What Warner Bros. and Legendary’s fresh spin on Godzilla’s Monsterverse lacks—character development, coherent plots, efficient use of its stacked casts—it more than makes up for in kaiju-punching. Last year’s Godzilla: King Of The Monsters wasn’t good, but it made Godzilla and Mothra look cool as hell against some vivid, lightning-lit skies. What else do you really want?
Its long-in-the-works follow-up, Godzilla Vs. Kong, was originally slated to hit theaters in May, but, in a refreshing twist, was bumped up to March, when it will debut both in theaters and on HBO Max. Millie Bobby Brown, reprising her shapeless role from King Of The Monsters, leads a cast that also includes Alexander Skarsgård, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Eiza González, and Lance Reddick. That’s an incredible lineup that, if the previous movies are any indication, will trot out dreary exposition while staring, wide-eyed, at an assortment of kaiju-filled screens. Adam Wingard, the genre wunderkind behind You’re Next and The Guest, directs this showdown between the franchise’s two leads.
In its first trailer, Godzilla Vs. Kong manages to pretend it’s actually a serious movie for about half of its runtime, but then Godzilla jumps out of the water, fists start flying, and it becomes clear that this is just a movie about a big ape bonking a big lizard with a big axe and everything else is mostly irrelevant. And that’s not necessarily a criticism, because this looks fun as hell—though it’s worth saying that the other recent Godzilla movies also looked pretty fun in trailers. See this one for yourself below.
“One will fall,” promises the film’s poster, which seems to want us to think that Wingard’s just going to up and kill one of the franchise’s dual spines. We’ll hedge our bets and assume that the “fall” is something more innocuous—like, say, falling into a skyscraper after being pushed or something.
See it below.
Godzilla Vs. Kong’s big, scaly foot lands in your HBO Max queue on March 26. It’ll remain there for a month as the film continues to play in theaters.
99 Comments
Looks worse than Death Note.
I don’t know why, but despite being deeply underwhelmed by King of Monsters, I was actually pumped up after watching this trailer.Part of it is that it seems clearer and just more focused, other is that man I was rooting for Kong there to put that atomic lizard in its place.
Also, Kong: Skull Island was the perfect mix of dumb fun. It had even better actors doing really stupid things and I loved every second of it. KOTM was just overstuffed and unfocused, this one certainly looks better already.
I didn’t care for the two prior Godzilla movies in the series (I guess I just prefer the original Godzilla where it’s him vs humans rather than other kaiju), but I guess I have to see Skull Island now.
Same, although I’m keeping my expectations at bay given some signs that it’s stuck to the last film’s off-putting visual style which stopped any of the fights from being enjoyable.
Godzilla bursts out of the water and King Kong smacks him down back in the water, then Godzilla uses his atomic breath to destroy the carrier Kong is on.Cut to some jabroni saying “These are dangerous times.” Yea…no shit, Sherlock.Trailer looks like it’ll have some good action, hopefully this skews more towards Skull Island than the last two Godzilla movies.
Kong and Godzilla won’t wear face coverings?
Is the epic battle just going to be them having an argument over Zoom? Will the first 20 minutes of the movie be Godzilla trying to hold back his atomic breath as he waits for Kong to connect in utter frustration?
Godzilla assumes his nuclear belch kills all COVID, and Kong’s a QAnon goober.
It will make it easier to identify them when they destroy the Statue of Liberty.Kong (filming himself on Facebook Live): “The storm is upon on us!”The next day Trump pardons Kong but not Godzilla because he’s “Chinese”.
First clip already released, and frankly, with Kong mastering the skies, our boy G-Zilla is gonna be in deep trouble.
Kong beat the brakes off Godzilla for that entire trailer. Folded his ass with one right hook.
Kong, 82nd Airborne Balloon Div. Death from above.
