Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire Had An Issue With Real Pythons On Set

It's been six movies since Gareth Edwards' "Godzilla" in 2014, and Adam Wingard seems to have finally cracked the code. Wingard's sublimely silly "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" happily abandoned all the portent and dourness of the first MonsterVerse movie, choosing instead to celebrate shallow monster mayhem and sugared-up, Saturday-morning-ready fantasy conceits that gleefully abandon logic. Kong lives in the Hollow Earth and fights jackal monsters, while Godzilla rules the surface world where he fights crabs and naps in the Colosseum. These are the basic tenets of a skewed universe lousy with monsters. There are magical stones under the earth that control gravity and miniature wormholes that monsters use to teleport around the planet. Everything is wild and nothing makes sense. And there is an integrity to that. 

It seems, however, that there was some injection of actual reality into the film's production. Wingard and his crew filmed "Godzilla x Kong" in Gold Coast, Australia, right in the middle of the Daintree Rainforest, a locale known for its unusual, dangerous flora and plentiful fauna. The title monsters in "Godzilla x Kong" were realized with CGI, but it seems that the cast and crew had to traverse through birds and snakes to capture their scenes on film. 

Actor Dan Stevens plays the hotshot monster veterinarian Trapper in "GxK," and he recently talked about his experiences shooting in Australia with the "20 Questions: On Deadline" podcast. Stevens recalled the film's very busy animal wranglers, hired specifically to remove pythons from the camera equipment. Daintree is home to the green tree python, one of the prettiest of all snakes. 

When asked what he enjoyed most about shooting "Godzilla x Kong," Stevens was quick to answer: Encountering exotic animals in the Australian jungles. Notably, he remembered the pythons and the large, five-to-six-foot flightless birds: 

"I think it was getting to go into those wild places that I'd always heard about. The Daintree Rainforest. There's loads of crocodiles. There's pythons on set. We had a snake wrangler on set who would just have to occasionally have to pluck a python off a crane when they'd decide to visit. There were also these birds called cassowaries. They're freaky-looking dinosaur birds is what they are. They're sort of giant, weird hybrid animals. But they are prehistoric, literally."

Stevens was lucky to see cassowaries, as they are notoriously skittish animals. Green tree pythons, incidentally, are harmless animals, and, as Stevens said, only came to visit; the cast was not in danger of being attacked or bitten. Stevens did note, however, that there was a vicious tree he had to look out for, saying: 

"[E]verything in the natural world there wants to kill you, including some of the leaves. There was a place where we were shooting — and I can't remember the name of this tree now — but it was nicknamed the Suicide Tree. Because if one of these leaves falls on you, they have these tiny little hairs that land on your skin, and plant a poison in your skin that is so painful, that you would rather be dead than endure the pain."

The tree is called a gympie-gympie, and it is indeed covered in poisonous needles that induce extreme pain. There are many legends about the tree's stings, but luckily, no one on the set of "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" experienced its horrifying effects.