How Godzilla Minus One Helped Fill A Missing Piece In Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire
Recently, Takashi Yamazaki's "Godzilla Minus One" made Academy Award history by winning the Best Visual Effects category, becoming the first film in the decade-spanning franchise to win an Oscar. An absolutely deserved win aside, it is one that feels both unexpected and a long time coming, with the future of the kaiju looking brighter than ever. One of the reasons why "Godzilla Minus One" is such an impactful entry can be chalked up to how humanity bands together to defeat a mammoth, indestructible force while also dealing with a socio-political situation that mirrors some of the bleakest moments in Japanese history. It is a film that ventures way beyond the spectacle of an incomprehensible beast stomping around without any regard for human lives, with the focus often shifting to the intricate inner lives of everyday citizens working together to achieve the impossible.
Adam Wingard's "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire," on the other hand, tells a different kind of monster story, where the anticipation of an inevitable showdown between Godzilla and Kong is quickly subverted in favor of an iconic team-up. A visually-driven extravaganza, "Godzilla x Kong" leans heavily into "a more hyper-realistic, fully animated vibe" where the appeal is monsters brawling with each other to either prevent or accelerate a world-ending event — so says Wingard via The Hollywood Reporter. Wingard also told THR that a specific scene in "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" ended up becoming a direct homage to "Godzilla Minus One" after he saw a powerful shot from Yamazaki's film that was featured in its trailer.
Godzilla x Kong took inspiration from Minus One
Wingard went on to explain that he saw "Godzilla Minus One" at a private screening before its U.S. release but was "immediately inspired" by the film the moment its trailer dropped. During this time, "Godzilla x Kong" was still in post-production, and the crew could not figure out the right effect for the scene in which Godzilla stomps on a building that has a spray-painted version of him on the walls. Although the act in itself underlined Godzilla's immense strength, Wingard felt something was missing, and the answer to the missing puzzle piece was found in a shot from "Minus One:"
"We were about midway through post, and there's a great shot in that trailer [of 'Godzilla Minus One'] where Godzilla stomps down in a closeup and his feet are so heavy that he pushes up the ground in front of him. And I was so impressed with that shot that I ran into the office of my VFX supervisor, Alessandro Ongaro, because we had a similar shot in our film that we'd been working on for a while, but it didn't have the right effect...So I showed Alessandro this moment in the 'Minus One' trailer and said, 'That's what we need to do.' So we paid homage to [Godzilla Minus One] immediately in the movie."
Wingard's film feels almost like an antithesis to Yamazaki's, as their respective treatments of monster lore and the King of Monsters are markedly different, but there is ample space for both Godzilla films to thrive and co-exist. After all, the MonsterVerse has endured over the years because of this very diversity, where myriad themes and tones, from the deeply political to the deeply absurdist, have bloomed to contribute to a franchise that is still going strong.