Godzilla Vs. Kong it’s almost here, and it’s a shock for all ages: two of the most beloved giant box office monsters, back in the throat as if it were 1962. But the film is not just a revenge between Titans, as for director Adam Wingard, it is a step towards a truly titanic level of film blockbuster.
He does not inherit only what was left behind Kong: Skull Island and two Godzilla films as part of Legendary’s brand new “Monsterverse,” but the legacy of two the greatest legends of cinema, literally or not, Wingard, better known for the small scale, taught action horrors like You are next and those on Netflix Death notice adaptation“He’s been on a giant stage.”
Learn more about their approach to dealing with these huge ones figures-from juggling a massive human cast to polishing the film just as it took over the covid-19 pandemic, studio employees a work from home–io9 met the director on a video call. Watch the interview below!
James Whitbrook, io9: Iyou inherited two very important movie franchises and destroyed them Godzilla vs Kong. What did you want to see in this movie that you felt we hadn’t seen either Skull Island or Godzilla i King of monsters?
Adam Wingard: I think the main thing I wanted to see is … I wanted to get to the heart of these characters. I wanted to feel the emotions of the monsters, you know? I think all the Monsterverse movies have done such a fantastic job of giving us all these kinds of direction points. of view—Somehow, they’re kind of these box office auteur films. Just like everyone can make their own specific prey. And, for me, I thought it was the most important …I wanted to go back to what I think these movies originated, which is a feeling of real empathy for monsters.
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I went back and watched everything Godzilla i King Kong films immediately when he was still in the early stages of film negotiation. And one of the things that caught my attention the most was the degree of emotion they could have, sometimes even Godzilla movies, you wouldn’t think. Godzilla vs Destoroyah, for example. There is a time when Junior (the little baby Godzilla) dies, and Godzilla cries for it and there is very sad music. It was a great awakening call for me, because I thought, ‘Hbefore we’re not dressed guys, you know? It shouldn’t be emotionally appealing, but here I have teary eyes because of the power of cinema. The way they juxtaposed images with music and things. And Kong has always had it, because he’s always been a more empathetic character in those older movies. So that was probably the main thing. Plus, like the colors, the crazy tonal stuff of the 80s that I like to bring to my movies, music and everything. The heart was what I wanted to explore.
io9: Kong is very much the main perspective when they take us to the film. Can we talk about the decision to frame it through its goal more, and Godzilla as an external antagonistic force?
Wingard: Godzilla has always been that pendulum of a character, traditionally. It has returned from bad, to good, to bad and that is how we have always perceived it. And the Monsterverse version, has always been a good guy. So it’s always been a matter of time before something happens and Godzilla would look like a bad guy, or a heel, I think, is the most accurate term for this movie. So this naturally creates a bigger mystery around Godzilla – once you’re the bad guy, you can’t stay with them all the time.
It must be a little more mysterious. It has a lot of screen time in the film, but ultimately this guy forces us to print Kong as a little more of the protagonist. He simply naturally created this kind of childhood status for Kong. Because here is this thing that seems unstoppable and is destroying half the world. “What do we do?”, And here’s Kong as that kind of very empathetic character. So history lends itself naturally to pushing him in that direction.
io9: Aside from the shadow of these two literally massive monsters, you have such a big cast to deal with. New characters, the bad guys, characters coming back from King of monsters—What was the biggest challenge in finding the impetus to unite these two universes?
Wingard: I think everyone who watches my movies can see that I have an obsession with efficiency, pace, and tone. Sometimes, maybe, I go through things too fast because maybe I have ADD or something, but I’m very impatient. I feel like a Hollywood blockbuster, sometimes they loosen up too much. We’ve gotten to a point where it’s very casual to see a movie in two and a half hours, but, boy, I feel like you really have to, really have something to last more than two hours. And with Godzilla against Kong, I just thought that the audience that will want to see this doesn’t want to sit for two and a half hours in the theater. They want a dense and exciting experience that can excite them. They want to run out of theater with energy, not worn out.
So I would say that the biggest challenge for me was just the fact that I have all these characters and that technically I’m doing a sequel, but I’m doing a sequel that has to be alone. You should be able to watch this movie without ever seeing the other movies. TThe biggest challenge is always the first half hour of the movie. It’s like “HHow do we set up all these things, but keep them very enjoyable? Because once the movie gets to the half-hour point, it’s just an uninterrupted action. The film never slows down.
But it was always important that even when we are preparing things, the film does not have a stagnant feeling and, above all, that you are never so far from the monsters. It was always important to me to always observe a little monster in every scene. Even if they are just setting up and the exposure surrounding them. All the actors contributed so much, they knew the characters, they knew the personalities they wore, everyone is very designed and easy to control. And they can make a very quick and effective touch.
io9: You’ve already made action movies, but there was nothing at all on the scale. How was that experience for you as a director, who not only got into this huge blockbuster, but we’ve been working for the last year on some really weird and weird times. You’ve dealt with this scale, but you’ve dealt with it in such a unique way.
Wingard: Fortunately, for me, just to talk to this last half: the pandemic hit us directly at our post-production facilities in March. That’s when we started having to work remotely, but we were in the final stages. I think we had about a month and a half, or maybe two months, of post-production left. WWe hadn’t blocked the image at the time, but we were pretty close. So working from a distance was not at all bad. There were a lot of special effects reviews that had to happen (I don’t remember which program we used), we had a special program where we could monitor online. And then, once a week or every two weeks, I was able to get into Legendary only with me and Alex Garcia, the producer, and we were able to see it on the big screen when we gave our last values: we saw it on the big screen because it was important to do so.
As for the development of the film, I have done many actions, but never on this scale. In many ways, the action was the easiest part of this film. As I mentioned before, editing the film and overcoming all those narrative efficiencies was the hardest part, but the good thing about working on a film like this is that for the first time, here I am, this freelance director used to develop scripts thinking about the budget, where you can’t just say “A house explodes “during an action scene; you have to say,” WHe, we know what we can afford and what we can’t afford, and how should we write about it? And with that movie, you are asked to use unlimited imagination. That’s what’s so exciting. I started making movies because of great science fiction shows like the Star Wars movies and Alien movies and that sort of thing. So I’ve always wanted the opportunity to flex my imagination and create these new worlds, environments, and things.
It was actually a lot of fun and intuitive, honestly, because you’re working from a time-consuming process and there are a lot of steps. How vessel, tweaks and tweaks and tweaks. In fact, he is very intuitive as a director. Start with a storyboard, then go to a preview, and once you’ve locked yourself into this animation, there are only different animation phases that are detailed as you go. The hardest part is that in the early stages of doing this is learning that once you get to a certain point, you spend a lot of money and are not allowed to return. Then you really i need to know that this is the right decision because if you don’t, it will cost the same amount of money to go back and redo it. Like, for example, if you don’t like the angle you chose once you saw it more specifically …all of a sudden it’s like, “Well, I’m sorry. We’ve already spent $ 18,000 on this shot and we’re just getting started, so … make up your mind! You have these kind of scary moments, but overall, this part was so much fun for me.I would love to make another of these great monster movies.
Godzilla Vs. Kong hits theaters and begins airing on HBO Max starting March 31st.
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