Classic. I remember seeing this and rooting so hard for Godzilla. The rumor was that there were two endings. Kong won in the American version, Godzilla in the Japanese. Kong freestyling in the ocean at the end was hilarious. But I was pissed that Godzilla “lost.”#TeamGodzilla
That fight was so fucking rigged. The Yakuza cleaned up big-time.
You know, for as much as movies and tv are perfectly replicating certain genre styles for the nostalgia, I actually wish that’s what these Godzilla/Kong flicks would try doing, instead of being CGI-fests.I just wish there was something practical I was seeing in onscreen. Do they even use miniatures and models or is it all green screen and ping pong balls?
Shin Godzilla used practical effects for the monster, as did King of Monsters for a few of them, I believe.
They use performance capture which I felt occasionally worked to create a similar effect in the first Legendary Godzilla
Incredible. But where is the aspca on this?
this pre-dates the ASPCA. Fun Fact*: This brutal capitalistic-allegorical-ape-on-radioactive-allegorical-lizard footage was so brutal, the ASPCA was invented seconds after the first screening. Their subsequent film “Planet of the Apes”, proved to be singularly unpopular, and they disbanded soon after.
* – fact may or may not be accurate.
So that’s how tsunamis are made
I know Kong left it open that he had a couple decades of growth still coming, but it seems like Godzilla must have shrunk too? (I don’t think the previous iterations of Godzilla could stand on an aircraft carrier, tail and all)Though I could see waving it away as a plot point, like maybe his growth ebbs and flows between mega battles, and since he just had an one in his last movie he’s in hibernation small mode or blah blah blah.
Or maybe it’ll just be one of those “don’t think about it too much” things.
Or maybe aircraft carriers got larger in response to the threat of giant goddamn monsters being real?
Earlier in the trailer it appeared that they’d taken one of the Iowa-class battleships out of mothballs, presumably to face the kaiju threat, so I guess that’s not entirely out of the question.
I took that to be a carrier specifically designed to transport Kong, so I imagine it’s freakin gigantic
I’m going to need you to come back next week with a tweetstorm that explains why this completely fictional fight is “total bullshit.” I expect 20-30 tweets should be enough, but if you hit the 50+ range The AV Club will write up a Great Job, Internet article with the title Godzilla vs Kong vs Twitter.
With each of these new movies the creators go through the effort to tell you the size of Godzilla but then don’t really seem to stick to it. For the last one they said he was 400′ tall but then sometimes when you see him standing next to skyscrapers the scale doesn’t seem to fit. He seems much bigger.As to the aircraft carrier in the trailer, unless it’s some new extremely large carrier, the scale doesn’t work at all. The biggest carrier is about 1,100 feet long at the deck. This version of Godzilla has a massive hind quarters and tail. He seems about 3 times as long as he is tall which would put him close to the length of the carrier by himself.Not to mention the weight of Godzilla and Kong would break the carrier in half. This new Godzilla is supposedly around 164,000 tons by himself.
I mean, a movie about a giant ape punching a giant lizard seems like the epitome of a “don’t think about it too much” thing, when you get right down to it. Brains should be stowed neatly below your seats.
I think this is the quintessential don’t think too much about it movie
I know Kong left it open that he had a couple decades of growth still coming, but it seems like Godzilla must have shrunk too? That was my first thought too. Kong is too big to climb the Empire State Building.
King of the Monsters was fucking awesome. Aside from the terrible song in the trailer, this looks just as awesome.
Mecha Godzilla looking like a megazord there at the 3 second mark. Hope Godzilla and Kong have some kick ass team-up moves.
I’m as cynical as the next pop-culture nerd, but I literally threw my fists in the air and said “YEAHHHH” when Kong punched Godzilla in this.So, thanks to my parents’ HBO subscription, I’ll be watching this when it comes out.
Does Kong have a Groot-like ability to change his height at will? Because sometimes he looks like he’s 12 feet tall, othertimes he’s like seven stories tall.
