GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE Director Says Film is Their "FAST & FURIOUS 5 Moment"
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire director Adam Wingard recently shared some more thoughts on Legendary’s new monsterverse. This time he says that the sequel is a character study and that this next film in the franchise is their “Fast & Furious 5 Moment.”
The more the director says about this movie, the more it pushes me away from it. During an interview with SFX magazine, Wingard starts off by talking about how this film is a character study:
"I’m sure it could show you what it looks like if Godzilla and Kong are having a birthday party in the tropics, complete with 300ft tall birthday cakes. You can see anything, but you can’t create things that make you feel something. That’s where my interest lies. I want to do a 300ft scale character study."
The thing is, as I’m watching the trailers for this film, they might as well be showing Godzilla and Kong having a birthday party in the tropics, complete with 300ft tall birthday cakes! That’s just how ridiculous the whole thing looks. If this movie actually has any kind of real character development, I’ll be very surprised because the last couple of films did not.
The director then went on to explain why this movie is their Fast & Furious 5 moment, saying:
"This is our Fast & Furious 5 moment, where the series is coming into its own of being able to say definitively 'This is what the MonsterVerse is.'"
I just can’t help but roll my eyes at this comment because the last thing I want is for these iconic monster characters to be compared to the Fast and Furious franchise. Does this make Godzilla Dominic Toretto and Kong Brian O’Connor?
In the upcoming film, “The epic battle continues! Legendary Pictures’ cinematic Monsterverse follows up the explosive showdown of Godzilla vs. Kong with an all-new adventure that pits the almighty Kong and the fearsome Godzilla against a colossal undiscovered threat hidden within our world, challenging their very existence—and our own. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire delves further into the histories of these Titans and their origins, as well as the mysteries of Skull Island and beyond, while uncovering the mythic battle that helped forge these extraordinary beings and tied them to humankind forever.”
The director previously talked about the relationship between Godzilla and Kong, saying: “There’s a bit of a truce — Godzilla’s in control of the surface world and Kong is down in Hollow Earth. It wasn’t, ‘Okay, give me a call when something goes wrong, Kong. And I, Godzilla, will rush to the rescue!’ The buddy-cop dysfunctional relationship dynamic is probably the best one to describe Godzilla and Kong. My influences are always embedded with the ‘80s, and the ‘80s were prime for [that] storyline. There’s a lot of misunderstanding – the way that the monsters communicate isn’t straightforward.”
The film stars Rebecca Hall (Godzilla vs. Kong), Brian Tyree Henry (Godzilla vs. Kong), Dan Stevens (Legion), Kaylee Hottle (Godzilla vs. Kong), Alex Ferns (The Batman) and Fala Chen (Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings).
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire opens in theaters on April 12, 2024.