Three Words Became The Guiding Motto For Godzilla X Kong
And, no, to rain on your parade right away, the three words were not "Lizard fights ape," although that would have served as a fine filmmaking motto for Adam Wingard's "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire." Those same three words might also have been a perfectly succinct review, and there is little going on in the MonsterVerse film beyond scads of deliberately silly monster action. The premise of "Godzilla x Kong" is pretty simple: Kong has moved to the Hollow Earth to rule over the monsters that live there, while Godzilla has remained on the Earth's surface to fight any rogue monsters that have the temerity to claim ownership of the planet. Kong discovers beneath Hollow Earth — in Hollower Earth, I suppose — that an entire species of Kong monsters has survived, all of them enslaved by the Skar King, a lanky giant gibbon. Godzilla is called to Hollow Earth by mysterious psychic forces, and Kong enlists Godzilla's help to fight the Skar King and his mystical ice dragon.
There are also several subplots about the human characters, where one of them might have come from, and how they have to replace a Kong tooth, but those characters are relegated to supporting roles. We're here to see the monster mash, and Wingard seems to know that. "Godzilla x Kong" is a far cry from the turgid seriousness of Gareth Edwards' "Godzilla," which launched the MonsterVerse in 2014.
No. According to an interview with The Wrap, the three-word phrase that Wingard used as his motto was "Simplicity is key." The visuals of "Godzilla x Kong" might have been busy and hyperkinetic, but this is not a film about its plot, story contrivance, or complexity. "Godzilla x Kong" needed to be as direct as possible.
Simplify, Simplify
Many filmmakers could take Wingard's motto to heart. Clarity should be highly valued. Making sure everything is immediately readable — visually and in dialogue — will only strengthen a motion picture. That went for all the characters in "Godzilla x Kong," be they five feet tall or 50 feet tall. Simplify, simplify. Wingard continued:
"And that's not just about the human stories, but about the monster story, too. We wanted there to be a simplicity of the actual plot and how many characters that there were so that you could get more intimate with them."
It was a mistake of Edwards to spend so much time with myriad human characters. Cast overpopulation was also an issue with Ryuhei Kitamua's "Godzilla: Final Wars" in 2004 and with Roland Emmerich's 1998 "Godzilla." It seems that the quality of a Godzilla film is inversely proportional to the number of central human protagonists it has. If there are as few as three human protagonists, then it will likely be a better movie.
Wingard felt there were too many characters in his previous movie, "Godzilla vs. Kong," and decided to pare it down. As such, a character played by Jessica Henwick was edited out of that movie, as were the parts played by the late Lance Reddick and Eiza González. Wingard would have rather devoted time to the monsters ("Because there was so much going on, there's only the little moments where you really got to get super intimate with the monsters," he explained), a lesson he took to heart.
As a result, he instead fashioned "Godzilla x Kong" as a jaunty 115-minute SFX bonanza perfect for eating popcorn in front of. Wingard, mercifully, got to the point.