After years of peaceful coexistance, having saved the human race from the invasion of the Titans, Godzilla lays waste to the American headquarters of a company called Apex. Madison Russell, survivor of the previous War of the Monsters, believes this is something more than titan bellicosity and seeks out a conspiracy theorist with similar ideas in order to infiltrate Apex. Meanwhile, the world's leading (discredited) expert on Hollow Earth theory gets a chance to take King Kong to a place he calls home. If, that is, Godzilla doesn't kill him first.

After all the time we spent locked up in our homes, returning to the big screens of the cinema was quite an event and it needed something big to remind us why we all used to love it so much. GODZILLA VS KONG is big. It's very big. It's a big ape and big lizard smacking eight bells out of each other in a variety of locations whilst the human world around them is laid to waste. The devastation in this movie is absolutely huge, whether it's a giant factory facility getting wasted, and entire fleet of ships getting wasted or the entirety of Hong Kong getting wasted. Absolutely no thought is given to the effect of this destruction beyond how good it looks on screen. The connection to ordinary humans caught up in it (a la GODZILLA) has long since been jettisoned in favour of tower block after tower block being utterly destroyed. If you're looking for spectacle then Kong and Godzilla going at it on the deck of an aircraft carrier or the final duel in Hong Kong certainly provides it.

Sadly, once you get past the scale, scope and spectacle of the wanton destruction, the film has very little to offer. The plot is absolute bobbins. Or, plots. A maintenance man and two kids go wandering around hugely secure facilities with laughable ease as they serve no purpose other than to finally provide an introduction and some exposition dumping late in the day. The second plot involves a little girl being able to talk to Kong in sign language, which allows two scientists and some shady corporate types to follow him into the Hollow Earth to find a super power source. They don't need to take the power source, just to scan it so they can magically recreate it back on the surface. How is not explained. Why Kong should be able to lead them to it is not explained. Why Kong and the team's super-sci-fi hovercraft have to pass through a gravity singularity to enter into Hollow Earth when Godzilla can just drill a hole straight down is not explained. The reason none of these things are explained is because they don't make any sense and they're only there to provide a reason for the huge CGI destruction.

There are some good actors here, but they're not here to act, nor are they given anything to act with. The characters are as thin as can be. There's a deaf girl who can sign to Kong. She has a bond with the creature. What else do we need to know? Nothing. There's a scientist who lost his brother in the search for Hollow Earth. What else do we need to know? Nothing. There's another scientist who is working with Kong and treats the deaf girl like her daughter. What else do we need to know? Nothing. Every character here has no depth because they are just there to move the nonsensical plot along to the next big CGI smackdown.

Considering the work that was done in the original GODZILLA and KONG:SKULL ISLAND to make the scenarios grounded in some sort of reality, the nonsense going on here is disappointing.

Visually, of course, it's stunning. The Hollow Earth sequence is breathtaking in its beauty, though it gets stupid again once we enter Kong's throne room (really). The first smackdown on the high seas is original and exciting, whilst the second in Hong Kong manages to just about stay on the right side of repetitive. I mean, how many buildings can each have their face smashed into before we get bored?

GODZILLA VS KONG is dumb. It's goofy and dumb. It's big, goofy and dumb. You will have to switch your brain off at the start just to protect yourself from the resulting loss of IQ. But, as far as big, goofy, dumb movies go, it's a spectacular big, goofy, dumb blockbuster of a movie and that might just be the most we can ask of it as the cinemas open up and welcome us back.