Kong, who has adjustment issues of his own, is meanwhile off on a separate adventure, in the Subterranean Realms still nearer the earth’s core. Having started out in the 1930s as a symbol of everything exotic and “savage” in Western eyes, he’s weirdly transformed into the opposite, a familiar face we can connect with as he voyages into uncharted terrain.

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The film’s most daring gambit is to chronicle this journey in lengthy wordless sequences with no human characters in sight, giving the computer-animated Kong scope to show off his warrior prowess almost in the manner of the Kung Fu Panda, coincidentally also back in cinemas this week.

Godzilla is comparatively underused, beyond the surreal charm of an early shot that has him curled up at the centre of the Colosseum in Rome, enjoying a well-earned rest after battle. Fans who take this mythology seriously may feel doubly let down after Takashi Yamazaki’s recent Godzilla Minus One, a sombre prequel from Japan’s Toho Studios which circles back to the US government’s post-war nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll, ground zero for the entire saga.

Not only have Wingard’s monsters become too tame for their own good, so has the drama in which they appear. Still more than previous chapters in the MonsterVerse series, Godzilla x Kong plays out as an elaborate but empty pantomime, anxious to avoid any form of subtext that might be deemed controversial.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t granted the spectacle of city-wide destruction at the climax, when the heroes finally join forces against a common foe (the city in question, selected with notable care, is neither in Europe, Asia or the US). But beyond the preliminary shots of extras running for cover, the cataclysm feels jokey, abstract and entirely consequence-free.

In cinemas now.

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