Godzilla Vs. Kong's Adam Wingard Has Regret Over The Opening Credit Errors

To date, there have been five films and one TV series in the MonsterVerse series, a high-profile American reinterpretation of Toho's long-running Godzilla series. The series began in 2014 with Gareth Edwards' "Godzilla," and that first film was a massive hit, but in terms of quality, the Monsterverse overall has been a mixed bag at best. Jordan Vogt-Roberts' "Kong: Skull Island" was a decent blockbuster, but the first and third films in the series — the third being "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" — lacked a sense of whimsy and fun, qualities vital to the Toho Godzilla films of the '60s and '70s.

It wouldn't be until Adam Wingard directed "Godzilla vs. Kong" in 2021 that the code would be cracked. Edwards had previously tried to make Godzilla into something smoky and stern, capturing the tone of a post-9/11 bum-out actioner with none of the actual thematic heft. Wingard knew that a film with giant monsters wailing on each other ought to be, y'know, fun. "Godzilla vs. Kong" introduced magical portals to a mystical Hollow Earth realm, flying electrical starships, and Mechagodzilla, a robotic monster secretly controlled by the psychic waves emanating from King Ghidorah's salvaged skull. Fun!

Despite the silly tone, however, the Monsterverse movies still all shared the same terse opening credits. The names of each one of the credited filmmakers were accompanied by on-screen "facts" about monsters, designed to look like biological field notes collected by some oblique government agency. The "facts" are then hastily redacted, giving audiences a mere glimpse. 

In a Reddit AMA from three years ago, Wingard talked about those opening credits, and some eagle-eyed fans, quick with a Blu-ray pause button, spotted a few mistakes embedded in them. Wingard could only send his deepest regrets on the matter. 

The credits are typically pretty playful. If one pauses before the black redacting bars appear on Adam Wingard's credit, one will see "The history of titan wars will be explored in A FILM BY ADAM WINGARD that sheds light on previously hidden truths." Some other quick info, however, reveals a few mistakes. For instance: 

Godzilla is said to be 393 feet tall and weighs 164,000 tons. Those numbers seem to change from film to film. True, it may be difficult to weigh a massive radioactive dinosaur-like creature, however, so perhaps a little fudging of the numbers is acceptable. Kong's height, meanwhile, fluctuated. In "Kong: Skull Island," he was 104 feet tall. In "GvK," he was now as tall as Godzilla. There's an explanation for Kong's growth, but surely that should have been reflected in the opening credits stat. 

Wingard was a little exasperated when asked about this on Reddit. "Godzilla vs. Kong" ran into a few notable problems during production. In addition to having the abide by COVID-related strictures, his cinematographer, Ben Seresin, was bitten by a poisonous spider. Additionally, about 40% of the crew became ill (not from COVID, though) forcing production to shut down. There was a lot to keep Wingard's attention, and throwing together small on-screen statistics wasn't his primary focus. To answer a fan, he wrote:

"The honest answer is we were finishing that title sequence while doing 200 other things during the pandemic and some things got a little overlooked. I regret that Kong's height is 'Skull Island' size and not 'GVK' accurate."

So he made a mistake. That's all. He was too busy to double-check a tiny detail or two. So maybe cut the guy a little slack. It was a busy time. 

Also, his film rules. That's important to remember.