Gojirafan2013
MemberBaragonMay-01-2022 7:09 AMFor the past two years, I’ve believed the chances of Legendary doing a humanless MonsterVerse movie were slim to none, as it would not only be too expensive, but wouldn’t be a guaranteed hit with general audiences. For the latter reason, I believed that general audiences wouldn’t be interested in watching Godzilla or any of the other Titans do monster-related stuff for two and half hours.
But after thinking about this for the past few weeks, I’ve come to believe that there may be a better chance of us getting a humanless MonsterVerse movie than I originally thought.
For starters, a lot of casual moviegoers, ever since G14, have criticized the MonsterVerse movies for having bland, two dimensional human characters that get in the way of the monster action. A lot of people only watch Kaiju movies for the monsters. So I imagine there’s a lot of people who’d want the movies to focus less on the human characters.
Second, ever since G14, the MonsterVerse movies have focused more and more on fantastical storytelling and the spectacle of the monsters fighting each other. With each movie, not only have the monsters gotten more and more screentime, they have also become more well rounded and personified. This especially holds true for Godzilla vs. Kong, where Godzilla and Kong are in the spotlight while the humans’ main purpose is to serve the story and develop them as characters.
Third, as a monster, Kong is anthropomorphic and relatable, making him able to carry long scenes by himself without a lot of human screentime. He’s also able to communicate with humanity via sign language.
Fourth, the people at Legendary have expressed interest in telling a story with very little or no human involvement. All the way back in 2019, Micheal Dougherty expressed his interest in directing a movie set in an age where humans and Titans coexisted with each other. Last year, Adam Wingard said he believes that if the MonsterVerse continues to be successful, it could eventually get to a point where the movies wouldn’t need to have human characters, as the monsters would be well rounded characters that could hold their own by that point. Max Borenstein, echoing Micheal Dougherty’s interest in a Godzilla: BC movie, has also gone on record saying that he wants to see Legendary make a movie that takes place in the ancient past without human characters involved.
The point that I’m making is that while I still believe the chances of Legendary making a MonsterVerse movie without human characters are small, I’d say that the chances of seeing one have gone up a little bit. To put things into perspective, two years ago, I would’ve believed the chances were like 0-20%. But now, I’d say they are 30-40%.
Even though the budget for a humanless MonsterVerse would be extremely high (I’m talking $400+ million), Legendary may decide to just take a gamble and see how it plays out. If, let’s say, the next solo Kong film with 50% human screentime is successful, maybe they’ll make another Kong film with 30% human screentime. Then, if the third Kong film is successful, perhaps they’ll take a gamble by making a fourth one with no humans at all. If Kong proves himself able to carry a large portion of a future movie, then he *might* have a shot at starring in a movie with no humans. But nothing is guaranteed.
TLDR: I believe the chances of Legendary making a humanless MonsterVerse movie are a bit higher now thanks to the general audience’s reception of the human characters in each MonsterVerse movie, the people at Legendary voicing their interest in telling monster-centric stories in the future, and Kong being relatable enough to carry scenes by himself in GVK. If we ever get a movie without humans, it’ll most likely be Kong-centric as he’s human enough to possibly carry a film on his own.
