Headscratchers / Godzilla vs. Kong

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Godzilla holding back against Kong?

• During their fight in Hong Kong, Godzilla was holding back before deciding to go all out on Kong? Was he not taking him seriously or something?
  • Well there is Alternate Character Interpretation as to which of the two was the aggressor and which was minding their own business, so I guess your observation lends evidence to the idea that Kong was the aggressor and Big Daddy G just wanted to finish off Ghidora... except this conflicts with the characterization Word of God established for Kong to explain why he didn't heed Ghidora's call in the previous movie (He doesn't care about what goes on outside his personal territory), so I guess it's a matter of which of two plot holes you're most comfortable with.
  • It honestly looks less to this troper like Godzilla was holding back, and more like, when it came to the end of the fight, Godzilla just had more successes which he was able to capitalize on better, lead to Godzilla triumphant. Under other circumstances, Kong may well have (though Godzilla's much greater experience fighting creatures his size certainly helped). But it's apparently common to read that fight as Godzilla deciding to quit messing around with Kong and stop him. On the other hand, the argument that Kong keeps getting in Godzilla's way has almost zero merit, only the Hong Kong fight could be said to have been started by Kong, and evidence for that is pretty flimsy.
    • in a recent AMA, the director did state that the battle went down hill fast for Kong because Godzilla got fed up of him.
  • This troper just took it as Godzilla recognizing that Kong was just a kid (relatively speaking, of course) and wanting to assert dominance without seriously injuring him. After all, it's not like most cases where Godzilla is fighting for his life or to save the world.
  • It may also be that Godzilla isn't fighting seriously, but only to get this big intruder off HIS turf, and determine intention.
  • Also, that Godzilla, unlike his opponent, can sense that he's got somebody else to fight in the vicinity, so has cause to conserve his strength and energy for later.

APEX's resources?

• As far as I'm aware, it's never explained how APEX was able to foot the bill for building, at minimum, dozens of Anti-Gravity vehicles, a massive subterranean superhighway that leads from America to Hong Kong, a few lavishly decorated secret bases, and a gigantic mech that could give Godzilla a decent fight, all while keeping the appearance of a for-profit tech company. MONARCH is a multi-government think-tank, and even they don't have the resources to pull all of that off. That's some serious Offscreen Villain Dark Matter.
  • It's explained in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) that the government never like Titans hence why they funded various weapons against them, including the Oxygen Destroyer. As long as Apex supports that belief, the government is more than happy to provide the money.
  • They may be getting government grants for R&Ding anti-Titan technologies, they may have successful and lucrative products on the market, they may have extremely wealthy private investors, or all of the above. It's not really important to the plot why the company can afford all this stuff, any more than it's important to the plot (most of the time) what Wayne Enterprises makes that keeps them in solvency.
  • Alternatively, since they somehow got the Ghidorah head last seen in the hands of an eco-terrorist group, they may have gotten the funds through less clean methods.
  • The Mentor/Big Good of this movie is an Alex Jones expy. Meaning that this movie runs on Conspiracy Theorist logic. So of course Evil, Inc. is going to have impossibly vast resources.
    • The movie in general also simply asks us to accept that humanity has in general become capable of building gargantuan structures in relatively short amounts of time, given the dome Kong is in only took a few years and is not treated as being particularly special despite being larger than any roofed structure real humans have made.
    • Seemed less like Jones and more like a generic-but-funny movie conspiracy theorist to me. This is a world where people know for a fact that there have been literally massive conspiracies going on for decades. Though it does seem funny that a guy who literally works for the biggest Titan conspiracy companies in the series to date scoffs at the podcast. Maybe because it throws in a lot of other conspiracies.
    • Also a 'lot' of what Berine says is wrong. Maddie even admits that most of his theories are whack in the novelization. He talks about lizard people, the Illuminati, and showers with bleach. The movie very clearly wants us to know that, even if he's right about Apex provoking Godzilla into attacking them, he's still batshit crazy.

