Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire - Director Answers All

The debut trailer for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is out, and it raises a lot of questions.

Who is the big red ape? Why does Kong has a robot arm? How come Godzilla is purple? Thankfully, the film’s director Adam Wingard has answered all. Well, mostly.

On the mysterious, gigantic red primate, Wingard said in an interview with IGN: "We wanted to come up with an antagonist that would both be a match for Kong and Godzilla, and that's really hard to do. There's a lot more to this character and how he's a threat, and that's going to be something that's going to be fun to kind of dole out."

We first see the red primate as a baby, but by the end of the trailer it’s grown into a terrible, towering beast on a rampage. Where the 2021 last film saw Godzilla and Kong form an alliance to take down Mechagodzilla, this time it seems the primary antagonist is the scarlet monkey.

Wingard, who’s the first ever director to helm more than one project in the Kong/Godzilla franchise known as the ‘MonsterVerse’, also spoke on how to improve the titan team-up concept.

"As soon as the [last] movie came out and the audiences started to see it, I was like, 'You just can't separate these two guys again,'" Wingard said. "It's too exciting having them in one movie. And now, the next one has to be about the continuation of that relationship, which is going to be the team-up."

Wingard continued: "The skills that it takes to create a giant monster movie are so specific that you have to learn them, and only at the end of production was I like, 'Oh wait, now I know.’ I had all these different ideas of what I would do next time and how I could improve upon it."

Related: Godzilla and Kong Feature in First Trailer for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

And from the trailer we know those improvements include upgrading Godzilla’s colour scheme, leaning even more heavily into improbable CGI, and giving Kong a mechanized arm that seems to add pneumatic punching power.

There’s plenty more info to learn ahead of the release of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire on April 12, 2024.