Silly naming conventions aside, the promise of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is certainly there. Godzilla and King Kong teaming up to fight other giant monsters is the exact kind of schlocky premise that can fill theater seats. It’s a concept that invites you to turn off your brain, sit back, and enjoy some mindless violence.

And yet, while the film takes some steps forward in giving the giant monsters more focus, rather than repeating the irritating decision of past MonsterVerse films to continually cut away to bland human characters, the film still teeters back and forth between boring and dumb in a manner that hampers this film from being the glorious over-the-top movie it could be. To be sure, this one perhaps has the best and most instances of hyper, silly fighting. The joy of seeing Kong and Godzilla swing fists at other giant apes and reptiles is real, and the action gets quite ludicrous in several moments, likely to the audience’s delight. The film is bombastic and loud, with moments designed to elicit audience applause. Godzilla powers up a magenta-colored beam, Kong straps on a robotic super-fist, and Dan Stevens cheeses his way through every scene.

For all of the silliness, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire still suffers from a script issues and other creative decisions that feel plain strange. For one, Godzilla spends almost the entire movie offscreen. The film occasionally cuts to him trudging across the world, preparing for whatever bout is going to happen. Yet, despite being a title character, there are large chunks where he just sits around doing nothing. This is very much a Kong-focused story.

One of the “themes” of the film is finding family, and Kong’s journey to find others like him leads to several extended scenes of him interacting with a mini giant-ape, and other giant apes, all with no dialogue. To see this universe embrace visual storytelling and character building with the monsters is something many have been asking for, and it pulls these moments off well. It gives a vision for what this entire universe could be with some creative readjustments. But the lack of Godzilla is still felt.

Godzilla’s journey across Earth leads to him smash historical landmarks and presumably heavily-populated areas. While such mindless violence is part of the deal, setting the mass death and loss of world heritage sites to Adam Wingard‘s needle drops seems tone-deaf in an unattractive way. The film treats Godzilla and Kong like heroic monsters saving the day, but when they’re not fighting “evil” monsters, their death toll stacks up in such a reckless manner that its hard to really take joy in it. That the film almost completely ignores this feels like a cheat, especially given that prior entries put such a focus on the human toll.

The actual human characters in this are as blandly written as ever. Most of the cast from the prior few films is gone without explanation, with only Brian Tyree Henry, Rebecca Hall, and Kaylee Hottle returning. While there is a minor character conflict in Hall’s scientist wanting her adopted daughter to find her place in the world, this is rather perfunctorily resolved and the film makes a point of how it didn’t ever seem a conflict for Hottle’s character. Henry is mostly here for comic relief, playing off of Stevens’ character to admittedly amusing results at times.

The tonality of this universe has been all over the place. From the more serious take early on, to the current cheese-fest, the films have vastly varied in quality. While Godzilla x Kong has enough silliness to entertain as a big-screen blockbuster, one wishes it took a little more time to think about some of its choices and blend together a slightly higher-quality work. It may not shoot itself in the foot as badly as Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but higher ambitions, even for this type of film, never hurt anyone.

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