Mechagodzilla's creation

• Okay, WHO in the right mind at APEX thought it would be a good idea to use the head of KING MOTHERFUCKIN' GHIDORAH as the basis for Mechagodzilla? Did anyone in that universe not remember that he was responsible for the catastrophic disasters that occurred in KOTM? Surely someone would've had to have second thoughts about using the Titan that nearly destroyed the Earth to create such a behemoth of a mecha.
  • Well, one generally assumes that dead is dead, and even if Ghidorah is technically alive in a cellular activity sense, surely his ability to be a one-dragon apocalypse vanished with the rest of his body. It's just a resource they can use to jump-start the innovations necessary to get Mechagodzilla up and running. They don't know they're in a Godzilla film and thus Mechagodzilla must inevitably be evil.
    • Well, no. Mecha G has been a hero just as often as a villain. My assumption for this movie, for example, was that it'd pull a Big Damn Heroes moment when Big Daddy G was about to get killed by Destroyah. The real reason using Ghidora's head to...power?... Mecha G wasn't a dumb move was because there was really no reason for them to suspect that the Monke Tech would pull his consciousness back from the dead.
• On a related topic; the last we saw of Ghidorah's head, it was being acquired by Jonah's eco-terrorists, men who willingly helped cause Ghidorah's reign in order to wipe out the plague of humanity. Here, it's in the possession of Apex, who plan to use it to kill off the Titans and let humanity re-establish itself as the apex species. How on earth did that come about?
  • This might veer into Wild Mass Guessing, but seeing as how Jonah was Genre Savvy enough to know that awakening Ghidorah and the other Titans wasn’t going to start the grand utopia his partner envisioned, it’s possible he and his men gave Kevin’s head to APEX knowing that whatever the company used it for would backfire and cause chaos.
  • Or they just sold it to Apex. Jonah's group likely didn't have the infrastructure, resources, or knowledge necessary to make the most of their find, and Jonah is mentioned to have been "trafficking in Titan DNA" before hatching his scheme in KotM, so it's entirely possible he simply sold Ghidorah's head to a company he knew full well didn't share his goals, because the massive payday would let him buy weapons and equipment and hire people who would.
• Also, what was the point of modeling a robot after Godzilla? Couldn't a different mecha from the Godzilla franchise have worked just as well?
  • While you are right, this train of thought will lead you down a deconstruction rabbit hole, ultimately arriving at the realization that a Giant Mecha is really just an oversized tank and thus has no real reason not to be shaped like one. Giant Mecha in general, and thus Mecha G in particular, require the same Willing Suspension of Disbelief that the very concept of a Kaiju does. Also, to my knowledge the only incarnations of Mecha G that actually had a reason to be shaped like Big Daddy G were the first one (had to perform a False Flag Operation from inside a lifesize Godzilla suit) and Kiryu (built around the bones of another Godzilla).
  • There are a few potential in-universe reasons for the shape though. They wanted something that could beat Godzilla, so perhaps they reasoned modeling it after Godzilla and making it stronger would be a good way to go, given Godzilla is the most powerful Titan on Earth. Also, the term used "replacing" could mean they were hoping that it looking a bit like Godzilla would cause the public to accept it more. "Hey, the Godzilla you loved turned rogue, but now we have a mechanical one you can look up to."
  • It's also have the potential fringe benefit that all the other known Titans (except Kong) are already greatly intimidated by Godzilla, so might show similar deference to a robot that looks sufficiently like him. The more readily they back down before Mechagodzilla, the less collateral damage from a confrontation.

Godzilla drilling into the Hollow Earth

• Godzilla uses his atomic breath to punch a hole all the way into the Hollow Earth. What was he intending to accomplish? Was he trying to target fire Kong all the way from the surface?
  • Either he wanted to take out Kong or destroy Kong's ancestral home. As long as no one abuses Hollow Earth energy, it's fine.
  • It seems like the Hollow Earth energy waking up triggered Godzilla's Goji-Sense, and he tunneled down more to figure out what the hell just went massively pear-shaped and what it means for his hunt for Mechagodzilla. Discovering Kong down there reignited the rivalry, so Godzilla basically called him out (or yelled at him "Nice Job Breaking It, Hero")
  • He sensed the massive spike in radiation as the axe-charger was activated and punched a hole straight through to see what was going on. He is implied to have spent time in the Hollows before, so likely has some understanding of what the charger was. Kong had activated a weapon that was used against Godzilla's kind, so in Godzilla's mind, this is a sincere threat.

