Easter eggs are a time-honored tradition in franchise movies as a way of paying homage to previous films in the series. The upcomingGodzilla vs. Kongis a modern interpretation of the kind of monster movies that have been getting made in Japan since the 1950s. Adam Wingard, who directedGodzilla Vs Kongrecently affirmed to Screenrant that one particular Easter egg in the film is a direct homage to 1962’sKing Kong vs. Godzilla.
“I would say that the Easter eggs are more directly related to the originalKing Kong Vs. Godzilla- and I wouldn’t even so much call them easter eggs as pretty obvious homages. One of them, obviously, people have seen - which is that the helicopters carrying Kong is a direct homage to the hot air balloon that’s carrying them.”
The originalKing Kong vs. Godzillasaw the majority of the action taking place in Japan, and officially inducted King Kong, a western creation, into the ranks ofKaiju monstersthat Japanese cinema had made popular the world over.
On the other hand, whileGvKcontinues in the tradition of Japanese kaiju movies, it is a distinctly American product. As such, it was natural for Wingard to pepper his film with references to western pop culture in the realm of blockbuster cinema. According to the filmmaker, audiences will be able to pick up references to many80s action movieswhile also finding that the film breaks new ground in terms of its franchise narrative.
“The homages that I had in the film were more based around 80s action movies and blockbuster cinema. Obviously, there’s some Jaw stuff; there’s a lot of Diehard; people have started picking up the Lethal Weapon 2 stuff in there. Weirdly, those were more of theEaster eggs, and there’s all kinds of stuff in the film.But when it came to Godzilla and Kong, though, I felt like the other monsterverse films had already done such a good job of layering in a lot of those kind of past homages and those kind of things. I felt like now it was just time to try to break as much new ground as possible. My take was always, ‘Let’s try to see these characters do things we’ve never seen them do before, as much as possible.'”
Early reviews forGvKhave been fairly positive so far, with reviewers declaring that the movie does justice to its behemoth lead characters while also adding new dimensions to Legendary’s MonsterVerse franchise. This is good news for the series, which, despite boasting state-of-the-art special effects, had not exactly managed to set the box-office on fire with previous outings likeGodzilla: King of the Monsters.
Directed by Adam Wingard and written by Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein,Godzilla vs. Kongstars Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, and Brian Tyree Henry. The film arrives in theaters and on HBO Max on March 31. This story originated atScreenRant.
