The first entry in the MonsterVerse, 2014’s “Godzilla,” was ultra-serious and dour. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a pretty good movie, but it’s not exactly “fun.” Several movies later, we now have “Godzilla x Kong,” which is super fun. It’s a sharp contrast to what came before, and it shows how a franchise can evolve and change over time. Director Adam Wingard, who also helmed the previous MonsterVerse entry “Godzilla vs. Kong,” seems to understand that audiences don’t want something dramatic with these movies — they want silly monster mayhem. And Wingard and company deliver that, and then some.
The zero gravity fight is the perfect example of this. If you stop and think about it for too long, it doesn’t make much sense. But who cares? Let’s have fun! “The first thing that I thought of when I was coming up with set pieces of this movie: we gotta have an anti-gravity battle,” Wingard says in the “Godzilla x Kong” special features. “I wanted to have the monsters fighting in anti-gravity environment.” Wingard saw this as an opportunity to “do some Showa-era crazy stuff and for Kong to do some wild things you’ve never seen before.”
Producer Alex Garcia adds: “The zero gravity battle in the film was actually the first thing that Adam pitched to us when he had this idea to set more of the film in Hollow Earth and to spend more time specifically in Kong’s POV … In ‘Godzilla vs Kong,’ we established that gravity doesn’t quite function as it does on the surface within Hollow Earth.”
Alessandro Ongaro, visual effects supervisor, states that the zero gravity battle was “probably one of the most complex” scenes to create, and Wingard goes on to say, “It’s such a challenge to find new ways for monsters to fight that you haven’t seen before. The zero gravity gave us license to really bring out a grounded version of the absurdity of the Showa films where Godzilla can fly through the air and dropkick and stuff.”
I don’t know if I’d really call the zero gravity scene “grounded,” but I get where Wingard is coming from. And he sums things up nicely by stating: “At the end of the day we’re here to cut loose and have a lot of fun.” “Fun” is definitely how I’d describe the scene, and the movie as a whole. “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is now on digital, 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD.
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