Promotion for Godzilla vs. Kong, the next installment in Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse, is heating up with the unveiling of a new yet familiar-looking banner.
Toy company Playmates, who hold the license to make the GVK action figures we scoped out a few weeks back, posted the banner to their website. No need to surf, we’ll show it to you right here.
As you can see, it looks like an image circulating online – and that we featured here – except for extra details such as Godzilla’s dorsal plates and Kong rearing back his fist. You can also make out the silhouettes of burning buildings.
Here is an older banner image for comparison.
Godzilla vs. Kong is going to be big and might be big enough to further the MonsterVerse with another sequel or a possible prequel. If King of the Monsters director Michael Dougherty is chosen to make it, he knows what he’d like to do.
Dougherty, focused as he and his movie are on how long the Titans have been around, pitched an idea during the latest MonsterVerse viewing party to take Godzilla to ancient times – that’s to say BC.
He tweeted:
I’d still love to do GODZILLA B.C. where we finally see this ancient world of man and monster, like a modern day Ray Harryhausen flick. Or maybe we just go for it and finally take humans out of the equation…. #Monsterversewatchalong #NerdistAtHome
— Godzilla: King of the Monsters (@GodzillaMovie) April 24, 2020
Related: Forgotten and Rare Godzilla 2014 Concept Art Revealed During MonsterVerse Watchalong
His clash of Titans concept could tread old ground and see the return of Ghidorah. It might even determine how the three-headed monster wound up in Antarctic ice.
Not surprisingly, Dougherty has a theory:
As for how Ghidorah ended up trapped in the ice, I like to think he lost his last battle with Godzilla and got KO’d into freezing waters.
— Godzilla: King of the Monsters (@GodzillaMovie) April 24, 2020
Evidence Ghidorah, Godzilla, and the rest of the Titans were here since the beginning were all around in KOTM. Dougherty liked the theme and wanted to be as conscious of it as possible, saying:
“I love the idea that Godzilla and the other Titans go back thousands if not millions of years and were the original rulers of the planet and I wanted the logos and Titans depicted as ancient hieroglyphs to hint at that theme.”
The clearest instance of this was the journey into Godzilla’s lair within the hollow Earth, something Dougherty was eager to explore.
I wanted to include a sequence where we really peeled back the layers of Godzilla’s mythology and depict him in a way and in a place we’ve never seen before, so finally entering his lair made sense. After all, every dragon has a cave, and we’ve never seen Godzilla’s.
— Godzilla: King of the Monsters (@GodzillaMovie) April 24, 2020
The lair was deliberately dotted with edifices and the flotsam and jetsam of several civilizations to show Godzilla had used it as his refuge since before the Vikings.
We littered the ruins with the wreckage of ships from different eras, from vikings to modern day battleships, as if they were pulled into the Hollow Earth via vortex, or because they were snacks for Godzilla. #MonsterverseWatchalong
— Godzilla: King of the Monsters (@GodzillaMovie) April 24, 2020
Related: Godzilla vs. Kong: New Spoilers Say Godzilla Has New Powers and Kong Has a Weapon
Far from deviating from the normative mythology of Toho’s movies, Dougherty expanded on it and cited Mothra as one of their most layered creations.
I always loved how the Toho films weren’t shy about playing up the mythological aspects of the creatures. They weren’t afraid to get weird. I think MOTHRA was the first Toho film to establish the creatures were deities connected to lost ancient civilizations…
— Godzilla: King of the Monsters (@GodzillaMovie) April 24, 2020
The mythology and the number of the Titans will only grow in Godzilla vs. Kong which is still set for a November release despite everything else dropping later in theaters than expected because of coronavirus.