‘Godzilla Vs. Kong’: Why the Shot of Kong Punching Godzilla Almost Got Cut

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When Warner Bros. released the first trailer for Godzilla Vs. Kong released, one shot that had fans excited was Kong sucker-punching Godzilla in the face while on top of an aircraft carrier. This shot promised things to come as many were ecstatic to see Kong and Godzilla finally going at it. Director Adam Wingard shares that this legendary shot was almost cut from the film. 

The aircraft carrier fight between Godzilla and Kong is fantastic

The aircraft carrier fight is the first encounter between Godzilla and Kong. After building up their eventual meeting, Godzilla finds Kong as he is being transported to Hollow Earth. Godzilla destroys almost every single carrier, either by swimming straight through it or bringing his tail down on it. Kong also causes a lot of damage as he jumps between carriers. 

When the two finally come face-to-face, Kong delivers a haymaker to Godzilla, and Godzilla counters with a smack to the face that knocks Kong backward. Eventually, Godzilla wins this battle when the fight ends up underwater, which is Godzilla’s domain. After this sequence, everyone still has the image of Kong punching Godzilla in their head, yet the filmmakers almost took it out.

Director Adam Wingard says this shot was almost removed from ‘Godzilla Vs. Kong’

In a March 2021 interview with Wingard for RogerEbert.com, Wingard explains how one of his visual effects supervisors convinced him to keep it in the movie. One of the producers told Wingard that this wide shot of the two monsters fighting was repetitive and that audiences had seen it before. However, VFX supervisor John “DJ” Des Jardin convinced Wingard to keep it. 

I will say that we were looking at this shot, and we were looking at the animation, and the VFX supervisor, John “DJ” Des Jardin, was making a presentation for us while we were in Australia,” Wingard said. “They only had a couple shots, and one of them was a rudimentary animation of Godzilla getting punched in the face by Kong on an aircraft carrier, in a wide shot. One of the producers looked at it and said, “We always have this shot in the movies, this wide shot. Do we need this?”… And I remember immediately DJ was like, “You guys are going to want this shot. Trust me.”

“I was talking to him after the trailer release, and I was like, “Remember when the first shot they asked us to cut was this aircraft carrier shot that’s like the first literal image we released of the movie, and it’s like literally the main moment of the film?” Wingard continued. “And he says, “Yeah, I tell everybody about that all the time, it’s hilarious.” It’s one of those things.”

Wingard wanted the aircraft carrier fight to be as realistic as possible

Still speaking with RogerEbert.com, Wingard told the media outlet that he didn’t want the scene to “strain credibility so far.” Obviously, a giant monkey fighting a giant lizard is unrealistic, but Wingard wanted to make sure that it looked like Godzilla and Kong could both fit on the carrier.

“I worked with my production designer friend, Tom Hammock, and he put together a little guide that showed a depiction of an aircraft carrier, and the actual size and weight of Kong and Godzilla as they existed in the Monsterverse films,” Wingard explained. “He showed me that the length of an aircraft carrier is over a thousand-something feet, and the monsters themselves are about 300, 350 or so. So we kind of looked at that and you can actually see they can fit on there. And then the next step was the art department people—they put together a size test of some kind, and so obviously there’s no way to actually measure how heavy Godzilla and Kong are, but estimating the amount of space they take up and the size, the weight that they have together, versus the weight of what an aircraft carrier can supposedly handle, it worked.”

Godzilla Vs. Kong is currently streaming on HBO Max. 

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