C’mon, Charles Dance’s character! Use that head you had at the end of King of the Monsters and grow yourself a King Ghidorah!And stick some cybernetic parts on it. The only thing better than a King Ghidorah is a MechaGhidorah.
“How did he get here? What does he want? He wants seeeeex.”
You want MechaGhidorah BEFORE MechaGodzilla!? Are you mad!!!!?
It may be madness, but I always want MechaGhidorah before MechaGodzilla.Maybe it’s because the original MechaGozilla looked so dorky. It put me off on the character forever. It looked like a silly suit of armor for Godzilla, not something new and terrifying.MechaGhidorah, on the other hand, is something terrifying that time-traveling terrorists made even more monstrous by grafting cybernetic parts to it. It’s like they thought, “Eh, this isn’t dead yet, so what can we do to artificially prolong its life and also make it more powerful, all while hoping we can still control it?”
Mecha King Ghidorah
Fair play to the trailer, it does at least show that there’s something up with Godzilla’s apparent heel turn — here he plows through ships when in 2014 he stopped and try to go under them; he claws onto Kong’s transport much more urgently than he’s moved in the last two U.S. movies. But — SPOILER — as a Twitter sleuth revealed, the first shot does give the biggest clue:
…
…
Godzooky!
YESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I caught this as well. I’m guessing the plotline involving Millie Bobby Brown, Brian Tyree Henry and Julian Dennison will lead t0 them discovering the group developing MechaG.
Good guess. My own theory is that the guy justifying Kong’s capture turns out to be one of Tywin Lannister’s SEKRIT EVIL HIPPIES.
I was curious if they are going to make Tywin Lannister’s Evil Hippies the villains here, or if there’s another force or govt at play. My fanboy thinking is that the stinger for KotM doesn’t really set them up to build a Mechagodzilla as much as a Mecha-King Ghidorah. While I’m not totally sure which one Kong and Godzilla may face here, if it’s Mechagodzilla I’d like to see a post credits scene of the Evil Hippies acquiring Mecha-tech after the fight. Then if by some miracle we get another one of these stupid, stupid movies Mecha-King Ghidorah could show up then… but again, this is me thinking as a fanboy, not thinking with logic.
Considering that the Titans were roaming free at the end of KOTM it wouldn’t strike me as too unrealistic that TLEH’s resources increased through illicit support by any number of disreputable players. Maybe a Hydra-like infiltration and takeover of Monarch?
I read that as McG and I am not sure I am not still confused.
Cool beans
And if that’s not enough, later we also see another clue:…..
I had guessed this from the “something’s wrong with Godzilla!” line. My kid watches all the old Godzilla films and this is how ol MechaG-man was introduced in his first film too.
So this is totally going to be like Family Guy’s Big Jaws bit where Kong & Godzilla see an even bigger threat on the horizon and team up to face it in the third act, right?(as a side note, did anyone else think it was hilarious that The Predator was basically Big Jaws, stretched out to feature length? So was Batman v. Superman, if I’m being honest)
Well, of course. They’re not going to KILL one of these monsters that basically print money in the first real movie of this “shared universe.” They’re definitely going to team up and fight something else. I think just about everyone expects that going into this.
They didn’t use “Sabotage” in the trailer out of fear that marketing execs would cream their pants.
The song they did choose gave me serious Roland Emmerich vibes, and those are NOT pleasant vibes!
I’m reading these comments, and I am completely AGHAST at the fact that any of you – anyone at ALL, for that matter – could be rooting for Kong to beat Godzilla? What the hell is WRONG with you people? Godzilla is the greatest monster in the history of film! Kong is cool, but he’s just a big primate. Godzilla is a force of nature! He’s awesome! He’s pretty much been my only friend since my parents died in the trailer park fire. So let’s all show some solidarity, and cheer on the true hero of this movie.
I’m rooting for Coach Taylor and the Dillon Panthers to win another regional championship.
