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.
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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.
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