own essay, but, basically, the retcons from film to film have sometimes stacked in improbability and other times undone each other.  There was already a systemic problem before this movie, so, while it makes the movie slightly worse, it would be unfair to emphasize it here, except insofar as some of the retcons here are worse than prior examples.

 

Kong returns to the ape kingdom, Suko finally has a smile on his face, and Shimo is no longer going to be abused.  Boots looks at his new king.  I would like to reiterate here that the minimalist aesthetic of the ape kingdom works if these other apes are meant to be less human than monkey (though Kong, at this point, is basically an absurdly large Australopithecine).  It also presents the possibility for contrast later if their culture develops under Kong, but that would raise sizable questions as to why culture did not under Skar King however long they were down there.  It will take either subsequent installments or deeper analysis than mine to come to a conclusion on whether or not this is an acceptable plot point.  If Boots is the standard average of these Hollow Earth apes, following films should flesh out his capacity for intelligence.  It also would be nice for Kong to have an ally outside of Suko in the kingdom, especially one that would have an interesting dynamic with the former guards if he gets a boost in the hierarchy.

 

Regardless, Kong’s journey was, overall, well done in this universe.  In Kong: Skull Island, he conquered the loneliness of being the last of his kind by protecting the Iwi.  Then, he lost the Iwi except one and fought to protect her, finding relics of his people, then spending all of his time searching for them until he found them, and they attacked him.  He fought tooth and nail not only to liberate his people but also redeem them by putting up with Suko’s assassination attempts because he legitimately wanted to help that child and the rest of his people.  Both of Wingard’s films especially have leveraged the inherent sympathy we get for seeing a benevolent humanoid character get hurt while chasing good goals in Kong.

 

Godzilla meanwhile returns to Rome to sleep, Mothra goes deeper into the Hollow Earth after repairing the organic barrier, and Trapper takes the HEAV and leaves Andrews, Jia and Bernie in Malenka.  Andrews is finally willing to give up Jia to the Iwi, but Jia, after this cathartic experience, thinks she can handle life with Andrews.  I am not sure why they stay in Malenka, but they do not get on the HEAV with Trapper, so how long they will stay down there is unclear.  People say that their subplot lacks stakes because there was not sufficient conflict for Jia against Andrews or cost for either of them staying or leaving.  That is wrong on both counts. 

 

The subplot’s focus is not on Jia but Andrews and her uncertainty in dealing with Jia’s worsening assimilation when Andrews is technically an outsider to Jia’s culture, adopted Jia in traumatic circumstances unexpected for both, learned Jia was keeping secrets about Kong’s sign language previously, left the Hollow Earth between films where Jia was happy to live with and study Kong, witnesses Jia spiraling out of control even with Andrews doing the best she can, and watches Jia finally at ease with the Iwi.  To say that this arc does not work because the characters are not in greater conflict is the same kind of logic that Godzilla Minus One does not work because Noriko does not take a stand against Shikishima’s treatment of their cohabitation.  There is more than one way to write a character arc; the issue with this one is Andrews’ passive nature and constant retcons to what the Iwi culture was originally.  As for the consequences, Andrews is, for reasons I still do not understand, staying down in the Hollow Earth where they cannot contact Monarch when Andrews is the main PR presence in Monarch, and the world governments will have massive issues with Monarch and the lack of Hollow Earth regulation.  Andrews just chose Jia over the entire world, and that has nothing to it except consequences.  Following films really should address it, and they don’t even need Andrews on the surface to do it: just have the governments decide to take greater action against Hollow Earth and Titan neutrality, which seems to be where the series would be going anyways after Monarch failed to evacuate Egypt and Rio.

 

While there are great moments within this final act, the overall contrivances weigh down its score considerably.  I would rate this at 3 out of 10, which brings the average score of this film a 5 out 10.  I think that is fair, but I would also be willing to go down to a 4.  The film need not be perfect for me to enjoy it, and it also need not be the worst or best film ever for its flaws and merits to matter.  Of the Monsterverse films, this is probably the low point in writing overall and yet also a high point in characterization for including Kong and Suko.  At the same time, this film had the best box office worldwide of the Monsterverse, so the momentum can carry this onward to new films.  Whether they will improve or double down, we shall see.  After Godzilla vs Megalon and Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974), we got Terror of Mechagodzilla, and, after Godzilla vs Spacegodzilla, we got Godzilla vs Destoroyah.  It is entirely possible for this franchise to bounce back into better consistency, and I will watch and wait.

Edit: 7/3/2024.  The actual review is over.  I alluded to the confusing nature of what is backstory for this film and the rest of the Monsterverse based on how little this film gave us.  It turns out expanded material related to the film has given us a little more.  We should not have to rely on outside material to understand a film.  If you are uninterested in reading me try to piece together the Monsterverse timeline briefly, you do not need to read this part.

Apparently, from guidebooks and the Artbook for Godzilla x Kong, the intended explanation of events was that Godzilla beat Shimo 1,000 years in the past after she tried to destroy Malenka, trapping her down in the Hollow Earth in such a way she was restrained so that, Skar King could then, after also getting trapped down there in some nebulous time, remove a crystal from her (since the novelization indicates that is where the control crystal came from).  Because none of this is in the film (and the film itself both implies Skar King didn't have Shimo when Godzilla fought the apes in dialogue and that he did through the drawing showing him brandishing his whip the same way as in modern day in the ancient battle), the confusion I demonstrate in this review is valid, and I will not remove that speculation and analysis, since this version of events also has problems.  

