A lot of versus movies have failed to deliver on the obvious promises made by their titles, with Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice a recent example. Audiences had been desperate to see the DC icons trade blows on the big screen for decades, but despite the theatrical edition running for 152 minutes, the title characters only battled head to head for a short time before putting their differences aside once they realized their mothers had the same name, a moment that still divides opinion among the fanbase.
However, it’s looking like the upcoming Godzilla vs. Kong is set to live up to its lofty billing. The trailers, promos and TV spots we’ve seen so far promise a huge amount of kaiju carnage taking place all over the globe, with the first showdown between the MonsterVerse’s marquee names happening in and around an in-transit aircraft carrier.
In a new interview, composer Junkie XL revealed that the first fight between Godzilla and Kong runs for a lengthy eighteen minutes, which is only going to raise the excitement levels even further when you consider that they’re set to scrap at least once or twice more before the end of the movie.
“I’m not going to say how this thing ends but there’s some spectacular, and then so, this scene that was released today, was it on IGN? 40 seconds of footage? That scene is eighteen minutes long and it’s ridiculous.”
We’ve been starved of big budget, effects-driven spectacle over the last twelve months, which is why Godzilla vs. Kong is primed to do such big numbers on HBO Max, and could even be the first movie in a long time to see strong business at the box office. An eighteen-minute fight scene in the middle of the ocean between two gigantic monsters is escapism writ large, and that’s only going to be the tip of the iceberg.
