What Warner Bros. and Legendary’s fresh spin on Godzilla’s Monsterverse lacks—character development, coherent plots, efficient use of its stacked casts—it more than makes up for in kaiju-punching. Last year’s Godzilla: King Of The Monsters wasn’t good, but it made Godzilla and Mothra look cool as hell against some vivid, lightning-lit skies. What else do you really want?
Its long-in-the-works follow-up, Godzilla Vs. Kong, was originally slated to hit theaters in May, but, in a refreshing twist, was bumped up to March, when it will debut both in theaters and on HBO Max. Millie Bobby Brown, reprising her shapeless role from King Of The Monsters, leads a cast that also includes Alexander Skarsgård, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Eiza González, and Lance Reddick. That’s an incredible lineup that, if the previous movies are any indication, will trot out dreary exposition while staring, wide-eyed, at an assortment of kaiju-filled screens. Adam Wingard, the genre wunderkind behind You’re Next and The Guest, directs this showdown between the franchise’s two leads.
In its first trailer, Godzilla Vs. Kong manages to pretend it’s actually a serious movie for about half of its runtime, but then Godzilla jumps out of the water, fists start flying, and it becomes clear that this is just a movie about a big ape bonking a big lizard with a big axe and everything else is mostly irrelevant. And that’s not necessarily a criticism, because this looks fun as hell—though it’s worth saying that the other recent Godzilla movies also looked pretty fun in trailers. See this one for yourself below.
“One will fall,” promises the film’s poster, which seems to want us to think that Wingard’s just going to up and kill one of the franchise’s dual spines. We’ll hedge our bets and assume that the “fall” is something more innocuous—like, say, falling into a skyscraper after being pushed or something.
See it below.
Godzilla Vs. Kong’s big, scaly foot lands in your HBO Max queue on March 26. It’ll remain there for a month as the film continues to play in theaters.