Sun in the Hollow Earth

• Is the "sun" seen illuminating the Hollow Earth the planet's core itself?
  • I hadn't thought to ask where the light is coming from, but now that you mention it, that's probably the only logical explanation... not that anything else in this movie was logical.
  • According to the Hollow Earth myth, there is supposedly an internal sun inside https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth
  • I heard that the light could have come from the portals leading to the Hollow Earth. Granted this would mean that there's more than one light source or Sun though.
    • It would thus also mean that everything would have multiple shadows.

The Temple of the Kongs

• The cathedral-like shrine in the Hollow Earth: who built it? Were there humans in the Hollow Earth and the Iwi were their last descendants?
  • Hot take: given the absurd size of the structures, what if they were built by the Kongs themselves? Kong's ability to comprehend and communicate with humans implies that he possesses human-level intellect: what if the Kongs were actually more advanced than just being big apes?
  • There's a throw away line early in the movie suggesting the theory that Skull Island was a part of Hollow Earth that somehow came to the surface. And since we know humans exist on Skull Island, its possible humans used to (or maybe still do, we didn't see much of it) live somewhere down there and made that temple.
  • Considering that Godzilla has a similar temple of his own, presumably there was some sort of human or humanoid civilization down there that liked to build rooms for the titans.
  • I think the implication was that, yes, Kong's ancestors used to have a civilization and that they built that place.
  • It's very unlikely humans built anything in the true Hollow Earth given we're basically turned into paste once we cross the gravity boundary. Godzilla's lair seems to have been in a surface layer (since no gravity affects) and could be viewed as a city which sunk into the Hollow Earth. It's got lots of human scaled building and steps. Nothing in the Kong temple is small enough for a human. It's all Titan scaled. There's now reems of evidence that Titans in general have human level intelligence so it's not a stretch that some could form societies.
• If this troper remembers correctly, Aztec mythology states that humans originally dwelled underground before coming to the surface, tossing the rocks behind them as they dug their way up so that, by the time they arrived they had blocked off their path back underground.

Conceivably, with Hollow Earth being a thing in the Monsterverse, this myth might have more reality to it than we think?

Fire the depth charges?

• How the hell did they think depth charges would be a good idea? If anything the hydrostatic shock would do Kong more harm than Godzilla.
  • Who says that it was a good idea? They were desperate to free Kong from Godzilla's grasps so that was the only option they had.
  • You'll notice the depth charges arguably did do more damage to Kong than Godzilla. Kong basically passes out as soon as he gets back on the ship, while Godzilla is seemingly unscathed. All the charges did to Godzilla was make him let go of Kong.

Why not take the Hollow Earth entrance on Skull Island?

• In order for Kong's ancestors and the other island Kaiju to have reached Skull Island, theoretically, they would have had to have come from an entrance from the Hollow Earth to Skull Island. But apparently, that possibility is never explored in the film. They could have saved everybody the trouble of transporting him to Antarctica and avoid risking a confrontation with Godzilla by taking the Skull Island - Hollow Earth channel. Now unless that channel somehow collapsed or is no longer usable one way or another, I don't see why they don't just travel through that pathway.
  • Skull Island is apparently in the midst of being destroyed by the storm system that once protected it now engulfing it, those channels were apparently closed when that happened. It's only Monarch's containment facility keeping Kong safe there, and they note he's grown too big for that environment to sustain him any longer.
  • Also, they'd have to deal with Skull Crawlers if they went that route. Sure they wound up having to deal with Big Daddy G in the route they did take, but that just makes it a Morton's Fork.

Why didn't Nathan Lind recognize Ren Serizawa?

• Nathan Lind once served in Monarch, so he likely served under or knew the name Ishiro Serizawa. But unless he somehow not only never met Ishiro, but also never heard of him due to internal secrecy within Monarch about it's hierarchy, it doesn't seem logical that he wouldn't recognize Ren's family name Serizawa. Doesn't exactly seem like that common of a Japanese name.
  • He likely never heard about Ren even if if he knew Dr. Serizawa. Plus, the guy is drowning in sorrows so he probably didn't care.

