If 2014’s Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla” took a grounded and gritty realistic page from Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ films, then it should be abundantly clear from some of the latest images and trailers that filmmaker Adam Wingard (“The Guest”) is moving in a drastically different direction with the fifth film in Legendary’s Monsterverse franchise saga, “Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire.” Seemingly even far afield than Wingard’s own 2021 film, “Godzilla Vs. Kong,” and potentially hewing closer to the goofier, “Kong: Skull Island” (2017), in this film, you have a Baby Kong, seemingly a Kong army, Kong sporting a cool new “Transformers”-like punch-em up mitt called the B.E.A.S.T. Glove, a new piece of tech that monsters now apparently wear, a truce between kaijus. Wingard even likened the film to having a quarreling buddy-cop dynamic in a recent interview.
“The buddy-cop dysfunctional relationship dynamic is probably the best one to describe ‘Godzilla and Kong,’” Wingard told Empire this week, highlighting “Lethal Weapon” as one of his fave films in that genre. “My influences are always embedded with the ‘80s, and the ‘80s were prime for [that] storyline.”
Of course, they can’t actually speak to one should apparently prepare for a lot of miscommunication. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding— the way that the monsters communicate isn’t straightforward.”
Umm, ok then! Written by Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, and Jeremy Slater, ‘New Empire’ stars Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kaylee Hottle, Alex Ferns, and Fala Chen. Hall, Henry, and Hottle reprise their roles from the last film, but actors like Millie Bobbie Brown and Kyle Chandler are apparently sitting this installment out.
Here’s the official synopsis:
This latest entry follows up the explosive showdown of Godzilla vs. Kong with an all-new cinematic adventure, pitting the mighty Kong and the fearsome Godzilla against a colossal undiscovered threat hidden within our world, challenging their very existence – and our own. The epic new film will delve further into the histories of these Titans, their origins and the mysteries of Skull Island and beyond, while uncovering the mythic battle that helped forge these extraordinary beings and tied them to humankind forever.
“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is scheduled to be released in the United States on March 29, 2024. Watch the new trailer below.