Usually there would be some kind of brief plot summary here, but honestly any studio blockbuster whose plot begins with “the mighty Kong has a toothache” deserves to have its story discovered by the viewer.

From the sublime to the ridiculous: it is jaw-dropping to see two Godzilla features produced in such close proximity to one another, one of which – Godzilla Minus One – is a dignified and heartfelt epic, and the other such a deliberately goofy and cartoonish fiasco. Do not mistake my amusement at Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire as a serious recommendation. This is the sort of post-Transformers blend of idiot writing and poor CGI for which its creators should be ashamed. Were director Adam Wingard a puppy we would be pointing him at his mess and firmly saying “no”. When the Japanese Godzilla films got this ridiculous, there were at least loveable rubber-suit monsters to enjoy.

Strangely the film of which I am most reminded is Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin (1997). Just like Godzilla x Kong, it was the fourth instalment of a Warner Bros action franchise. It also replaced a slightly more serious take on its subject matter with something deliberately colourful, self-aware, and wacky. Most notable of all, Batman & Robin was arguably a pitch-perfect adaptation of the Dick Sprang-era Batman comic books of the 1950s. Fans mistook Schumacher’s film for a poor adaptation, when in truth it was a great adaptation – just one that nobody was particularly desperate to see.

The same phenomenon is going on with Wingard’s film. This is, for all its silliness, far from the most ludicrous a Godzilla film has ever been. While I would personally prefer to see something a little more serious, I find I cannot fault Godzilla x Kong for replicating the goofier fringe of the original franchise.

The fault here lies not in the subject but in its execution. For one thing Godzilla is barely present, spending what scenes he does have preparing himself for the climax. The overwhelming bulk of the picture is spent watching Kong discover more giant apes in the ‘hollow world’ deep beneath the Earth’s surface. In these lengthy sequences, Kong – a motion-captured CGI character – interacts with other CGI characters and monsters against a fantastical backdrop of CGI. It all looks so artificial that it is difficult to care. It also leads to some dreadful problems with scale. Kong is intended to be roughly 100 metres tall, and yet divorced from almost all human context he is regularly animated with the speed and weight of a monster one tenth his size. It is a problem that persists throughout the film. It lends everything an artificial air with which it is difficult to engage.

Giant monsters do hit each other. Beloved cities and architectural icons get smashed to pieces while they fight. With most kaiju films, and that includes Godzilla x Kong, there is a floor level entertainment in watching visual effects pummel one another. The human context, however, feels particularly week, as does a sense of scale. I did enjoy this sequel in fits and starts, but at no point did I particularly respect it. I feel that is telling.