Despite both being Godzilla movies, the recent Japanese flick Godzilla Minus One and the upcoming Hollywood blockbuster Godzilla X Kong have dramatically different vibes. Godzilla Minus One is a very somber and brooding rumination on the trauma of World War II, and Godzilla X Kong is more focused on spectacle.
But Godzilla X Kong director Adam Wingard, who also directed the previous movie in the MonsterVerse franchise, says the two films have a crucial piece of DNA in common: He and Godzilla Minus One director Yamazaki Takashi both used cat behavior as influences for Gozilla’s mannerisms.
“With Godzilla himself in this movie, it’s funny, like, one of my biggest influences is my cat Mischief. She was, on Godzilla vs Kong, a lot of the mannerisms of Godzilla,” Wingard said during a presentation for press at IMAX headquarters, where they had a “war room” full of things from and related to the movie, with the walls covered with what Wingard called his vision board for Gozilla X Kong. “And a couple weeks ago, I had a great conversation with Yamazaki who did Godzilla Minus One. And I was thrilled to find out that he too finds a lot of his influences from his cat as well. So I don’t know what it is about Godzilla. But somehow, in the creator’s mind, at least the current ones, we’re taking a lot of inspiration from our cats.”
In Godzilla X Kong, there’s one particular shot near the beginning of the movie where the comparison becomes super obvious, when Godzilla curls up into an extremely cat-like pose while he naps inside one of the world’s most famous landmarks.
“There’s literally a shot in the film where Godzilla is curled up in the Roman Colosseum,” Wingard said before referring to a picture of Mischief that he had up on the wall. “And, you know, this picture here is the juxtaposition of, it was inspired by my cat and her cat nest. With Godzilla, you know, you’re always trying to find ways to juxtapose him in familiar iconic locations. And in this film, we had a lot of fun taking him all over the world.”
Godzilla X Kong stars Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Bryan Tyree Henry, and Kaylee Hottle, and it lands in theaters on March 29.
