Clash of the titans

Trevor Hogg gets a ringside seat for the epic fights featured in Godzilla vs. Kong…

- Trevor Hogg

A welcomed rematch takes place between two iconic titans that originally clashed in King Kong vs. Godzilla in 1962, as Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) has proven that there is still a demand for the theatrical experience as the fourth instalment of Warner Bros’ MonsterVerse has earned $391 million worldwide during the coronavirus pandemic. Directing the epic Hollywood blockbuster is Adam Wingard (The Guest) who partnered with visual effects supervisor John ‘DJ’ Des Jardin (Sucker Punch) to have the giant gorilla and massive lizard share the screen together. In total 960 visual effects were created with the main vendors being Scanline VFX, MPC and Weta Digital.

A shot that has served as the cornerstone of the marketing campaign, of Kong punching Godzilla in the face while onboard an aircraft carrier, almost did not make it into the final cut. “It ended up being one of the four shots that I had Bryan Hirota at Scanline test, which got the producers jazzed about the movie,” states John ‘DJ’ Des Jardin. “Way down the line, we’re shooting in Australia, and happen to be looking through the edit and that shot wasn’t there. We were told it was taken out because the producers need to save some money, so when Adam and Alex Garcia [Enola Holmes], the main creative executive on the show, got into editorial to go over sequences with us, I asked, ‘What about this? This shot is cool and it seems like the telltale shot of the title of the movie.’ We even all agreed that if we keep that shot in you are going to market the movie with that. Now here we are a couple of years later and that’s exactly what happened!”