Why Godzilla vs. Kong's Runtime Is So Short, According to the Director
Godzilla vs Kong director Adam Wingard explains why the film's runtime is under two hours despite fans hoping for a runtime closer to three hours.
Godzilla vs Kong director Adam Wingard explains why the movie's runtime is a little less than two hours. After years of anticipation, the MonsterVerse Titans will finally meet on screen and battle it out. Legendary's most recent iteration of Gojira was introduced in 2014's Godzilla, directed by Gareth Edwards. It was announced in 2016 that, eventually, Godzilla would once again meet King Kong face-to-face in an eventual sequel, planned for release in 2020 at the time.
Kong was then reintroduced three years later in Kong: Skull Island, another hit for the studio that led to Godzilla: King of the Monsters being released two years later. With Godzilla vs Kong's impending release in theaters and on HBO Max, years of storytelling will come to a head when the two Titans share the screen for the first time since 1962. Fans expecting a film the size of the monsters in it, though, find themselves a bit disappointed.
Godzilla vs Kong's reported runtime clocks in at 1 hour and 53 minutes, leaving some fans scratching their heads as to why such an epic movie could be so short. Wingard explains that this is on purpose, telling Variety that he prefers to keep his films under the two-hour mark. The director also says that if Godzilla vs Kong were to run for three hours, it likely wouldn't include an additional hour of the Titans duking it out.
A lot of the fans online were all asking me is this going to be a three-hour film? When it was announced that it was a little under two hours they immediately thought — when is the director’s cut coming out? I like movies under two hours. I think if you do a movie over two hours, you better have a damn good reason for it to be that long. At the end of the day, if you’re going to make this movie into three hours, you’re not going to get an extra hour of monsters fighting. You’re going to get an extra hour of people talking about monsters.
Each previous MosnterVerse film has hovered around the two-hour mark so it's no surprise that Godzilla vs Kong does the same. Fans may have expected the film to be massive both onscreen and in its length, but that just isn't the case and it's likely for the best. Not only could it become repetitive to see an extra hour of both Gojira and Kong going at it, but it would also be extremely expensive to put together more of the epic battle scenes fans are craving.
An extra hour would also likely bring the exact things fans don't want - more of the human side of the plot. Wingard even acknowledges this, slyly nodding to the fact that the people behind the monsters have been the least loved aspect of the MonsterVerse films. Even Godzilla vs Kong's early reactions point out the fact that, while the battles are just what fans were hoping for, the subplots involving the characters on Team Kong and Team Godzilla are the least exciting part of the film. Luckily, if Godzilla vs Kong does well enough, fans could get more of the action they're craving in the future.
Source: Variety