While “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” may be remembered as a disappointment at the box office, its long-term legacy should be kinder — because it’s just about unfathomably weird and crazy for a big budget movie from a major Hollywood studio.
“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” sees the gargantuan beast return to do battle against some of his most famous rivals, led by the three-headed dragon King Ghidorah. Through it all, humanity is stuck struggling to survive the onslaught, while the mysterious Monarch agency does its best to learn how to communicate with the creatures.
The new “Godzilla” film, despite the seeming finality of its title, is not the climax of this series, but simply a ramping up toward to the true epic conflict that the MonsterVerse has been building toward — which will come in next year’s “Godzilla vs. Kong.” That film will see the two most well known giant cinematic monsters face off against each other. “King of the Monsters,” in fact, refers to Skull Island and King Kong several times, but we’re going to have to wait a bit longer to see that matchup take place.
Given that franchise hook, it would be natural, then, for “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” to contain a look ahead at what’s coming in a post-credits scene. So does “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” actually have one of those? Yes, it actually does, though what it shows us may not be exactly what you expect with “Godzilla vs. Kong” on deck.
Spoilers ahead for the post-credits scene. We’re about to say what’s in it.
You have been warned.
The post-credits scene takes us back to Isla de Mara, which is a ghost town after the crazy battle that took place there in the middle portion of the film. We see a fisherman escort bad guy Jonah Alan (Charles Dance) down a corridor and tells him they’re in a “brave new world” following the “rise of the King” — this guy seems to be somebody who deals in monster parts.
The fisherman takes Alan and his crew into a huge room that contains Ghidorah’s severed head — the one Godzilla bit off during that fight in the Gulf of Mexico. Alan looks at the severed head and says “We’ll take it.”
So no mention of Kong there, but this would seemingly hint at what the real conflict in “Godzilla vs. Kong” will be. It’s obvious at this point that the main event in that film probably won’t be Godzilla and Kong fighting each other, but rather teaming up to beat back some other threat. With Alan, the ecoterrorist antagonist of “King of the Monsters” taking possession of that head and presumably having some kind of plan for it, odds are good that whatever he’s up to will end up as the thing that ends up bringing Godzilla and Kong together.
“King of the Monsters” stars Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Thomas Middleditch, Aisha Hinds, O’Shea Jackson Jr., David Strathairn, Ken Watanabe and Zhang Ziyi. Michael Dougherty directed from a script he co-wrote with Zach Shields.