If you’ve seen an uptick in the number of people talking about Godzilla or Kong in recent months, you’re not alone. The MonsterVerse was one of those things that went sorta under the radar when it was announced. Most were just hoping Godzilla and Kong would be halfway decent portrayals of the legendary characters. So when Toho partnered with Legendary and director Gareth Edwards to bring Godzilla to theaters here in America, all people cared about was the film had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the 1998 catastrophe.
As they began to build the MonsterVerse, various publications commented briefly that it would be attempting to build a cinematic universe akin to the MCU. This was, of course, the same time frame that saw Universal saying they were building a “Dark Universe” featuring their collection of monsters like Dracula, The Mummy, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, and others. It also saw a Van Helsing Universe announced. We were gonna get a collaboration of Transformers and G.I. Joe into one shared universe. Even the Ghostbusters announced and have pushed forward with an idea that even saw G.I. Joe officially name-dropped in Transformers: Beast Wars, and still may come to fruition in their Unicron Saga.
But outside of Transformers, and even that’s a huge “maybe,” every, single one of these ideas crashed and burned like the Permian asteroid that failed to destroy Godzilla. The Universal “Dark Universe” didn’t even get past the god-awful Tom Cruise abomination that they made. There are also the famously awful attempts by DC, even under James Gunn now, to try and get their own shared universe going. It does not seem to be easy to create a cinematic universe that is both pleasing to die-hard fans as well as accessible enough for the general audiences to get behind it.
Then there’s Gojira or as you likely know him, Godzilla. For myriad reasons, Goji has been able to defy every expectation placed upon the MonsterVerse and the latest film Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire absolutely demolished the expected box office return. It was especially stunning to Toho and Legendary because Toho had released Godzilla Minus One, a non-MonsterVerse Godzilla film, to critical acclaim not even five months prior. But any worry they had about Godzilla fatigue was almost instantaneously put to bed on opening weekend.
While Godzilla Minus One was not part of the Legendary MonsterVerse, it was hailed by critics and fans as one of the best and most terrifying portrayals of Godzilla ever seen. The special effects for the film were created on an astoundingly tiny $15 million dollar budget and they were so incredible that they achieved something no other Godzilla film had ever even sniffed — an Academy Award for Special Effects in an extremely competitive field.
‘Godzilla Minus One’ Wins Best Visual Effects | 96th Oscars (2024)
If you watch the clip, it becomes noticeable that everyone in the crowd wanted to see this vaunted franchise, responsible for bringing joy and Japanese cinema into the lives of many Americans, finally get the recognition it deserved. Even as they go over the nominees, it is pretty obvious which one the crowd loved the most, and the reaction when they announced the winner provided further proof that this franchise means so much to so many people. In many ways, Godzilla is us and we are Godzilla.
No, I’m not trying to be super deep here and I promise this is related to my overall point. The reason Godzilla was able to release two films within five months of each other, one considered high art and the definition of award-winning special effects and another that won’t even come close to ever seeing an Oscar nomination but that has made over $500m and counting is because Goji can be anything we need him to be.
Godzilla can be 350-foot spectacle capable of suplexing Kong by the Great Pyramids of Giza or he can be a metaphor for anti-war points of view as well as a vehicle for exploring things like disaster response, allowing the United States to dictate Japan’s internal policies, trauma, hope, and even something as deep and controversial as Japan ordering pilots to become Kamikazes in the final days of the war. Godzilla can be something parents discuss and explore after their kids go to bed or something they share with their kids via the MonsterVerse. He is adaptable and malleable.
Adam Wingard, the director of both Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire has done a remarkable job of riffing off the Showa-era Godzilla films while also exploring topics and themes that would be right at home in the Hesei-era films. He doesn’t try to re-create things that fans have already seen, he instead creates homages that honor what fans have already seen while staying the course of being their own thing. Nobody would confuse MonsterVerse Goji with Millenium-era Goji. They are distinct and unique.
Here, we begin to understand why Godzilla has succeeded where nobody else could. We understand why fans love Godzilla over and over and over while they rejected the same Transformers film after the fourth time seeing it or why they hated the D.C. Extended Universe as it flopped back and forth between creating a unique identity and being fan service to past creations. Fans don’t need to see something they’ve already seen, they need to see things they’ve previously watched integrated and explored in newer films but not replicated.
If you watch Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire fight scenes closely, you’ll see Goji deliver his famous drop kick during the Hallow Earth battle before it ascends to Rio de Janeiro. What you won’t see is Legendary promoting this drop kick ad nauseam as the reason fans need to go and watch the film. Instead they promise fans a deeper understanding of Hallow Earth’s past. They offer a deeper look into a Titan that rivals Gojira in power, and they promise to further set-up the climax to Wingard’s trilogy in what I expect will be a modern-day Titan Wars. Could you see this ending any other way?
The MonsterVerse has and will continue to succeed as long as it continues to deliver the content it’s been delivering. Allowing monsters to have dialogue through action and even writing this non-verbal dialogue into the script so there’s little to no ambiguity about what is being “said” on-screen. The Wrap’s Drew Taylor did a remarkable job exploring this subject in his piece on Adam Wingard’s process for creating this film. I highly suggest you read it following this if you’re interested in learning more about the creative process.
The point here is, whether we are talking about Adam Wingard’s version or Takahashi Yamazaki’s version, both Godzillas are capable of telling compelling and interesting stories about humanity and their place in the world. Both directors are capable of bringing a different vision of the character to life and at no point does one version of Godzilla feel out of place against another because the franchise itself has embraced variety and creativity. Watching the two directors discuss their approaches is a thing of beauty.
Director on Director | In Conversation with Adam Wingard & Takashi Yamazaki | IMAX®
Gojira will always have a place in my heart because of how important he is to the discussion of what a monster is, what humanity is, and how thin the line between monster and human can be at any given moment. From the perspective of some creatures, humans may be the monster. Godzilla is a unicorn within film because he can occupy and adopt any form we need him to adopt. Evolution is the name of the game with Goji and right now, the MonsterVerse has evolved into the only worth competitor to the MCU and if you picked any cinematic universe to succeed, it probably wouldn’t have been this one, but it should have been.