Godzilla vs. Kong is fine. It’s a perfectly adequate kaiju team-up picture. People don’t like to hear this, because everyone is so hyper critical of everything now, but the giant monster genre has a form and it was fairly true to that form, but it’s not perfect. There are ideas that feel rushed, almost to the point of being superfluous to the story.
So in this exercise the studio has come to me with the following ask: “We’ve already started work. We’ve built sets. We’ve hired actors. The story needs to follow the same basic beats, but it feels a little off. Can you fix it?”
Sure… why not?
This assumes you have seen the movie, so needless to say: spoilers ahead.
The movie is either too long or too short. You have to pick one, but in the interest of giving the studio a reason to pick one or the other, let’s lay it out.
The 90 Minute Version
Summary: Eliminate Bernie, Madison, and Josh almost entirely.
Start the movie with “some guy” (Bernie) heading in to work at Apex. He confides in a co-worker that he thinks Apex is up to some shady stuff. He took a wrong turn in the computer system and saw something about some classified project in Hong Kong that has some R&D going on right here in Florida. Something big. Something expensive. The co-worker brushes him off and then “TITAN ALERT!” Godzilla is attacking.
While evacuating the curiosity gets the better of him and he follows some guys who don’t seem to be evacuating, but going deeper into the facility. There he spots some mysterious device. The ceiling is blown apart. He sees Godzilla outside. Godzilla turns toward the device, he rears back, his mouth lights up. Our guy goes “Oh sh-“
Cut to Monarch temporary site just outside of where the attack happened. Instead of having Madison show up and talk with her dad it’s just two Monarch people, maybe bring back Mark Russel (Kyle Chandler) for his cameo, and to create continuity with the previous movie, saying “Godzilla is acting erratically. Something must have provoked him, but what? He just left after he destroyed this one part of the building.” He points to a 3D diagram.
Other: “What was there?”
Mark: “That’s just it, we don’t know. Apex says it was just a run of the mill R&D division, but by the time we got in the place was melted. No evidence. I don’t like this at all.”
The movie continues to play out as it does minus the kids finding Bernie, infiltrating Apex, and going on their adventure. They are gone from the movie altogether… as is Bernie, who was vaporized by Godzilla.
The next major change is just a cut, somewhere mid film, probably as the Kong group gets to Antarctica, to Walter Simmons and Ren Serizawa in Apex’s “Evil Hong Kong Lair” discussing the “loss of the module”
Simmons: “We can build another. In the meantime the prototype functioned just as well, and will function even better once Maya finds that power source.”
Serizawa: “We’re playing a dangerous game. Godzilla will come for us and if we’re not ready, it will be the end.”
Simmons: “This is our chance to get rid of that dumb beast once and for all. Return humanity to the Apex species on this planet. We’ll be ready. I have faith in my daughter.”
Continue as before. Kong gets to hollow earth, some stuff happens, he’s on his way to the area where the power source is.
Back to Monarch in Hong Kong. Simmons says “Begin the test.” Show Serizawa in some kind of cockpit with his head gear. Then cut to some kind of generic monster (keep the Skull Walker, whatever) getting released into a giant dark room. From the darkness we see two red glowing eye-like points. Cut back to Simmons smiling as the whole room is bathed in red light, then it goes dark. Error warnings “Main power failure.” Simmons sighs.
Serizawa is in his cockpit talking on the radio: “We still only reached 40% power.”
Simmons: “I know, but the prototype functioned as expected. We’ll get that power source soon enough. How was the interface?”
Back to Serizawa as the camera dollies back to reveal he is sitting inside of some mechanism built from King Ghidorah’s skull.
Serizawa: “It’s quite strange. It’s working better than the version that doesn’t use Monster Zero’s neural pathways. I almost don’t need to tell it what to do. It feels almost instinctual.”
Simmons: “Is that a problem? You’re still in control, right?”
Serizawa: “Of course!”
Serizawa then takes off his interface gear and turns off the system. He walks off. You see the systems faintly come back online. Cut to the same device that our random Apex guy saw at the start of the movie… an eye? It starts pulsing, just like it was at the start of the movie. Cut to Godzilla somewhere at sea turning around. Then back to Monarch “Godzilla is changing course. We think he’s heading for Hong Kong!”
Movie continues to play as is. Only the reveal of Mecha Godzilla is now when he bursts out of the mountain, leaving a greater surprise for the audience. Completely cut everything with Bernie and the kids in the Apex base. The whole stopping the satellite uplink is convoluted and unnecessary. Kong and Godzilla fight Mecha Godzilla and defeat it and the rest of the movie plays out the same.
