To quote Ken Watanabe in the 2014s Godzilla and / or the best GIF ever: “Let them fight.”
After almost a year of delay due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic Godzilla versus Kong is on the horizon. The fourth film in Legendary Entertainment’s “Monster Verse” franchise after that Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters is currently slated for a simultaneous release of Kino and HBO Max in March as part of Warner Bros. Entertainment’s industry-rattling strategy to fight bans for the foreseeable future. A new trailer for the film promises to be a real blockbuster, with two titans battling it out while other nefarious forces descend over the earth. Big screens were made for this.
Directed by Adam Wingard (The guest, 2016 Blair Witch) with a script from Pirates of the Caribbean Writer Terry Rossio, Godzilla versus Kong picks up where King of the monsters stopped – notably the movie’s Kong-filled credits and a post-credit scene teasing the return of King Ghidorah and the introduction of Mecha-Godzilla. In a summary from the start of production in 2018 it says: “When Monarch embarks on a dangerous mission into unknown territory and uncovered clues to the origins of the Titans, a human conspiracy threatens to wipe the good and bad creatures from the faces of people for Earth always. “The movie stars Millie Bobby Brown and Kyle Chandler from King of the monsterstogether with Alexander Skarsgård (The stand), Rebecca Hall (Christine), Brian Tyree Henry (Atlanta), Shun Oguri (Gintamai
The big question that remains after that first glance: will Godzilla burp again? For those who haven’t caught Godzilla: King of the MonstersIt’s important to know that while the big lizard could fight its way through hordes of titans, it also delivers a burping ass. When we asked director Mike Dougherty why he gave Godzilla a moment of gasping in the mouth amid a vortex of monster chaos, he had this to say:
A big reason Godzilla has this mysterious pull, this mysterious pull, is that he has human traits and elements, and I think that’s an enduring aspect of the fact that the Japanese put him in the man-in-man process for decades. Have executed suit. There were very humanistic expressions and body language that made us identify him a little more than we could have done if he had been executed in stop motion.
So it was important to me to really embellish it and embrace this concept. Both the animators and performance capture artists we worked with became a fun team and always tried to add another close-up, add a wink, add a slight tilt of the head, all to convey that Godzilla a surprisingly large emotion has area to connect with.
Can Godzilla versus Kong bring humanity to two warring titans? Can Godzilla’s Beauty Kill the Beast? We’ll find out when the movie hits theaters and HBO Max on March 26, 2021.