How did APEX even get Kevin's head?

• The last we saw of the head, Alan Jonah's eco-terrorist group had it. How did APEX get it?
  • I can consider two possibilities:
    • One, the eco-terrorists couldn't really make use of the head, lacking the funding necessary to do anything involving science or experimentation with the head on a limited budget, so they sold it to a company that wanted it, being APEX. Quite possibly, they might have even known what APEX could and would do with it and that with Ghidorah's biology, the brain would take over Mecha Godzilla, maybe even advertising it to APEX.
    • Two, the eco-terrorists were found by APEX agents or someone aligned with APEX and were attacked and killed, with the victors claiming the head for APEX. Considering that in terms of ideals, APEX and the eco-terrorists are diametrically opposed, and that it's unlikely that the eco-terrorists knew about APEX's plans or of Ghidorah's biology (unless for the latter they actually could study Kevin's head to determine his biology), this may be the more likely possibility.
    • Another possibility is Jonah simply saw the kind of man Walter was a knew with an ego that big, anything he did with the head would blow up in his and mankind's face.
• It's revealed in the novelization that Jonah sold the head to Simmons.

Ghidorah's mind

• So is Ghidorah literally the Man in the Machine with his full consciouness, or did his telepathic waves simply command Mechagodzilla to go rogue? Especially considering the brain in question is Kevin's, yet Mechagodzilla's sadism and brutality is more in line with Ichi's personality.
  • Ghidorah's decentralized nervous system probably allowed the other heads' personalities to re-manifest in any remaining part of his nervous system.
    • Except this time it's only got the one head to work with. Which means that either A)it's just Kevin, B)The three personalities have done a Fusion Dance, or C) this isn't actually Ghidora, but a "newborn" clone of him.
    • In a Reddit AMA, director Adam Wingard clarified, saying that Mechagodzilla's consciousness was essentially the combination of whatever was left of Ghidorah and the robot's own A.I., which resulted in a unique being.

Why not just use the Oxygen Destroyer again?

• If APEX wants to get rid of Godzilla so bad, why don't they just request the US Military to fire another Oxygen Destroyer warhead at him instead of wasting a lot of fortune on the Mechagodzilla project? It's already proven in the previous film that it actually worked and Godzilla was temporarily killed until Serizawa revived him.
  • Oh sure, use the same warhead that brought an entire economy to ruin and aided the giant space dragon to wreak havoc over the world. Yeah, I'm sure that would make you the good guys.
  • Well, APEX isn't exactly the good guys here, and they're already willing to cross any moral line to make Mechagodzilla a thing, so...Besides, the giant space dragon surviving was something nobody expected, but it did work on Godzilla, so the argument still stand that it could still be an alternative.
  • That assumes that they had more Oxygen Destroyer laying around, or that more could be made within a reasonable timeframe.
  • Point of order, the Oxygen Destroyer didn't actually kill Godzilla. It weakened him, sure, but it wasn't even a mortal wound, as the scientists predicted that he would recover with enough time. The only reason they used the nuke was because Ghidorah was destroying the planet, so they couldn't wait for Big G to get better on his own.
  • Yes, it did in fact not killed Godzilla but it did severely weakening him to the point that he has to stay hibernated in a highly radiated underwater city while he's recovering. That city has since been nuked to oblivion when Serizawa detonated a nuclear warhead to speed up Godzilla's recovery as mentioned above, and we don't know if there are any other similar locales where Godzilla could use to rest up if the same thing happens to him again. Besides, he's vulnerable while recovering, so anybody could do anything they wish with the Big G while he's helpless to resist. All they need to do was getting one good shot at him with another Oxygen Destroyer warhead (or two, just to be sure, and if they can afford it). Since by the time of GvK, Ghidorah was already defeated (to the world's understanding, anyway), hose at APEX or anybody who don't want Godzilla around wouldn't have to worry about another apex predator taking over afterward.
  • Godzilla is noted for his ability to adapt and become harder to kill, and that his regeneration is part of that (it being implied this is also how he managed to outlive the rest of his species). It may be that after healing from it once, another Oxygen Destroyer would be far less effective.
  • Pure speculation, but if they wanted to pay homage to the original Oxygen Destroyer they could always claim the inventor of it killed themselves and took the secret of its creation with them.
  • The idea assumes that Walter could actually influence the government to use the Oxygen Destroyer, which he probably didn't. Besides given that Godzilla only attacked the Apex facility, using the Oxygen Destroyer would actually kill more people than he was. The second time he attacked it was in Hong Kong and I don't see the US government getting permission to use a Weapon of Mass Destruction in a foreign country. More importantly, Walter is an egomaniac. He's also very proud of MechaGodzilla and really wanted to see his creation brought to life. Given his hubris he no doubt wanted MechaGodzilla to be what killed Godzilla, so he could brag that his company created a weapon did a better job against the most powerful Titan on Earth with only a fraction of the colleteral damage.

