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Godzilla may be deemed the King of the Monsters, but he’s not the only Titan in the MonsterVerse franchise who’s royalty… or at least, not anymore. Following 2017’s Kong: Skull Island, which took place in 1973, moviegoers got to watch the giant gorilla fight the enormous reptile in the present day during Godzilla vs. Kong. But along with this tale delivering a different kind of clash of the Titans, Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard has confirmed that Kong walked away from the movie officially holding his king title.
Throughout Kong: Skull Island and most of Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong is simply referred to as just that, but in the real world, we’ve known him as King Kong since he first rampaged on the big screen in 1933. Well, in the “Behold Kong’s Temple” featurette that’s included on Godzilla vs. Kong’s home release, Adam Wingard stated that once Kong sat on the throne inside the Hollow Earth temple, he achieved “royal status.” As the filmmaker put it (via ScreenRant):
… You really get to see Kong turn into King Kong.
To be fair, Kong essentially held king status on Skull Island, because aside from the Skullcralwers, none of the other monsters messed with him, and the Iwi people worshipped him as a god. Unfortunately, by the time Godzilla vs. Kong began, Skull Island was suffering through severe thunderstorms, which wiped out the native population, reduced Kong’s kingdom to ruins and necessitated that Monarch find a new home for the gorilla. That home ended up being Hollow Earth, which is where Kong’s ancestors came from. In addition to the throne mentioned earlier, that temple contained an axe that Kong later wielded in battle against Godzilla.
Now as far as Earth as a whole goes, Godzilla is still the undisputed alpha of the Titans, as evidenced by all those monsters kneeling before him at the end of his 2019 movie, as well as defeating Kong in Godzilla vs. Kong before Mechagodzilla showed up. Nevertheless, we can now officially call classify Kong as King Kong within the MonsterVerse, and by the end of Godzilla vs. Kong, he’d become Hollow Earth’s ruler. Maybe there will come a day when Godzilla and King Kong have a rematch, and if the latter emerges victorious, then he can become the new King of the Monsters. For now though, he looks comfortable as Hollow Earth’s monarch.
While it was initially unclear if the MonsterVerse would continue after Godzilla vs. Kong, with the movie having scored a solid amount of positive reviews and doing incredibly well on the commercial front, it’s looking like the franchise will go on. It was reported in late April that Legendary Pictures was courting Adam Wingard to direct another MonsterVerse entry, with Son of Kong one of the potential ideas being floated around. If that’s what’s selected, hopefully we’ll actually hear someone say “King Kong” during the story.
If Son of Kong, or any new MonsterVerse movie, is announced, we’ll be sure to let you know. For now, you can buy Godzilla vs. Kong on Blu-ray, 4K, DVD or digitally now.
