Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire Spoiler Fixes A Big MonsterVerse Complaint
While 2014's "Godzilla" was such a hit that it launched the MonsterVerse, there was one common criticism echoed even in positive reviews: For a two-hour-plus movie bearing his name, Godzilla appears very rarely, leading to complaints that the film focuses too much on its human characters over the legendary kaiju. Eventually, the discourse became so prevalent that "Godzilla" screenwriter Max Borenstein defended the monster's limited screen time, telling TheWrap, "It's hard to build tension if you've given the ghost away early on."
With the next installment in the MonsterVerse coming in April, "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" director Adam Wingard is already assuring fans that he didn't skimp on the giant beasts. "So much of the film is entirely animated CG shots; so much of it is just pure imagination," he told IGN. "We have some sequences going up to about eight minutes long, where it's just the monsters doing their thing, and so the movie really allows the monsters to tell their own narrative in a visual, nonverbal way."
Expanding the MonsterVerse
The MonsterVerse movies have been steadily scaling up since 2014. Not only has the number of monsters ballooned but also the amount of time they get in the spotlight. And given that "Godzilla vs. Kong" introduces an entire Hollow Earth full of mysterious creatures to the franchise, these monsters are going to need a lot more screen time.
Fortunately, the "Godzilla x Kong" trailer has already shown us that we'll be seeing an entire community of Kongs, pterodactyl-like creatures soaring through the Hollow Earth, a giant swarm of wolf-looking monsters chasing Kong off a cliff, and more. So it backs up what Adam Wingard is claiming about the film.
While some may have complained about a lack of monsters in the franchise's early offerings, this next entry in the MonsterVerse will address that head-on. And now that it's expanded into TV with "Skull Island" on Netflix and "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" on Apple TV+, it shows no sign of slowing down.