Walking Nuclear Power Plant vs... Monke

• Anyone else honestly thought that Kong had a chance of winning? Not because of previous works, but in terms of the current universe? Just curious.
  • Their fights felt pretty even to me, at least when Godzilla couldn't drag Kong underwater. Kong's nimble enough to avoid Godzilla's Atomic Breath for at least a little while, and in an environment with cover and height that plays to his apeish strengths, he can really put the hurt on Godzilla. I honestly saw Godzilla's final victory as less "Godzilla stops holding back and utterly curb-stomps Kong" and more "pretty even, but Godzilla had a few more successes that he built upon more." Not putting Godzilla's victory entirely down to luck, but that in a hypothetical rematch, slightly different circumstances and choices could see Kong victorious.
    • The director confirmed the environment of the Hong Kong fight was designed to favor kong and that the battle was basically over once kong managed to piss Godzilla off.
    • To be fair, the humans never intended for Kong to actually fight Godzilla, only to lead them to something that could help them fight Godzilla. Godzilla has more combat experience, often times against more agile and equally intelligent foes, like the MUTOS and Ghidorah, which would serve him well against Kong, who is also heavily reliant on agility and intelligence. Kong's experience with fighting kaiju is more limited, primarily focused against skull crawlers, which lack ranged attacks and may or may not be as intelligent as other kaiju. As such, trying to evade a more dangerous attack is not on Kong's forte. Even after that, Godzilla has a heavier bulk and a more durable body, making him harder to put down.
  • It's brought up a few times they have archeological accounts that indicate Kong's species and Godzilla's species fought on even terms in the past (something confirmed in the Hollow Earth), so it's a reasonable assumption.

Big Daddy G's newfound disregard for human life?

• Why is Godzilla casually wrecking ships when in the first movie he went out of his way to tiptoe around them?
  • They were between him and Kong, and he was THAT determined to stay the alpha that he wasn't in the mood to be careful this time.
  • Actually Godzilla knows that these humans are heading to the Hollow Earth and use the energy against him. He's trying to prevent them from using it to power up MechaGodzilla.
    • I don't doubt Godzilla is smart, but I rather doubt he read the script. The only explanation the film itself offers is that Godzilla would sense Kong as a rival and attack him to fight for dominance. Attacking to stop them from getting the Hollow Earth energy would require A) Godzilla knowing that the Ghidorah signal he's picking up is being used to construct a mecha, B) that mecha requires Hollow Earth energy to activate fully, C) that Team Kong have decided to help Apex get the Hollow Earth energy and are using Kong to do so. That's approaching Bat Deduction levels of convenient. Besides, if Godzilla really wanted to make sure they didn't get the Hollow Earth energy, he'd either keep attacking even after they played dead, or simply head to Antarctica and collapse the passage (if knows everything else he'd have to know for this to work, he'd know that, too).
    • Godzilla knows Ghidorah well enough that his Healing Factor won't work without sufficient energy. And he knows Kong and his race's ancestral home and that place's energy source. Plus, he was merely stalling them long enough to finish his job.
  • While there are likely multiple reasons, the simplest one might be that Godzilla is simply that irritated in this film thanks to what he senses is being done at the Apex facilities, and likely getting more and more irritated as he can't figure out why he hasn't been able to find what he is sensing and whatever it is, is refusing to come out and fight him (it's noted he used threat displays during the first attack, presumably in an effort to get a response from the enemy he sensed). He's still not going out of his way to attack humans, but in his frenzied and confused state he is no longer being as "careful" or restrained as he usually is. And in such an emotional state, those ships and Kong basically became something to redirect his frustrations on (i.e. he couldn't find Ghidorah but he could find Kong).
  • Looking at it from Godzilla's perspective, it's not a huge stretch to assume that both APEX's activity and whatever Kong was being hauled around for (seemingly headed straight for the location of a hollow earth entrance, notably) were connected somehow.
  • The ships do fire at Godzilla. He only attacks them after they start shooting him and when the engines are cut he leaves them. It's implied that even though he was in a bad mood, if the humans hadn't panicked and shot him that he would have ignored them.
  • Gareth Edwards said during the production of Godzilla (2014) that Godzilla was the punishment we deserve. Maybe he's finally delivering that punishment.

