Recent news coming from Tom Hiddleston that next year's Kong: Skull Island movie will be a blood relative to Gareth Edwards' 2014 monster blockbuster Godzilla is not only promoting the King Kong reboot but is also adding to the hype of Legendary Pictures' planned Godzilla vs King Kong, which is scheduled for release in 2020. Although four years away the monster face off has a lot of cinema, monster and kaiju fans excited, with much speculation being thrown around by fans as to how the confrontation will be adapted for modern audiences. One such speculation is that the character of King Kong will need to be vastly increased in size to be comparable to the 2014 rendition of Godzilla, but with Hollywood's latest iteration of Toho's King of Monsters coming in at around 350 feet tall, that means King Kong will have to grow up to six times its normally depicted height, with most renditions of the King of the Apes averaging around 50 feet tall.
That said in his 1954 debut Godzilla was estimated at just over 100 feet tall, making the original 1962 face off against King Kong more believable and more plausible, given the two creatures similar sizes. Kong: Skull Island, which is currently in production in Hawaii, will likely introduce us to a larger scale version of King Kong that is comparable to 2014's Godzilla. While the suspension of disbelief from audiences can be stretched to accept a 350 feet tall amphibious lizard having survived since before the time of the Dinosaurs, can Legendary Pictures really expect the same of a colossal ape that has lived hidden on a small island, likely too small to even sustain the creature. Put simply; in their haste to make a big impact on the big screen screen and at the box office, have Legendary Pictures made their iteration of Godzilla too big?
In addition to next years Kong: Skull Island and 2020's Godzilla vs King Kong director Gareth Edwards, whom has been working hard on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which is due for release this Christmas, is expected to helm a sequel to his 2014 Godzilla. The sequel, scheduled for a 2018 release is believed to feature Toho mosters Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah, with the latter likely to be depicted as being much larger than Godzilla, begging the question of how much bigger are all these monsters going to get? Some audiences find the plausability of such monster movies a stretch too far, and while we could argue it is all just a bit of fun, making these monsters ever bigger is likely turning away prospective audiences that could otherwise have become new fans of this legendary form of Japanese cinema.
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Browse images from the upcoming Godzilla vs. Kong sequel here as well as images from Apple TV’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and Toho’s Godzilla Minus One.
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