Filmtracks: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Tom Holkenborg/Antonio Di Iorio)

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Written 4/23/24

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Buy it... only if you found the soundscape and themes of the previous franchise score appealing, that approach processed to even more abrasive ends in the sequel.

Avoid it... if you'd pay $75 or more to see a John Williams concert.

Holkenborg

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire: (Tom Holkenborg/Antonio Di Iorio) Because these MonsterVerse movies continue to make insane amounts of cash, they continue to exist, each entry mostly the same intellectual dearth as the others. As the direct sequel to 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong, the continued domination by giant pre-historic creatures on the planet compels the largely ridiculous story of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire in 2024. The human characters in these films may as well simply be fodder for splattering under the monsters' feet, because their stories are pointless. Instead, people pay money to witness the monsters fighting each other and interacting badly with human-built structures. While there exists the required landmark mutilation and assault on a nuclear facility in this plot, the sequel mainly serves to introduce audiences to new Hollow Earth territory where all the biggest, nastiest enemies of insurance companies reside. When the benevolent King Kong accidentally finds his way into a deeper layer of this realm, a whole new group of angry monsters awaits to unleash havoc on the surface. Kong, Godzilla, and Mothra together battle the evil leader of the realm and make new friends along the way. Lots of violence, an abundance of noise, and a disappointing lack of monster-on-monster sex action leaves Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire as a good recipe for a headache and not much else. For films appealing to the lowest common denominator of intelligence, it's no surprise that their music does the same. In the 2021 film, Tom Holkenborg provided the kaiju genre with music that required you to check your brain at the door, a monumental missed opportunity consisting of tired Hans Zimmer leftover techniques and an intentionally synthetic mix. For Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Holkenborg returns, this time affording co-compositional credit to Antonio Di Iorio, who has been a de facto ghostwriter for Holkenborg for years. (Some reports indicate that Di Iorio was actually responsible for a fair amount of the music in Godzilla vs. Kong, and he may very well be the hidden lead here, too.) Regardless of who wrote this music, however, its loyalty to the prior score is absolute, extending all its best and worst aspects for a predictably obnoxious second pass.

It's difficult to imagine that anyone turned off by the score for Godzilla vs. Kong will find any reason to explore Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, because the traits of the first score that annoyed the most are all accentuated in the second one. There is absolutely zero subtlety anywhere in this music. It's either too loud or too simplistic, even for this genre. Although a cut-rate orchestra was employed for the recording, you can once again expect very few of its performances to sound organic. Instead, there is so much brazen and significant electronic manipulation in this mix that it exudes an 8-bit sound at times, perhaps because the director is an enthusiast of 1980's synthetic music. Sometimes, it sounds almost like a bad imitation of Benjamin Wallfisch's metallic tone for Mortal Kombat but without the same touch of creativity. The tone of this Holkenborg and Di Iorio score is grating in nearly every cue, its ambience devolving to such brute force that it loses the ability to apply emotional variance to any scene. Every crescendo is overblown and desensitized, even the less bombastic tonal parts suffering from the haze of manipulation. Credit goes to the composers for once again trying to infuse some specialty instrumentation and vocal inflection into the mix. But even here, the results are often more irritating than they are worth. The awful tribal chanting and percussion post-processing in "Threatening Survival" is as unattractive as the devolving soundscape with bizarre drum kit coolness in "Tech Project Upgrade." The Godzilla material receives increasingly synthetic tones as this film progresses, maybe representing the nuclear element but no less insufferable. Enthusiasts of the prior score will be very pleased to hear its three main themes reprised everywhere in this sequel. The applications of each idea are pretty basic, but there are times when the composers manage to overlap a couple of the main themes with skill. In fact, all three returning themes are combined very nicely in the second half of the climactic battle in "Frozen Rio," a cue that will serve as a clear highlight for enthusiasts of the concept and Holkenborg. Among these three ideas, the two for Kong are especially well established from start to finish in this work, which makes sense given that Kong is essentially the main character. Also returning is Godzilla's simplistic theme for his appearances. Joining them are a handful of other ideas, a few freshly introduced, that round out the narrative reasonably well.

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Kong's pair of themes in these scores includes a fanfare and a more sensitive alternative, the two ideas mingling extensively in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. The main returning fanfare is heard briefly at 0:08 into "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Main Title Theme)" before growing big on brass at 1:25 for multiple heroic renditions and a dramatic climax. It stomps with menace at 1:04 into "Threatening Survival," is rhythmically accelerated at 0:20 into "He's Arriving - Devastation" (and then full at 0:58), and occupies the start of "New Entrances and Encounters" with ominous strings, building to forceful brass. The main Kong identity is presented harshly at 1:22 into "Approaching the Lake," cyclically to open "Myth and Ritual," with increasing struggles at the beginning of "Desperate Escape," and as a momentum-builder after the rock exposition in "Tech Project Upgrade." It counters the Godzilla theme at the start of "Egypt Fight" and asserts itself in the middle of "Frozen Rio" with giant choir and brass, its major solo performance at 2:28 on the latter leading to the secondary theme in stride. That other theme for Kong often finds itself used as a B phrase or interlude to the main fanfare, its longer lines serving that purpose adequately. It recurs several times in full at 0:18 into "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Main Title Theme)," becomes embedded in the tribal action early in "Threatening Survival," and extends out of the primary fanfare right away at 1:03 into "He's Arriving - Devastation." Lighter choral shades await at 1:00 into "New Entrances and Encounters," leading to a noble moment, and that stance continues faintly at 0:42 into "Approaching the Lake" and in whimsical form early in "Hollow Earth's Nature," shifting to synth keyboarding. It barely informs the optimistic tone in the first half of "IWI Findings," turns to the distant voices again in the middle of "Myth and Ritual," cascades out of the cyclical primary Kong theme in "Desperate Escape," and accompanies the rhythmic ambience at the outset of "Divine and Glorious." This secondary Kong identity gains heroic stature for a moment in the middle of "Egypt Fight," impressively joins the Godzilla theme for tonal heroics at 1:14 into "Frozen Rio," and gains sensitivity in "You Are My Home." While the album track title of "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Main Title Theme)" suggests that this score has a new main theme, that cue actually consists mostly of returning Kong material, with a couple of other themes in tow near its end.

