Hip-hop genre pioneered by Gucci Mane / TUE 4-18-23 / Showy basket / Dah's counterpart in Morse code / Face-off in a 2021 monster film

Constructor: Kiran Pandey

Relative difficulty: somewhat harder than your typical Tuez puzz

THEME: "BREAK IT UP, YOU TWO!" (58A: Command that could be given to the title characters in 17-, 26- and 45-Across) — movie titles that follow the pattern "___ VS. ___":

Theme answers:

• "ALIEN VS. PREDATOR" (17A: Face-off a 2014 science fiction film)
• "GODZILLA VS. KONG" (26A: Face-off in a 2021 monster film)
• "KRAMER VS. KRAMER" (45A: Face-off in a 1979 courtroom drama film)

Word of the Day: "GODZILLA VS. KONG" (26A) —

Godzilla vs. Kong is a 2021 American monster film directed by Adam Wingard. A sequel to Kong: Skull Island (2017) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019); it is the fourth film in Legendary Pictures' MonsterVerse, the 36th film in the Godzilla franchise, the 12th film in the King Kong franchise, and the fourth Godzilla film to be completely produced by an American film studio. The film stars Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Lance Reddick, Kyle Chandler, and Demián Bichir. In the film, Kong clashes with Godzilla after humans move the ape from Skull Island to the Hollow Earth, homeworld of the monsters known as "Titans", to retrieve a power source for a secret weapon intended to stop Godzilla's mysterious rampages. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well, "GODZILLA VS. KONG," despite being the most recent of these films, left absolutely no impression on my brain, and that was pretty much the heart of the problem for me, theme-wise. That is, the other two movies seemed iconic, and that one seemed ... pfft, like nothing. The 36th Godzilla film, who cares? I see that it made over $400M and had some very good actors in it (Brian Tyree Henry?! I almost want to see it now), but I wrote in "GODZILLA VS." and then ... nothing. This is in part because my Morning Brain could not not not make sense of 19D: Showy basket. I kept picturing Easter baskets. I had DUN- and *still* had no idea how the hell that could be a "basket." This deprived me of the "K" I (desperately) needed to get KONG, which ... is only half a "monster." Without the KING, and without the initial "K," no way I was getting to KONG. It's a very good thing I actually remembered what the hell NGRAM was (30D: Google ___ Viewer (tool for charting word frequency over time)), because I really needed that "N" to make "KONG" become visible. And to finally see that DUNK was a basketball clue all along, d'oh! Anyway, "GODZILLA VS. KONG" feels like a weak link here. I know the puzzle wants me to think the first themer is a "science fiction film" and the "GODZILLA" one a "monster film" but they are both obviously monster films and this theme set would've been much better if there'd been one less monster film. Would've made the set more varied, and made "KRAMER VS. KRAMER" seem like less of a weird outlier. But I guess you gotta find another "VS." film that's 14 letters long, to match "Kramer," so ... we get "GODZILLA VS. KONG." Maybe that's the joke—that "Kramer" is an outlier?  There's a sort of silly energy to the whole conceit, which is fine, but the themer set needed ... something. Another monster film to set up the joke of "Kramer" or a thematically broader set of movies or ... something. 

The fill was the thing that really bugged me early on. Hadn't seen ANIL in so long I went back to confusing it with ARIL—both words are old-school crosswordese and back when you'd see them a lot, I think I had worked out a way to remember what the difference was, but today, I wrote in ARIL, which is a seed covering, I guess. I remember that. Now. And DIT, ugh, wow, we're doing Morse code junk again in the year 2023!? I don't like VEAL, I don't eat VEAL, I don't particularly want to see VEAL in the grid, but I sure as hell would prefer DET (as an abbr. for "Detroit" or "detective" or whatever), to DIT, so bring on the VEAL, if you must, or else just rework the short stuff up top, it can't be hard, why in the world are we dealing with junk like ANIL and DIT in an easy-to-fill Tuesday grid? After you get out of the NW, and if you ignore NGRAM, the fill does improve a bit, and the four longer Downs are solid enough (OPEN MIND is actually quite good). Oh, and I think PARADOX / COTERIE make a lovely central pairing—goes a long way to making up for the ANIL / DIT nonsense. 

Cluing seemed somewhat harder than usual for a Tuesday (see that DUNK clue, for instance, LOL). Also, [Green movement?] for PUTT, which I like. I did not know that earth was CHAOS, or rather ... I was thinking it was a void, and I couldn't remember what the actual (English) word was. Hmm, I'm reading Genesis I (KJV) and not seeing the word CHAOS. I do see "void," though, so I feel better about my memory. I'm sure CHAOS is in there somewhere. It's in Paradise Lost, so it must be biblical. Milton wouldn't mess something like that up. Probably. My one non-KONG-related error today was AFRO, written in off the "R," at 13D: Wavy do (PERM). I know, I know, AFRO's don't really have "waves," exactly, but apparently I have a crossword curly hairdo reflex that defaults to AFRO (since it's a far far far far more common crossword answer than PERM). If I'd known or cared in any way about "GODZILLA VS. KONG," maybe this crossword would've been more of a pleasure to solve. But I think I'd still see that title as a weak link. Not iconic enough on its own, not different enough in kind (i.e. genre) from "ALIEN VS. PREDATOR." But I do give the puzzle credit for trying to do something weird and original here.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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