Godzilla vs. Kong it’s almost here, and it’s a confrontation forever: two of the most loved giant monsters at the box office, one at the other’s throat again as if it were 1962. But the film is not just a titanic rematch, for director Adam Wingard, it is a step towards a truly titanic level of highly successful film production.
Inheriting not only what was left behind by Kong: Skull Island it’s two Godzilla films as part of Legendary’s fledgling “Monsterverse”, but the legacy of two of the greatest legends of cinema, literally or not, Wingard – best known for action horrors taught on a small scale as You’re next and Netflix Death note adaptation– was pushed to a gigantic stage.
To learn more about your approach to dealing with these huge figures—juggling a huge cast of humans to polish the film as soon as the covid-19 pandemic was established, sending studio staff for work from home–io9 chatted with the director in a video call. Check out the interview below!
James Whitbrook, IO9: Yyou’re inheriting two large film franchises and merging them into Godzilla vs Kong. What you wanted to see in this film, you felt like we hadn’t seen it in anyone Skull Island or Godzilla and King of the monsters?
Adam Wingard: I think the main thing that 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 films have done a great job of giving us all these different kinds of direction points by sight– they are a kind of blockbuster author films, in a way. Like, everyone can make their own specific shots. And for me, I really felt it was the most important …I wanted to go back to what I think these films originated from, which is a feeling of true empathy for the monsters.
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I went back and watched all Godzilla and King Kong films immediately when I was still in the early stages of negotiating the film. And one of the things that I was impressed with was how emotional they can be at times – even Godzilla movies, what you wouldn’t think. Godzilla vs Destoroyah, for example. There is a moment there where Junior – the little baby Godzilla – dies, and Godzilla kind of mourns for it, and there is a really sad song playing. It was a great awakening call me, because I thought, ‘Here we have guys in suits’, you know? It shouldn’t be emotionally captivating, but here I am with teary eyes because of the power of cinema. The way they juxtaposed the images with music and stuff. And Kong has always had that, because he was always just a more empathetic character in these old films. So, that was probably the main thing. Besides the colors – the crazy things of the 80’s tones that I like to bring to my films, and the music, and everything. The heart of it was what I wanted to explore.
io9: Kong is basically the main perspective when we are brought into the film. Can you talk more about the decision to frame this through your lens, and about Godzilla as an external antagonistic force?
Wingard: Godzilla has always been that character pendulum, traditionally. He went from bad to good and bad again and that’s how we always perceive him. And the Monsterverse version, he was always a good guy. So it was always just a matter of time before something happened and Godzilla was seen as a villain – or a heel, I think, is the most accurate term in this film. So this naturally creates a bigger mystery around Godzilla: once you’re the villain, you can’t just stay with them all the time.
It has to be a little more mysterious. He gets a great screen time in the film, but in the end it kind of forces us to have an impression in Kong as a little more of the protagonist. This naturally created that kind of underdog status for Kong, too. Because here is something out there that seems unstoppable and is destroying half the world. ‘What do we do?’, And here is Kong as that kind of very empathic character. So history naturally lends itself to push you in that direction.
io9: In addition to the shadow of these two literally huge monsters, you have such a large cast to deal with. New characters, the villains, characters returning from King of the monsters– what was the biggest challenge for you to find the impetus to bring these two universes together?
Wingard: I think anyone who watches my films can see that I have an obsession with efficiency, rhythm, and tone. Sometimes, maybe, I get through things too quickly because maybe I have ADD or something, but I am very impatient. I feel like Hollywood blockbusters, they kind of get too loose at times. We got to the point where it’s very casual to see a two and a half hour movie, but, man, I feel like you really have to, same there’s something going on for more than two hours. And with Godzilla vs Kong, I just thought that the audience that will want to watch this will not want to sit in a theater for two and a half hours. They want a dense and exciting experience that will get them excited. They want to run out of the theater with energy, not exhausted.
So, I would say that the biggest challenge for me was just the fact that, like, I have all these characters and I’m also technically doing a sequel – but I’m doing a sequel that needs to be independent. You need to be able to watch this movie without ever having seen the other movies. TThe biggest challenge is always the first half hour of the film. It’s like, ‘HHow do we configure all these things, but keep everything very pleasant? ‘Because once the film reaches the half-hour point, it’s just an uninterrupted action from there. The film is never slow.
But it has always been important that, even when we are setting things up, the film does not have a feeling of stagnation – and also, more importantly, that you are never that far from the monsters. It has always been important to me that you always get a little glimpse of a monster in every scene. Even if it’s just setting them up, and the exposure around them. All the actors contributed so much to this, they knew the characters, they knew the personalities they are bringing – everyone has a colorful design and is easy to follow. And they can make noise very quickly and efficiently.
io9: You’ve done action movies before – but there was nothing on the scale of that. What was that experience like for you as a director, not only getting into this big box office hit, but we have been working during the past year in very strange times. You have dealt with this scale, but you have dealt with it in a unique way.
Wingard: Fortunately for me, just to talk about the last half of that – the pandemic hit us directly at our post-production facility in March. That was when we started working remotely, but we were in the final stages. I think we had about a month and a half, or maybe two months left, of post-production. ÇWe hadn’t caught the photo at that point, but we were pretty close to that. Therefore, working remotely was not so bad. There were a lot of special effects analyzes that had to happen – I don’t remember which program we were using – we had a special program where we could monitor it online. And then, once a week or every other week, I was able to go to Legendary just me and Alex Garcia, the producer, and we could watch it on the big screen when we were doing our last ok – we saw it on the big screen because that was important to do.
In terms of developing the film, I did a lot of action, but never on that scale. In many ways, the action was the easiest part of this film. As I mentioned before, setting up the film and overcoming all storytelling efficiencies was the most difficult, but what’s great when you’re working on a movie like this is that for the first time, here I am, this independent director used to developing scripts with the budget in mind – where you can’t just say ‘A house explodes ‘during an action scene – you have to say,’ Well, we know what we can and cannot afford, and how we have to write about it, ‘do you know? And with this film, you kind of ask to use unlimited imagination. That’s what’s so exciting. I started making films because of great science fiction shows like the Star Wars movies and the Foreigner movies and that kind of stuff. So, I always wanted to have the chance to use my imagination and create these new worlds, environments and things.
It was actually a lot of fun and intuitive, honestly, because you’re working on a process that takes a lot of time and involves a lot of steps. How you go, you adjust and adjust and adjust. In fact, it is very intuitive, as a director. You start with a storyboard and then go to a preview and, after locking that animation, there are only different phases of the animation that get more and more detailed as you go. The most difficult thing is in the early stages of doing this is to learn that, once you get to a certain point, you are spending a lot of money and you are not allowed to come back. So you same have 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 after seeing it more developed –suddenly it’s like, ‘Well, sorry. We’ve already spent $ 18,000 on this photo and we’re just getting started, so … make up your mind! ‘You have those kinds of moments that are a little bit scary, but overall, that part was so much fun for me. I would love to do another one of these great monster movies.
Godzilla vs. Kong hits theaters and starts broadcasting on HBO Max from March 31.
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