Those wounds run….pretty deep.#TeamGodzilla.
#remembermachogrande
No truer words…Hollywood even cheats by making Kong bigger just so he can have a chance. But we all know Godzilla (battle-hardened from a cinematic career of fighting) would wreck Kong 9 ways from Sunday. If this movie doesn’t end with Mille Bobbie Brown eating freshly roasted ape-kabobs, it will be some crusty ass crap, lemme tell you!
Godzilla’s all right, I suppose. I prefer my monsters to be a friend to all the children, like that Herculean exemplar Gamera.
You’re Next and The Guest are great. This is a big step for Adam Wingard, so good for him!
The Guest is one of my favorite movies of the last decade. I’ve probably watched it 5 or 6 times now and I love every minute of it every time (and I have watched the barfight scene even more than that because its one of my go-to youtube clips when I need a smile).
They’re both great but Blair Witch is just flat and dull and Death Note seemed to land with a giant “meh” (I haven’t seen it). I hope he brings some of his You’re Next / The Guest energy to this.
I’d like that to be the case, but I’m not optimistic about a bigger budget and existing IP being what he needs.For people who want to see the start of his collaborations with Simon Barrett (and Amy Seimetz, AJ Bowen & Joe Swanberg), you can check out “A Horrible Way to Die”, the film they made prior to “You’re Next”. It better fits the “mumblegore” label than his subsequent features.
Also, the guy can put together a badass soundtrack.
ALL MY LIFE I’M LOOKIN’ FOR THE MAGIC, I’VE BEEN LOOKIN’ FOR THE MAGIIIIIIC
You’re Next definitely gives me hope the characters will be a little sharper. Friggin love that one
His Death Note adaptation was so friggin’ weird that you have to respect it even if I didn’t fully enjoy it. I loved his choice for L, though. You can’t go wrong with Lakeith Stanfield going full Lakeith Stanfield.
It’s good if you separate it from the original IP, imo. It’s a well done movie, it’s just not good Death Note. Similar to how Fallout 4 is a good video game but a bad Fallout video game.
I watched these cheesy movies at midnight during overnight friend stays. There was little else to watch (wrestling ugh). It was entertaining enough. But what, really, did Godzilla want? Did he want to prove himself on Broadway? Own a fleet of food trucks? Just eat people?What a pest.
“Godzilla: King Of The Monsters wasn’t good, but it made Godzilla and Mothra look cool as hell against some vivid, lightning-lit skies. What else do you really want?”… Um, I want a good movie?
I fully expect this movie to induce pain on all of the diodes on my left side.
“a cast that also includes Alexander Skarsgård, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Eiza González, and Lance Reddick” – I don’t know who half those people are, and certainly none are as notable as Kyle Chandler.
If he doesn’t give an inspiring speech to Kong at halftime of the fight, with reference to the clarity of his eyes and the fullness of his heart, this franchise will have been all for nothing.
This time we’ll have a post credit sequence with Gamera!
Well, as an unabashed superfan of Godzilla (thanks, UHF channels Creature Double feature in the 1970’s), I’m there. Saw the last two in real IMAX. I guess I have to stream this one. I am bummed.Also, I am #TeamGodzilla. Suck it, Monkey-boy.
If this movie doesn’t end with Godzilla wiping the earth with Kong-after wiping his own ass with him-then it’s complete, pandering bullshit.Yep, a movie with titanic sized monsters battling each other has the potential to be completely unbelievable.
This looks like straight up garbage.
Random things exploding for no reason, stupid people, cleavage; Who the fuck directed this, Michael Bay?
I would love to see the movie growth chart comparing KK to Godzilla, and wonder how not only are they WAY to large to even move now, but how KK suddenly got to be the same size.
WTF.
