There are movies that you watch for their cast, there are movies that you watch for their plot, and then there are films like Godzilla which you watch for a massive audio visual experience. Legendary and WB’s Monsterverse began back in 2014 with the arrival of Godzilla, which was a huge box office hit. That launched the current franchise which consists of Kong: Skull Island (2017), Godzilla: King of Monsters (2019), and Godzilla vs Kong (2021). The 2021 epic culminated the intense build up of 7 years in a satisfying VFX heavy action packed film. Well, The Titans are set to team up again in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and the wait for it is almost over!
Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire Full Plot Summary and Spoilers
As you may know, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire has its world premiere at TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on March 25, 2024. So, many lucky fans and critics have already seen it and in typical Monsterverse fashion, critics aren’t that impressed while fans are loving it. It has been stated that the fans who enjoy mindless monster bashing mayhem and less human stories will absolutely love this film. So, considering how it doesn;t have a great plot, you can pre-decide whether you want to view this spectacle in theatres or not. The full plot summary of the film follows below but beware the article contains MASSIVE SPOILERS!
Set after the events of GvK, humanity is now more embracing towards Godzilla and how he chooses to handle the Titans. Movie begins with Godzilla battling and defeating a spider-like Titan in Rome. In a comical scene, after the fight Godzilla falls asleep in the Roman colosseum. (Original test screenings dubbed the spider-Titan “Arachnid” but more recent test screeners identified it as Scylla.) Meanwhile Kong is running things deep down in the Hollow Earth, we see him on the hunt leading a pack of death jackal-like creatures into a trap. (Original test screeners dubbed the creatures Kong’s hunting as “Wart Dogs” but more recent test screeners identified them as Death Jackals.)
Doug makes a cameo and steals Kong’s Wart Dog/Death Jackal he’d successfully caught. Monarch is mostly tied up with the military this go-round while Jia, Rebecca Hall’s character and a new Monarch scientist played by Dan Stevens monitors Kong in the Hollow Earth. Dan Steven’s character is a little flamboyant and serves as Kong’s dentist. Jia starts having nightmares and visions of a Titan uprising inside the Hollow Earth lead my a mysterious threat known as the “Skar King”. Skar King is a brutal, power-hungry orangutan-like Titan who’s enslaved a troop of Kongs and rules his underground empire with an iron fist.
He sports a whip made of Titan bone that he wears around his shoulder like a bullet chain, at the tip of his whip is a crystal that can control his secret weapon that he plans to unleash on the surface world- a particularly ancient Titan called Shimo capable of causing a new ice age. Shimo is a huge, pearlescent reptile-like Titan that somewhat resembles a bearded dragon, it has ice-based abilities and blue ice crystals that align its head and back. Skar King rides it into battle. (Early test screeners referred to Shimo as a male and the father of all Titans but more recent test screenings identified Shimo as female.)
Kong inadvertently frees Skar King from his Hollow Earth imprisonment and meets a small juvenile ape Titan called Suko, Suko alongside a group of apes jump Kong but Kong grabs Suko and uses him as a blunt weapon to fight off the apes. Kong and Skar King face off where Kong’s defeated, loses his axe, and has his arm frost bitten by Shimo. Suko later gets caught in one of Kong’s traps and is left behind by the rest of the Skar King troop, we learn Suko’s not as aggressive as Skar King and he and Kong begin to bond.
Up on the surface world, Godzilla senses the disturbance going on inside the Hollow Earth and begins preparing for war by supercharging on a French power plant, he then travels to Greenland and fights and kills Tiamat in a underwater battle and uses her lair to “evolve”. I think the implication is that some of her energy dissipated into the surroundings which is why Godzilla has the purple/pink energy now. (Just a guess) An ancient tribe of Iwi are revealed to have survived deep in the Hollow Earth. They foresaw Skar King’s return so they use Jia to summon Mothra whom they discover in an underground Iwi Temple guarded by webbing. Skar King leads his troop to the Iwis home in an attempt to find a way to the surface.
After receiving medical attention for his arm in the form of an anatomech brace, Kong resurfaces in Cairo where he calls out to Godzilla for help, sensing Kong, Godzilla awakens from his stasis now evolved and rippling with atomic energy and angrily makes a beeline to Kong and upon seeing him, attacks without hesitation. Kong attempts to reason with Godzilla but he refuses to listen and eventually pins him to the ground again, before Godzilla can finish Kong off, Mothra arrives and defuses the situation. Through her intervention, she convinces Godzilla and Kong to work together.
Godzilla and Kong travel back down into the Hollow Earth to face off against Skar King’s army. Mothra plays a support role in the final battle, she helps keep Skar King’s ape troop at bay while Godzilla and Kong battle Skar King and Shimo. She fights using her classic wing scale pollen from the Toho movies and webbing to wrap up apes. Right as they clash, the Iwi activate a device that manipulates the gravity leading to a sequence where Godzilla, Kong, Mothra, and Suko battle the army in zero gravity (most of Skar King’s army of apes are taken out here by Mothra and Suko while Kong and Godzilla focus on the two heavy hitters). The gravity reactivates and Godzilla, Kong, Skar King, and Shimo fall through a portal that drops them all off in Rio De Janeiro, where the rest of the fight takes place.
Towards the end of the battle, Skar King tries to defend himself against an attacking Godzilla with his whip but Godzilla catches it in his mouth and breaks it, dropping the control crystal enslaving Shimo and sending it sliding across the ground. As Kong and Skar King scramble to recapture it, Suko comes in last second with Kong’s axe and brings it down on the gem, breaking the control over Shimo. Skar King then receives the beating of a lifetime by Godzilla, Kong, and Shimo before she freezes Skar King solid with her ice breath and Kong smashes him into a million pieces. The movie ends with Godzilla firing his atomic breath into the sky to dissipate Shimo’s ice age blizzard she’d created before he swims back to Rome to rest in the colosseum while Kong and Suko ride Shimo back into the Hollow Earth where they free all the enslaved apes.
While it may sound a bit like fan fiction, but the film’s ridiculous trailer was anything to go by, you can’t discredit this leak right away. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is all set to release on April 12, 2024.
If you have any questions regarding Godzilla x Kong, feel free to ask in the comments below. For more content, stay tuned. As usual, like, subscribe, and share our articles as we here are trying to build a community of people High On Cinema!