The Other Titans

• What has become of Rodan and all of the other Titans? Are they dead?
  • It is mentioned in the end credits of KOTM that Rodan went to a volcano somewhere north of Fiji to make a nest there, and Mothra is probably in the process of being reborn inside a newfound gigantic egg. As for the other Titans, some of them are labeled as 'defeated' by Godzilla in the opening credits of GvK, but we don't know if they simply went into hiding or being killed outright, leaving their fates uncertain.
  • The sheer size of the Hollow Earth also makes it possible they went back there for one reason or another. While we are told it had been 3 years since a Titan sighting (presumably meaning outside of sightings made by the people who actively study and track Titans), nothing is said about any Titans dying (beyond the "defeated" scenes noted above). Of course, some might have been killed in MechaG tests, but its implied Skullcrawlers were the ones used for that.
  • Apparently there's a tie-in comic that reveals Godzilla ordered the others into hiding when he started sensing Ghidorah was still alive (seems rather unwise since even Godzilla was never a match for him alone).
    • On land, yes. But recall that in their underwater fight, Ghidorah was basically already dead until the Oxygen destroyer was used. The real headscratcher is why Big Daddy G never tried luring Ghidorah to the water in all the thousands of years they'd been battling before.
    • Maybe he did fight him in the water before. Ghidorah must've gotten trapped in ice somehow, after all.
    • In that fight Godzilla had attacked when Ghidorah was focused on chasing the humans. Ghidorah's not stupid (well, two thirds of him aren't, at least). Under normal circumstances he would probably catch on and know better.

Jia signing titan's names

• Jia communicates via sign language, but she mentions the names "Godzilla" and "Kong"? There are ASL signs for those?
  • In a world where Godzilla and Kong exist, it would make sense that there would be.

Skullcrawlers as test subjects

• How come APEX uses Skullcrawlers as cannon fodder for Mechagodzilla? Especially since they aren't particularly strong compared to the other titans. Is it because they're just the most plentiful titan species and thus readily available?
  • There is indeed the convenience of them being the most plentiful large titans on the surface (albeit limited to one island), but they also mature quickly (given how being overrun with them was such a threat on Skull Island), meaning they can be raised and replaced more easily.
  • Also, to the best of APEX's knowledge, the only other titans that ever had a breeding population in modern times were the MUTOs. Even if the pair from the first film weren't the last ones, those things can't breed without a Godzilla carcass to lay their eggs in. If Godzilla were dead to provide such a carcass for mega-lab-rat breeding purposes, APEX wouldn't need Mechagodzilla in the first place.

Can Titans die of old age?

• We have never seen a titan die of old age on screen? And all titans deaths we are aware of have been caused by battle as far as I am aware? Plus Godzilla is implied to be very very old (10s of thousands if not millions of years old). So is there a chance that Kong and Godzilla have become eternal guardians of their worlds/the world so long as they do not die in a fight?
  • It seems to be dependent on the species. The ones still active are the ones who don't age past adulthood, can hibernate for exceptionally long periods of time to extend their lifespans, or have (or had) active breeding populations. Kong and Skullcrawlers seem to be in the last category, the MUTOs seem to be in the middle, and Godzilla and the other Titans waking up in KotM seem to be the first type.
  • Didn't the first movie establish that Big Daddy G's been around for millions of years?

