The second Kong's fist connected with Godzilla's jaw on the deck of an aircraft carrier en route to Antarctica -- somewhere, I think, around the 44-minute mark of the film -- I knew that Godzilla vs. Kong was going to be a kick-ass movie.

I have a vague recollection of watching 1962's King Kong vs. Godzilla sometime back in the early 1980s, and I remember that it was pretty bad. Its modern successor is not.

That's not to say it's a pinnacle of plot and narrative. You want expansive dialogue and incisive character development, look elsewhere. GvK is about big monsters fighting. And it delivers on that premise really, really well.

Full disclosure: I didn't really like Godzilla, the 2014 movie that rebooted the franchise and launched the cinematic MonsterVerse. I wasn't even motivated to see its sequel, 2019's Godzilla: King of the Monsters. But I did kind of enjoy Kong: Skull Island, the 2017 movie that reimagined Kong's origins in a post-Vietnam War setting, but it didn't live up to the standard set in 2005 by Peter Jackson's King Kong remake.

Now back to Godzilla vs. Kong. In earlier films, Godzilla was set up as a sort of hero, fighting against the other monsters -- aka MUTOs, aka Titans -- to save the planet, and mankind, from destruction. But after Godzilla lays waste to a research lab in Florida, killing several people in what seems to be an unprovoked attack, top minds decide their best bet is to use Kong -- happily living on his island for the past 50 years, where he apparently grew three times his previous size (so he could look Godzilla in the eyes, I suppose) -- to unlock the "Hollow Earth" and tap into the Titans' own power to stop them. Of course, 'Zilla senses Kong on the move and attacks his naval convoy, leading to a brief but impressive fight at sea. Godzilla, who lives more freely underwater than his hirsute monster cousin, has a natural advantage in the opening round.

I'm still not exactly sure how he's fooled into leaving.

Then we get a whole Journey to the Center of the Earth vibe for a while, and there are a lot of people involved ... although no one who seems truly vital to the plot. This just provides a bridge that sends Kong to the ancestral inner core of his ancestors, where he can fight a few more monsters and find a mystical Kong-sized dwarven axe, of sorts, which will help him counter Godzilla's atomic breath.

Or so you'd think. Without providing too much detail on the endgame, let's just say Kong doesn't find an easy rematch in Hong Kong, where he and Godzilla have their second battle. And then Mechagodzilla -- a giant robot created to fight Titans but now under the mental control of one of the late Ghidorah's heads (I guess I should have watched Godzilla: King of the Monsters after all) -- joins the fight.

What do you think? In the face of this new threat, will Kong and Godzilla become allies? I'll let you figure that one out on your own.

The plot doesn't always make perfect sense, and the people are more of an afterthought than an integral part of the film. Ultimately, however, this movie isn't about the story, it's about the spectacle. And GvK provides spectacle in spades.