Shimo is most likely supposed to have either directly or indirectly frozen King Ghidorah in the ice we find him in at the start of KOTM.  Like the crystals as a light source, that was an idea Wingard's team had and dropped late into the production, but it still probably should be counted as intent.  That finally places the ancient Ghidorah events most likely before the ancient rivalries with the apes (the implied multiple Godzillas vs multiple Kongs in GvK and shown one Godzilla vs many apes in GxK, most likely meant to be the same event now based on Skar King's familiarity with the Godzilla dorsal fin Axe Kong found in the previous film).  If it really only one was Godzilla against all of those apes (and also against Ghidorah), the mutual destruction of the Godzilla species and MUTO species that serves as the backstory for Godzilla 2014 would happen before any of that (I hope you understand my previous comments about how confusing and inconsistent the Monsterverse has always been in lore and worldbuilding).  Godzilla had an ancient society worshipping him that we see the ruins of in KOTM, and now it seems he also protected the Iwi in Hollow Earth.  This is a lot of protecting of humanity for Godzilla to be doing before Skar King wages war on the surface world (since, remember the Iwi lore in GxK is that the apes were the guardians of humanity until that happened), so that already is strange but it gets worse.

If expanded material is on the table and crucial for this film, then we have to look at the prequel comic Godzilla Dominion, and these pieces will stop fitting.  In that story, Godzilla had a previous home wherein a similar, maybe offshoot society worshipped him (the abanoned art is very similar to the KOTM temple).  Another ape, nicknamed The Rival beat him up and took his home.  This is said to be a part of Godzilla's youth, so it would be very strange for this to happen after Godzilla defeated Ghidorah in ancient times, but we are given no information on why The Rival was there.  The only reason we can even guess that The Rival would be outsed is if Skar King took control, and The Rival took on a Kong in Act Two of GxK role of failing to beat Skar King and barely escaping with his life.  (Of course, that only happens in GxK because Skar King as Shimo, and he would not yet, so this relies on Skar having a physical prime we never see.)  That is potentially fine if Skar King was working on building the Godzilla axes while everything else went down, except insofar as Skar King's age.  Shimo can't be trapped until 1000 years before GxK, which is also after Godzilla is capable of defeating creatures as strong as Shimo and Ghidorah.  Kong went from a teenager to middle aged between 1973 and 2024 (and started to gray in fur by 2027), meaning despite the fact that Skar King is framed as quite old in GxK, it is impossible for him to be old enough to kick out The Rival before Shimo attacks Malenka (but Skar King has to be the ape that turned the others to conquest from being protectors of humanity).

The only timeline I can make would go like this.  The Titans are the guardians of nature and Apes are protectors of humanity, distant past.  The MUTOs and Godzillas wipe each other out.  Some circumstance arises where Godzilla is directly worshipped by multiple groups of humanity, and a Kong invades his place of worship, which becomes ruins.  Skar King arises and should live and die in the time it takes for Godzilla to mature from being beaten by an ape to beating Ghidorah and Shimo around 1000 years ago (something needs to have happened about the apes protecting humanity since Godzilla is the one doing it now).  Skar King and company need only find one Godzilla corpse to design all of the axes and build the throne room above the Hollow Earth energy source (but Godzilla being down in the Hollow Earth activately defending against threats mean that it is a very short timeframe he will allow that, since he can sense every moment those axes are charged).  That fight has to happen, and the best faith assumption is that this all is happening in modern history just under the surface of the Earth, again, otherwise Skar King would live and die many times before this film, so that the Kongs and Iwi that get displaced to Skull Island can be as recently as possible (this also does not work with expanded material pertaining to Kong Skull Island but seems possible based on the Godzilla vs Kong novelization).  

Godzilla then has to dump Skar King in a pit where Shimo is restrained, not the apes.  I talked in the review about it making sense to drop the apes into a Shimo pit where they will not survive, but he actuallly restrained her, allowing Skar to take a crystal from her and control her.  This is strange.  Even though Shimo was a destroyer by nature, if we take into account Dominion and the end of GxK, he has leniency for destroyers (he helps out destroyer cephalopod Titanus Na Kika, and of course lets Shimo go after her control is broken).  That seems like the opposite of what he should have done, since, outside of one attack on Malenka, Shimo was an incidental ally, freezing Ghidorah, while Skar King and the apes would not only resemble the rival he hates but have harnessed weapons of at least one fallen Godzilla (technically, the set that made the axes could be Godzilla's own, but then he would have even more reason to kill them).  This is the most workable order I can contrive, but Legendary would need to make the appropriate retcons or make a Monsterverse film that references no ancient backstory.

While this is all a mess, adding back in the prequel comic Godzilla Dominion mitigates one perceived issue with Godzilla x Kong The New Empire.  In that comic, Tiamat nearly kills Godzilla after he tries to go back to the home The Rival destroyed (the reason he is finally going back is that his KOTM home got blown up in that film). Tiamat also looks different once she reappears in GxK, meaning that from Godzilla's perspective, she was already evolving in her GxK home, meaning she was most likely planning on a rematch.  People complain that Godzilla kills Tiamat in this movie, but, from every angle, it is the kind of thing he would justify without character assassination, especially because she came the closest of any KOTM lesser Titan to killing him.

As I have been implying, this mess is not solely because of Godzilla x Kong but the entire Monsterverse adding things that would have been impossible in the world of Godzilla 2014 and never officially reconciling them.  Consequently, it has been best to ignore the novelizations and prequel comics and just focus on the films.  But since this film makes that impossible with cut content, then it should hold up to all of it or at least as much of it as possible.