Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard reveals he shot enough footage to make the latest MonsterVerse film five hours. Godzilla vs. Kong is out now and doing big business at the box office for Hollywood. In the United States alone, the film set a Hollywood record for best opening day since March 2020.
It's always interesting to see the scenes that don't make the final cut of film, and director's cuts will take that one step further by including many of those cut scenes in the longer edit. While the MonsterVerse doesn't have any director's cuts, there are deleted scenes, both released and unreleased. One such deleted scene saw Godzilla franchise actor Akira Takarada's cameo in 2014's Godzilla. Sadly, the filmed scene was never released, not even as a bonus on home media. Unsurprisingly, there is deleted material from Godzilla vs. Kong as well, but sadly, it doesn't sound like there will be an extended version of the film incorporating the cut content.
In an interview with Den of Geek, Adam Wingard says he "absolutely" could make a lengthy director's cut of the film. However, he says he's not interested, and completely satisfied with the final version.
"There’s certainly enough footage to make a five-hour version of this film, I’m sure, But making a longer film is easier than making a shorter film in a lot of ways. For me, this is the version that worked the best, and I don’t see any reason to do a director’s cut. Probably the only thing if, 10 years from now, somebody said, ‘Hey, do you want to do a director’s cut of Godzilla vs. Kong?’ I would probably just use that time to have another 40 days in the sound mix, because I just love that kind of thing."
Wingard goes a bit into some of the cut content, citing Lance Reddick's role being far smaller in the final version. The director notes when something in the plot is tweaked, it affects scenes, negating their ability to fit. Ultimately, Wingard says he wanted the film to be two hours or under, and the cut content "wasn't supporting the movie as a whole." It's very interesting to hear plot and actor content was cut from Godzilla vs. Kong. Iron Fist star Jessica Henwick was revealed to appear in Godzilla vs. Kong a while ago, and even said in a 2020 interview, "I got to work with some great actors." But, she is nowhere to be seen in the film.
Godzilla vs. Kong's brisk runtime certainly helped to keep a big focus on the monsters. The film has been well received, and was officially Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. However, the common criticism is the human element and it's not hard to see why. A majority of the humans simply serve to get either Kong or Godzilla from one place to the other, and suffer from being underdeveloped. For example, Ren Serizawa is the son of Dr. Ishirō Serizawa, yet this relationship is never referenced in Godzilla vs. Kong. Perhaps some of the deleted content could have been beneficial in deepening the characters. Hopefully, some of the deleted scenes will make their way to the Godzilla vs. Kong home media release.
Source: Den of Geek