Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Kyle Chandler, and Demián Bichir

Director: Adam Wingard

This monster movie would probably look spectacular wherever you watch it, but it absolutely dazzles on the big screen with epic monster-on-monster action and thunderous, almost deafening, sound effects.

The fourth film in Warner Bros and Legendary’s MonsterVerse, a cinematic universe where giant monsters are real and have existed way before the human race came into being, Godzilla vs Kong pits two ancient alpha predators against each other.

For some reason, Godzilla, a predator resembling a huge reptile who has the ability to bombard his enemies with nuclear radiation, has been attacking cities and killing people. Godzilla, always seen as more of a saviour than an indiscriminate killer, is mighty ticked off about something and has been felling cities like dominoes.

Enter Kong. Since Kong: Skull Island, the giant ape on which many say the survival of humanity depends, has been dragged from his isolated island home to the civilisation. Luckily for humans, there is a little girl who has a connection to Kong and they communicate using sign language.

The whole planet becomes Godzilla and Kong’s arena. Humanity is reduced to commentators and spectators outside the ring. Because the movie is rated PG-13, there are no millions lying dead in the wake of the destruction wrought by these titans. When our own world, more so now than ever before, appears to be on the edge of ruin, these monsters feel like our primal fears made incarnate. They are our eco-anxieties rendered larger-than-life, in flesh and blood.

Science fiction dramas, for a large part, centre their actions on the blunders made by people. What else can possibly earn the wrath of nature? The main villain in Godzilla vs. Kong is a mega-corporation that uses its financial muscle to achieve its dream of world domination. Since the forte of American cinema is to throw in a couple of monsters to make a giant spectacle every now and then, it chooses this particular gimmick. It invites the viewers to witness an epic battle between two beasts that are powerful enough to uproot skyscrapers in less than a second.

Godzilla vs Kong is exactly what its trailers and promotional and marketing material said it would be: a big, thrilling, dumb action movie that no monster movie fan should miss.