They were both always far, far too large to exist. In King of the Monsters the creators said Godzilla was supposed to be 400′ tall, which is taller than he was in the first one. They don’t really seem to stick to that scale though.In Skull Island, which took place during the Vietnam War, they said Kong was still young (a teen if I remember correctly) which left them a bunch of wiggle room to make him as big as they needed him to be in this movie. He was supposed to be 104′ tall in that movie, but again, he seemed much bigger when they needed him to be, particularly during the scene where he destroys the helicopters. The rotor diameter of a Huey Gunship should’ve been about half his height but he seems much bigger than that in that scene.
Would you two just get a room already!? Sheesh.
kong in the skull island movie is like 100 feet tall
zilla is 1000 feet tall
so….?
Unfortunately it looks like they’re leaning into the overly serious tone of the other Godzilla movies, rather than more dopey but fun tone of Skull Island.Also, why is Kong wielding a giant Stormbreaker? Also, also, that was definitely Mecha-Godzilla in that early shot.
No Jed Jaguar????
And as much as they want to try to make Gyorgy Ligeti’s Requiem be Godzilla’s “theme,” it still only makes me want to worship a pitch-black monolith and evolve.
They’ll inevitably team up to fight a greater threat. Bummer that it won’t be the greatest threat, which is too much human screen time. And oh boy, now they’ve written up a magical girl that is a convenient psychic sedative for Kong.
The threat is Mecha-Godzilla, I’d think. You can see him for a split second at the beginning of the trailer, as well as a schematic of him on a computer screen later in the trailer.
Oh, no! I say, he’s got to go.
I for one cannot WAIT for GODZILLA and KONG to throw fists. I’m #teamKong all the way here- that shot in the trailer when he uses his axe to absorb Godzilla’s (or is it Mechagodzilla?) atomic breath and then smoke Godzilla with it elicited an “oh shit!” from me.
Thank god they’re introducing another fucking kid. the family angle has worked so well in the other movies.
I got Kong winning. He has opposable thumbs. It has to come into play at some point.. I’m guessing he gets behind Godzilla and does a suplex. And then he jumps around motioning “in your face!!!”
Glad to hear we’re putting our Random Dialogue Generators to good use.
This trailer seems to be heavily pro-Kong. That’s not going to get me into the theater, vaccinated or not.#teamGodzilla
I’m Team Kong. He has an axe made of Godzilla’s dorsal fin. C’monnnnn.
this looks so fucking awesome and i feel so bad for anyone who doesn’t think so
EXT. SKULL ISLAND- DAYA helicopter lands in a field next to a log cabin. The door opens and two men, both wearing dark suits, emerge. CUT TO:King Kong, wearing a flannel shirt and wool cap, chopping firewood. The two men come around the corner or the cabin. Without stopping his work Kong speaks.“Not interested.”The two men look at each other. “It’s him, Kong. He’s back.” King Kong removes his hat and wipes his brow, then turns to face the men. “Not my problem. Not anymore.”The men take a step toward Kong, who subtly shifts the axe in their direction. “That’s not all. It’s… it’s your dad. He’s missing.”The cabin door opens and a woman steps out, untying her apron.“King, is everything alright?”“It’s fine, Susan. Pack a bag for me.”SCENE
“Millie Bobby Brown leads a cast that also includes Alexander Skarsgård, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Eiza González, and Lance Reddick.”You’re just gonna do Kyle Chandler dirty like that?
The standalone Godzilla film in the Legendary series was about as good as I’d hoped – I love Godzilla, and I love the infinite number of ways there are to tell the story, but I was mostly relieved that they kept it simple. I’d have liked a bit more charisma from the star but I thought it was well-directed by taking a ground-eye view for the whole movie, that was a wise choice: keeping the people centred.
I also liked Skull Island a lot, because it dove straight in and, within reason, was again a character piece.
But holy christ that last Godzilla movie was awful, and I’m sure this will be too.
Imagine coming to the AV Club comments and not seeing someone announce with absolute certainty that something they haven’t seen will be awful.