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After a huge international opening, Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard spoke to Entertainment Weekly about his reverence for past Godzilla movies as well as his unique approach to the fight of the decade.
"Each one of the films served a different purpose," says Wingard of the kaiju's history. "Godzilla 2014 had to scoop Godzilla out of the hole he was in from the '98 Godzilla which was so campy and let such a bad taste in western mouths. Gareth did such a good job with that film, reintroducing him. They've done a great job with the MonsterVerse films of establishing different tones.
"I had the advantage of seeing what people responded to with those films and be able to say, as a fan of all these movies, well, what do I want to do with my version of it? My inclination is usually to go for a really fun, crowd-pleasing film. This movie in a lot of ways is a culmination of a life's work building up to this point. This is not a drill, you know. This is my chance to do Godzilla versus King. This only happens once every 50 years! So, I've got to take this opportunity and run with it."
As for how he made his fight special? Simple. He just treated the titans as if they were action stars.
"Creating the fights was absolutely the funnest thing that I've ever done in my entire career," Wingard explained. "You would think that that would be the most difficult part of the movie. But to me it was always the easiest because we always knew what the goal was, and it was just about making it as spectacular as possible. The trick is to treat a monster brawl the same way you would a normal action film. I don't like it whenever characters bang each other around and there's no evidence of the fight after the fact. I want to see people take damage."
Godzilla vs. Kong has seen huge gains in international markets with a $123 million haul. This gives the film the largest opening during the COVID era, and may signal a hopeful return to theaters for the United States.