I’ve trimmed a good 20 minutes from the movie without sacrificing the monster action. The only downside I see to this version is that it eliminates one human, Maddison, who was “rooting for Godzilla”, but even that aspect of the final film is so weak that it goes almost unnoticed. This is a truer version of the movie they released. The focus stays on Kong and builds up to Godzilla and Kong teaming up at the end to take down Mecha Godzilla.
The 2 Hour 20 Minute Version
Summary: Godzilla gets more motivation
One complaint, if you can even call it that, is that Kong is the star of the movie and Godzilla kind of comes off as a bully. The former is definitely the case, but the latter isn’t true if you’re watching for the little details. When Kong arrives in the Hollow Earth lair we see dozens of Godzilla skeletons scattered around and then the axe made from a Godzilla bone plus dorsal plate. Later we see a dozens more of these same weapons laying on the ground creating the image of a Godzilla when they charge up. It’s possibly implied here that Kong’s ancestors were the aggressors, or at least the more powerful. The further evidence for this is at the end of the movie Godzilla backs off once Kong throws down (buries) the hatchet, signifying the war between them is over.
Let’s focus on these ideas and expand on them. But how, when neither can clearly speak or tell the story of their ancestors?
Rather than go beat by beat, like I did above, this is more a conceptual modification of the plot. The plot will still follow most of the same beats, but with some additional scenes expounding on ideas I’m presenting here.
Establish that Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) has styled herself as the next Dr. Serizawa. She has his journal, which he gave to her father in the previous movie, and has been studying it, along with other mythology they’ve only recently discovered by exploring more of the pathways into the Hollow Earth.
She believes Godzilla isn’t just some brainless alpha titan, exerting his dominance. He is fiercely protective of the Earth and its ecosystem, it has nothing to do with him wanting to be “in charge of the titans”. She cites the fact that Mothra was also supposedly an alpha titan, and yet the two didn’t fight each other. They worked together. Furthermore, Kong is supposedly an alpha titan. Why didn’t Godzilla go to Skull Island and attack him before they put him in a containment facility? And more importantly, where was Kong when Ghidora was calling all the other titans to him? Why didn’t Kong respond to assert his alpha dominance?
As she progresses on her adventure with Bernie, who should be less of a conspiracy whack job, and more a broken man just searching for purpose, she reveals a lot of what she found. The ancient legends of the Odo people (a little Easter egg for the original Godzilla) believed that Godzilla came from inside the Earth thousands of years ago, and arrived after the rest of his species had been killed by another race of titans. She speculates that he’s not some ancient, dominant, lifeform. He’s all alone and just doing what he can to stay alive and keep the planet thriving. It’s necessary to inter-cut scenes of her with shots of Godzilla in the middle of the vast ocean, nothing around him for thousands of miles/kilometers. Emphasize his isolation. Bernie asks “Who or what could be powerful enough to kill a Godzilla?” Cut to Kong.
We’ll need a little more background on Kong too. Emphasize that he’s not very old, maybe a few hundred years. You need to make it clear that whatever happened to Godzilla’s species wasn’t Kong’s specific doing.
When they get Kong to the throne in the Hollow Earth Ilene comments on the Godzilla skeletons. She remarks that this looks less like a war and more like a slaughter. She speculates that Kong’s ancestors weren’t fighting a war against Godzilla’s species, they were exterminating them. When asked what that means for Kong now, she will emphasize that Godzilla has no way of knowing Kong wasn’t part of what happened, this is why he’s attacking Kong. It has nothing to do with alpha titans, it’s revenge. It also explains why Godzilla left Skull Island alone for so long. As long as Kong stayed there he wasn’t hunting Godzilla, but as soon as he left, Godzilla perceived him to be a threat. And once Kong sees the axe, almost like genetic memory, he knows what it means and what he must do… kill Godzilla.
I would restructure the final battle slightly. When the two finally team up to fight Mecha Godzilla, have at least one instance where Godzilla is thrown through a building and buried. Kong knocks Mecha Godzilla away and then starts digging Godzilla out, culminating with Kong taking a hit/blast for Godzilla, giving him a chance to get up and catch his breath. Have a little more than just Kong helping thump the baddie. Kong is actively trying to keep Godzilla alive.
Then at the end, where Kong throws down the axe and Godzilla walks away, it’s more clearly symbolic that this was never Kong’s war and Kong will not continue the fight to end Godzilla’s existence.
Also, f**k it, in this version there’s a mid-credits stinger. Kong is happily bounding along in the Hollow Earth and comes across a baby Godzilla, which shies away from him. Kong smiles, picks the little one up, cradles him in his arm, and then looks up to the opening toward the surface Earth and runs off in that direction.
Does this make any sense? No, not at all, but it provides some kind of happy ending for Godzilla and Kong both, with no obligation to make a sequel.
Armchair Screenwriter 