PAGE A20, KEIZERTIMES, APRIL 16, 2021
A beast brawl free-for-all on HBO Max
By TJ REID
For the Keizertimes
When RKO released the cultural
touchstone that is King Kong in 1933,
the titular titan served as a dire warning
of how man should not exploit nature or
attempt to control it for selfi sh reasons.
When our other favorite giant beastie,
Godzilla, showed up 21 years later, he
was a dark, serious metaphor for nuclear
annihilation (a fear that was very much
in the zeitgeist of the Japanese people
at the time for obvious reasons). These
monsters instantly struck a chord with
the public, and fast forward however
many years and countless movies later,
we get the two meeting in a feature fi lm
for the fi rst time (or since 1962’s King
GARDEN,
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how to garden at their homes if they have
space.”
A portion of the space will be rented
out as low-cost private gardens, but other
space will be open to the public to plant
and harvest as needed.
“There are some raised beds already
on the site and we want to leave those in
place, but we will be reorganizing some of
the other areas,” Snyder said. “Anything
we harvest that doesn’t get used in the
neighborhood will be donated to the
Marion Polk Food Share.”
Snyder said support from area busi-
nesses and neighborhood residents has
already been generous.
“Our goal for this weekend is a good
start. We’ll be doing some tilling and
some of the initial planting and try to
restore some of the beauty it had before
COVID hit. The more hands we have
helping, the quicker the work will go,”
she said.
Even though the event will be out-
doors, volunteers will be asked to wear a
mask while volunteering at the garden.
Review
Kong vs. Godzilla, anyway). Here, in
Legendary Picture’s Godzilla vs. Kong,
the rich tradition of these kaiju con-
veying deeper themes is continued by
asking the thoughtful and important
question, “What would happen if giant
monkey fought giant lizard?” Without
a doubt, I can say that … well, yes. This
happens.
Look, you know this movie isn’t a
masterpiece, even if you haven’t seen
it or never plan on seeing it. It’s not
like the transformation of the two fran-
chises from serious art to silly-but-fun
popcorn fl icks was sudden and some-
thing that Godzilla vs. Kong pioneered.
In the last movie in Legendary’s thor-
oughly okay MonsterVerse, Godzilla
gets dropped from space by King
Ghidorah, and we fi nd out that the earth
is hollow. Godzilla vs. Kong was never
going to be art. What it is instead is
a middling action movie that suff ers
from the same thing that other mov-
ies in the MonsterVerse are guilty of:
too much time with boring human
characters who mostly exist to spout
exposition. Godzilla vs. Kong has some
great actors in it, Millie Bobby Brown,
Rebecca Hall, and Brian Tyree Henry, to
name a few, but it is hard to take any of
them seriously when all they do is give
bland backstories, quip, shout techno
babble, and quip some more. Can we
just get back to giant monkey fi ghting
giant lizard, please?
Because despite the billing and the
fact that the movie gets right into things
without pausing to explain who these
human characters are — a mixed bless-
ing, it turns out, as no one really cares
(and a situation that might be remedied
if one has seen all of the previous three
movies in the continuity, which I have
not) — it still drags in places. The two
titans don’t even meet each other until
roughly forty minutes in. And sure,
Kong gets plenty of screen time (and
to a slightly lesser extent, Godzilla,
even though Kong is clearly the focus
here) before then, but I still found my
attention wandering whenever the two
weren’t beating the crap out of each
other.
But when there is action, there is
action. Monkey and Lizard have never
looked cooler, and their battles are
something to behold. Godzilla vs.
Kong is the latest Warner Bros. movie
to be released on both HBO Max and in
the theaters simultaneously, and if you
have the chance to see it in theaters,
make sure you take it (while taking all
the necessary precautions). It might be
worth your time if you go in expecting
no more than some cool surrounded by
a whole lot of stupid.
Godzilla vs. Kong is now available on
HBO Max.
Cat of the Week
Name: POPPA BLUE
Age: 1½
HISTORY:
Stray cat brought in March. He is
a domestic short hair lynx point.
PREFERRED HOME:
Very loving and aff ectionate cat
but doesn’t do well with other pets.
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