Godzilla drilling into the Hollow Earth Part 2

• There more I think about that scene, the more it bothers me. I mean, not only the amount of power that Godzilla would need to generate for his atomic breath to slice through the 2900 miles of earth's crust in seconds is absurd (he better have a matter-antimatter reactor down his gullet, pure atomic energy won't cut it) , but if he was capable of that then there is no way he couldn't one-shot any of his foes. I mean, are we supposed to believe that the carapace of a MUTO is stronger than thousands of miles of soil and rock?
  • The reason why the MUTOs were successfully able to survive against the Godzilla species is because they had their EMP abilities to neutralize their atomic breaths. If the MUTOS didn't have that, they would have been wiped out.
  • Also, assuming that gravity effect happens to Godzilla's breath the same way it did to Kong and the vehicles, Godzilla didn't have to power through that amount of the Earth's crust. Recall that the gravity effect caused whatever is effected by it to move 1,000 miles in two seconds. Upon effecting the Atomic Breath, it would have pushed through a great deal of the distance without any further power input from Godzilla.
    • Problem with that explanation is that in the movie we see simulation of how the gravitational thingamajig works, it is not an uniform layer beneath the surface (which makes sense, else it would have been discovered much earlier by anybody drilling for mining or scientific purposes) but a system of conduits distributed all over the planet. Of course it could be handwaved that out of sheer luck one of those was located right beneath the area Godzilla was... but man, that's awfully convenient for the plot!

Kong's axe

• What's it's axe head made of? A lot of people claim that it is a dorsal spike/fin from one of Godzilla's kin, but at least once in the movie it makes a clear metallic sound while hitting something. Was it actually made from that floating mineral ore, and Kong's ancestor made the axe shaped it into a form resembling something from their sworn enemies?
  • Who's to say that Big Daddy G's plates aren't metallic? Most radioactive elements are metals, so maybe some of his radioactive fuel gets used as building material for his spines when it runs out of juice.
    • The above can be considered true since there's a(n endangered) species of sea snail with a shell literally made of iron.

Selective Hollow Earth portal?

• When the team enters the Hollow Earth portal in Antarctica, they go through a weird portal thingy that is said to have crushed the lead's brother in an earlier attempt. But then in Hong Kong, Big Daddy G tunnels right down to the Hollow Earth with his atomic breath and roars down at Kong. And then both Kong and the team return to the surface relatively quickly without any issues. Whatever happened to the portal? Is it only present in certain entrances?
  • I took it that the portal/gravity effect happens regardless of whether you are going to or leaving Hollow Earth, and that it explains both how Godzilla was able to blast all the way to it and how Kong got back to the surface so quickly (recall that when hitting the portal it pushes whatever is in it 1,000 miles through the Earth in two seconds, so Godzilla didn't need to blast all the way through on just his own power). Titans have such tough bodies that they can handle the forces involved (that they can function at all shows their bodies laugh at regular rules of gravity, square cube law, and such), while the humans still had that one remaining shielded vehicle.
  • I don't think it was a portal, but more of a sort of singularity that acted as a point of gravitational inversion between the surface and the Hollow Earth. Such things are theorized (but not completely proven) to exist in outer space in locations where gravitational shifts are common.

Apex copy-pasting Hollow Earth energy

• This might just be because I know nothing about energy physics (for example, I don't even know if that's what you would call it) but apparently Apex just needs to know the wavelength of the power source in the Hollow Earth and then they can just make enough of it all on their own to power Mechagodzilla? How exactly does that work?
  • I recall there being text on the big computer screen stating they were "synthesizing" the energy, presumably turning some other resource they had direct access to into a Hollow Earth energy equivalent once they knew the energy in detail. That doesn't explain how they could do that, let alone on a massive enough scale to power Mecha Godzilla, but then again humanity in these movies has clearly advanced to pretty much magical levels of technology.
    • Okay, but that doesn't really address the main point of my question: they don't have enough energy to power him directly, but they do have enough energy to make enough energy to power him? (Again, this could just be that i don't know science)
  • Chalk it up to the film being a gleeful Genre Throwback to some of the Showa-era silliness of Godzilla, and try not to think about it so much. Is it at all scientifically plausible? Hell no. Does it let Godzilla and Kong have an epic tag-team fight with Mechagodzilla? Hell yes.
  • I took it as being less the energy source they were interested in than that it could be an extremely efficient method of energy storage. They have enough power, but if they use ordinary batteries Mechagodzilla will need a recharge too soon to actually do much, much less defeat Godzilla. From the data they gathered they were able to learn enough about this energy source to synthesize it, giving Mechagodzilla a dense enough energy source that he can actually finish a fight before needing to recharge.
  • The novelization explains the energy is somehow biological, almost like living cells. They're able to replicate it precisely because of that.
  • If I remember correctly, it's stated that the titans are drawing on the Hollow Earth energy to maintain their impossibly biology, and they can obviously do that on the surface. So once they know the correct frequencies, APEX can tap the Hollow Earth energy radiating up to the surface, just as the titans do.

