The first Godzilla: King of the Monsters trailer was a highlight of this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. To a haunting rendition of “Clair de Lune,” we got to see a Royal Rumble sized collection of classic Toho kaiju (Mothra! Rodan! King Ghidorah!), complete with characters staring up at them with religious awe and some truly apocalyptic looking imagery. Hopefully, Warner Bros. will want to keep that style going and I can’t wait for this Saturday, when they release some new footage from the movie in the form of a second trailer.
In advance of this, they’ve now debuted a new image of Big G strolling through a city with a helicopter escort, looking as if he’s quickly fitting into the role of humanity’s overly destructive, radioactive giant lizard protector. It’s a great shot, and you can check it out for yourself below:
Now, I honestly didn’t get on that well with Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla. I went into it expecting an all-out monster smashathon and got a rather more slow-burning action film in which Godzilla simply wasn’t on screen that often. I’ve come around a bit on it now (though I still really dislike Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s hero), and thought Kong: Skull Island was genuinely fantastic.
Given that this is leading straight into 2020’s Godzilla vs. Kong (directed by one of my favorite horror directors, Adam Wingard), Warner Bros. will no doubt be pulling out all the stops as their MonsterVerse is gradually becoming one of the rare cinematic universes that actually works.
All that said, there’ve been some very advance screenings of the first 40 minutes of the film, which have had a mixed reaction. Nothing disastrous mind you, but a member of the test audience commented that there were a lot of human characters and that the opening of King of the Monsters set up a lot of different plotlines. Still, they also said that the film features a hell of a lot of Godzilla and that even the unfinished effects were amazing, so consider my advance ticket reserved.
