Nobody goes to see MonsterVerse movies for the human characters, which is both stating the obvious and something the actors themselves are fully aware of. Alexander Skarsgard, who took top billing in box office smash hit Godzilla vs. Kong, even self-deprecatingly mocked his own involvement by admitting people weren’t going to head to the theater in their droves to see him playing a geologist.
Despite the lack of memorable figures that aren’t created entirely in a computer, the MonsterVerse has gathered an incredible roster of talent across the four installments to date. It just goes to show how much focus has been placed on the spectacle above all else when the likes of Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Vera Farmiga, Kyle Chandler, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Lance Reddick and many more were afterthoughts in the grand scheme of things.
In a new interview, longtime MonsterVerse scribe Max Borenstein admitted that not only does he believe a blockbuster with minimal human involvement is more than possible, but he’d love to see it happen.
“I do think it could be done. I was thinking about the same thing. I think it would be amazing, actually. Given the success of Godzilla vs. Kong, I’m kind of hoping in whatever the next phase Legendary decides to do that we would see that. I think it’d be pretty cool. I think it is possible. It would be very ambitious. I think ambitious in that Mad Max: Fury Road way. I think it’s totally possible to do that with the absolute minimum amount of human characters and really characterize the creatures.”
For the most part, any creature feature regardless of budget needs human characters to ground the narrative, create stakes and give audiences something to invest in, so Borenstein’s right in saying there’d be an air of experimental cinema about a largely wordless MonsterVerse epic where the hulking beasts were given the majority of the spotlight. Whether Warner Bros. and Legendary take that plunge is an entirely different question, but we do know that Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard entered talks a while back to helm the next chapter, which could be a modern day update for Son of Kong.
