The Battle of two enormous Titans, Godzilla vs. Kong will be a spectacle to watch. Here is how Kong will stand a chance in a fight with the beast with the atomic breath.
Warner Bros.’s upcoming Godzilla vs. Kong will feature a culminating clash between the two headliners of Legendary’s cinematic Monsterverse – the colossal primate known as Kong and the mammoth reptile named Godzilla. The face-off between the two kings is a fight fans have been eager to witness.
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Though the franchise spans decades the latest saga by Legendary Pictures which began with 2014’s reboot of Godzilla, which was then followed by Kong: Skull Island, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters is concluding with this new film. While the box-office returns for the films have not been as massive as their monsters, the world and mythology were meticulously crafted so the eventual battle between King Kong and Godzilla felt inevitable.
The first full trailer of Godzilla vs. Kong delivers on all the bombastic scales that you would hope from it. Director Adam Wingard is at the helm of the epic blockbuster that pits the two titans against each other while teasing a larger mystery with the promise of an even greater threat.
Why Kong Got So Big in Godzilla vs. Kong
After seeing the poster and trailer, a question lingers: how did Kong become the same size as Godzilla? Well, the basic or logical explanation is that only a creature who is as equal and as strong as Godzilla can possibly take him down. And since Kong doesn’t fly or has an electric bite like Ghidorah, he needs to get sized-up considerably to square off against the giant lizard.
There have been many iterations of King Kong and Godzilla. In Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Kong has to climb the Empire State Building to get to the top but Godzilla is normally taller than that building. Generally, Kong is considered smaller than Godzilla except in 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla where they scaled up Kong to his biggest size ever, at 147 feet to make it a fair fight. I think the creative choice of having the Kaiju’s same size in the latest film is for the same reason.
Godzilla in all his latest movies (since the 1990s) has been taller than 100 feet. Whereas Kong has varied in height over decades, ranging from 25-55 feet to the version in 2017’s Kong: Skull Island which was the biggest take on the classic monster in his solo movies, at approximately 104 feet. Even at that height though, Kong would still only reach Godzilla’s knees as the city-smasher, Godzilla is a whopping 393 feet tall in this new franchise. So this why he should be bigger than before.
But don’t worry, this has already been built into the story. They’re not retconning anything here by changing Kong tower over skyscrapers like Godzilla there is an explanation for it. So Kong is getting a glow up and he will be much taller than what he did in Kong: Skull Island. This will be the largest Kong has ever been on screen.
How Kong Can Be That Big
The choice of making Kong 104 feet in Skull Island came about for slightly different reasons though, as director of that film, Jordan Vogt-Roberts told IGN back then that:
“Everyone wants to say, ‘Oh, he’s big because of Godzilla and Kong, right?’ No, he’s big because I wanted you to stand and look at this thing towering over you and the first decision your brain makes — not the second, not the third, not the fourth, not the fifth — but the first instinct you have is, ‘That is a god’.”
Kong: Skull Island takes place in 1973 and, as the movie’s creators have stated before, Kong’s got room to grow. Co-producer Mary Parent told that Kong is “an adolescent when we meet him in the film. He’s still growing into his role as alpha.”
In that film, John C. Reilly’s character, a WWII Air Force lieutenant who’d been stuck in Skull Island for nearly 30 years, describes the Island’s situation to Tom Hiddleston’s James Conrad and Brie Larson’s Mason Weaver. “Kong’s god on the island, but the devils live below us,” he said, describing the Skullcrawlers.
“They come from the vents, deep down,” he continues. “That’s why Kong got so mad. Those bombs woke up a bunch of them. You’re lucky he’s out there too or you wouldn’t have made it this far. He can handle them as long as he gets to them while they’re still small. You don’t want to wake up the big one. It wiped out his whole family. Kong’s the last of his kind but he’s still growing. And you better hope he does.”
Kong is the last descent of his species. In Skull Island we see giant-sized skeletons of Kong’s parents in a scene. It is confirmed that he’s clearly a younger version and not in his prime stage. Since there are roughly 50 years between the events in Skull Island and the upcoming film, it makes sense that Skull Island’s lizard-smasher would grow up to be as big as Godzilla.
There are no official details revealed about how tall Kong will be for the collision with Godzilla but in the trailer, he definitely looks like he’s reached peak ‘alpha’ levels for his superspecies. Another advantage Kong posses against Zilla is he’s faster, more agile, can jump great heights, intelligent than other Kaiju’s. Most importantly as shown in the trailer, he has a weapon that can withstand Godzilla’s atomic breath.
The film stars Alexander Skarsgård (Big Little Lies, The Legend of Tarzan), Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things, Enola Holmes), Rebecca Hall (Iron Man 3, The Town), Brian Tyree Henry (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), Eiza González (Baby Driver, Bloodshot), Zhang Ziyi (Rush Hour 2), Lance Reddick (John Wick), Shun Oguri (Weathering with You), Julian Dennison (Deadpool 2), Demián Bichir (The Hateful Eight), Kaylee Hottle, and Kyle Chandler (King Kong, Super 8). We have seen Brown, Ziyi, and Chandler before in King of the Monsters.
Godzilla vs. Kong is scheduled to be theatrically released internationally on March 26, 2021, and in the US the film moved back a week. It will debut on March 31, where it will be released simultaneously in theatres and on HBO Max.
I myself will be rooting for Kong to win. Are you Team Kong or Team Godzilla? What do you think about making Kong as big as Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Kong? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or on our social media and be sure to come back to The Illuminerdi for more movie news.
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Source: IGN
