Godzilla Vs. Kong Director Had Harrowing Plans For Kong He Just Couldn't Go Through With

It is a shame that Adam Wingard won't be returning to direct any more movies in the MonsterVerse, but we can hope that the franchise will veer into fresh directions with a change of hands. Wingard's contributions have shaped a chunk of the expectations we have from the kaiju-focused franchise, especially the lore surrounding Hollow Earth and the monsters that inhabit it. Before the director ventured into making "Godzilla vs. Kong" and the recently released "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire," he dabbled in low-budget horror projects such as "The Guest" and "You're Next," and has currently set his sights on helming an action-thriller titled "Onslaught." But what was it like for Wingard to adapt to the expectations surrounding a kaiju blockbuster centered on an epic, highly-anticipated fight between two beasts with unresolved beef?

For starters, Wingard had a clear roadmap planned out for "Godzilla vs. Kong," where a singular focus on the dual characters helped weave a globe-trotting adventure with indulgent, high-octane fight scenes interspersed along the way. "Because we had these two characters to follow, it allowed us to just stay focused on the most interesting moments," Wingard told Variety while talking about the need to jump from one spectacle to the next to keep things moving. It was also crucial to strike a balance between the perspectives of both Godzilla and Kong: while Godzilla is more of a primordial force of nature that comes with a factor of unpredictability, Kong's limitless powers also include empathy, along with feelings of loneliness and isolation, as underlined in "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire."

As Kong is closer to experiencing emotions within the human spectrum than his on-and-off nemesis Godzilla, Wingard originally had some devastating story ideas for him, which he ultimately chose not to go through with.

Spoilers for "Godzilla vs. Kong" follow.

"Godzilla vs. Kong" opens with the humans planning to escort Kong out of Skull Island, but this journey is interrupted by Godzilla, who attacks the group and defeats Kong. Wingard talked about this ocean battle at length, explaining how Kong is "at a severe disadvantage" here since he was heavily sedated and "can't really swim that well" compared to Godzilla, whose prehistoric origins can be traced back to the ocean. After this defeat, Kong is airlifted into Hollow Earth, and the humans unravel a conspiracy, where the ambitious Ren Serizawa (Shun Oguri) has taken control over Mechagodzilla, leading to the emergence of a greater threat that demands that the Titans team up to save the world.

Due to the disparity in power levels between Godzilla and Kong, it would make sense for the latter to be more vulnerable during such high-stakes battles, and suffer in the process. Wingard told Variety that these narrative situations cropped up while the script was being penned, but he "nixed them" due to his growing allegiance to Kong as a character:

"You can't help but identify with Kong more. He's more like us. I've always been a bigger Godzilla fan, but I found myself falling in love with Kong in a way that I wasn't expecting to. I really worried about him. There are certain things in the scripts that came about and were supposed to happen to him and I nixed them. I felt too bad for him."

Well, it's a good thing that Wingard refrained from pursuing the Kong-will-suffer route, as his tragic humanity already paints him as someone doomed to experience the intricate layers of pain, especially when all hope is lost.