The other major returning theme belongs most obviously to Godzilla, representing Holkenborg's adequate but somewhat clunky attempt to generate a true kaiju identity. Once again, nothing from any of the classic Godzilla scores survives thematically in Holkenborg's take on the character, leaving this portion of the MonsterVerse as a musical outlier. A partial but large performance occurs after 2:17 into "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Main Title Theme)," and the idea is suggested at the start of "He's Arriving - Devastation." But it opens "Leaving Colosseum - New Dossier" in pure, complete, stomping form, mingling with other material thereafter. It thrashes on brass with synthetic vocal breathiness at 1:22 into "French Army," idiotically overemphasized by choir afterwards. At 2:11 into "Myth and Ritual," Godzilla's theme is pitted against Kong's secondary material, and it is further hinted against other themes in "New Kingdom" over animal calls and chants. It returns in irritating, overblown tones against synth rambles in "Egypt Fight," receives an atrocious performance at 3:32 into "Collapsing Gravity," and accompanies the secondary Kong theme for tonal heroics at 1:14 into "Frozen Rio," ultimately blending really well with both Kong themes at the culmination of the cue. As mentioned before, the Godzilla theme starts off in its traditional low brass incarnations of focus and takes on a more obvious synthetic tone as the score wears on, and even the theme's progressions become more fragmented in later cues. The evolution of the theme is somewhat noteworthy but not necessarily enjoyable, and the composers don't get the opportunity to provide a refreshing return to the idea's original form as a sendoff for the monster. Other identities in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire aren't as well defined, including the new ones. A new theme encompasses everything from the Hollow Earth threat generally to the Skar King villain and, in its rising trios of notes, even Mothra. This idea is previewed in massive form at 2:09 into "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Main Title Theme)," is reduced to a more fluidly tonal form at 0:34 into "Monarch Base - Red Dream," and espouses sinister drama to close out "He's Arriving - Devastation." Advancing brashly at 1:10 into "Leaving Colosseum - New Dossier" against the descending Godzilla lines, this theme consolidates for a distorted, almost buzzing performance later in the cue. Just as challenging is the theme's obnoxious blasts after a minute into "Ancient Creatures."

The villain material in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is decently explored in the latter half of the score, tormenting early in "Myth and Ritual" and growling at the start of "New Kingdom," influencing much of the latter cue. It then counters the Kong themes in "Desperate Escape," threatens in the crescendos of "Broken" and "Egypt Fight," and thrashes around in "Collapsing Gravity" and "Frozen Rio" with grating electronic effects. Since this theme represents adversity generally in the score, you find its variants applied to a plethora of characters and situations as needed. On the opposite side is an equally broad family theme that applies to both the humans and Kong's own relationships in the film. This idea debuts nebulously on keyboard and strings in middle of "Friendship" but is better defined clearly at 2:10 into "New Entrances and Encounters." It opens "Approaching the Lake" solemnly on brass, shifting to action briefly at the cue's end, and splashes at the end of "IWI Findings." The family theme achieves massive fantasy mode at 0:14 into "Memories Resurface" before turning eerie in the final moments, and it is deconstructed in "Broken." It becomes a fragmentary fanfare in "Divine and Glorious" before regaining form on choir and synths, later bursting through the action repeatedly at the height of "Collapsing Gravity." As the story wraps, this material attempts the same heroics in "Frozen Rio" and is turned by the composers into a more bombastic anthem at the start of "You Are My Home" with a few Godzilla allusions along the way. None of these new ideas is anywhere near as memorable as the returning identities for Kong and Godzilla, and the challenging instrumental processing of their performances doesn't help. In the end, the manipulation of the recording to make everything sound synthetic does little more than cause the music sound dumb regardless of who wrote what. While these monster movies don't require the most intelligent of music, they can often benefit greatly from a little more dynamic compassion built into the soundscape. This music, by comparison, devolves into bonehead pounding far too often for comfort. Enthusiasts of these scores may confess that Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a marginally better experience overall because of the keen thematic integration at its end, but you have to be ready to forgive the inauthentic soundscape to reach that point of appreciation. On album, the 64 minutes of music presented is about all that can be tolerated, and unless you found something appealing about the prior entry, you'll discover nothing of interest here. ** @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Tom Holkenborg reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.16 (in 19 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.49 (in 6,143 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

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