Why couldn't Godzilla defeat Mechagodzilla by himself?

• Because after defeating Kong he gets easily pummeled by Mechagodzilla.
  • Two main reasons. First, he was tired after blasting a hole to the Hollow Earth and defeating Kong. Second, Mechagodzilla was specifically designed to kill Godzilla.

Is Maia stupid?

• Why would she have her men shoot at Kong when they're inside the H.E.A.V. causing him to grab it and crush it when they could've flew around him and go through the hollow earth portal. I mean it's not like he was going to grab them if they just flew around him and not shoot at him.
  • Her main character trait is that she is foolishly entitled. In her mind why should she have to move around him, he should move for her.
  • And the temple is collapsing around them, she barely escaped from a bunch of monsters into the relative safety of her vehicle, there's a monster between her and her most immediate escape — which, by the way, was tunneled by another monster — under the circumstances, blind, crazy, stupid panic is an acceptable reaction.

Why did Kong look inside the H.E.A.V. before crushing it?

• When he grabs it with Maia still inside before he casually crushed it.
  • Most likely to make sure there were no humans he actually cared about inside.

Lack of radiation poisoning

• How are the squishy humans able to survive Hollow Earth's radioactive atmosphere?
  • Same reason Godzilla can stomp through cities and not leave them as uninhabitable wastes of land: not all kinds of radiation are deadly, or some are only deadly after a long uninterrupted period of exposure.
  • We aren't told if the radiation levels in the Hollow Earth are even uniformly high or not. Certainly in Godzilla's temple, they were dangerously high, but that was not truly the Hollow Earth, more like Hollow Earth adjacent.
  • In the novelization it is made clear that neither Godzilla nor the power source in the Hollow Earth are actually nuclear in nature. Godzilla has the ability to convert conventionally understood radiation into some unknown kind of energy that is emphasized, in italics no less, to not emit the same sorts of particles and waves of nuclear energy. No idea why Godzilla's temple in the previous movie was radioactive, though; it could be that this movie's new energy source was meant as a sort of retcon to make it so Godzilla isn't himself dangerously radioactive.
    • The temple is filled with radioactive elements because it's a lounge for Godzilla to feed and heal up. The impression I got is that Hollow Earth energy is a byproduct of titans themselves, metabolizing natural radiation into a useable form and putting it back into the environment to encourage growth.

How was Madison able to identify a clutch of Skullcrawler eggs on sight despite never interacting with the monster on screen?

• Monarch has been studying Skull Island for decades. Presumably, that kind of thing would be accessible information for her.

The name "Skullcrawler"

• In Kong: Skull Island, Marlow says he just made up the name "Skullcrawler" in an attempt to make them sound scarier, and their true name is never spoken by the Iwi. Was this officially accepted as their name in-universe?
  • The novelization of Godzilla vs. Kong states that the Iwi called the Skullcrawlers "Halakrah", which translates to "Persistent Enemy".
  • We can presume it took a while for the Iwi to actually admit the Skullcrawlers' real name to Monarch, and until that happened, Marlow's nickname kinda just stuck around until it became the official moniker.
  • In the opening credits of the film, Skullcrawlers are given the name “Titanus Cranium Reptant”.

Kong drops his axe

• Does Kong abandon his axe entirely? Or does he simply drop it to signal a truce with Godzilla but brings it with him to the Hollow Earth?
  • Take a closer look, Kong sees the axe that represents everything that went wrong with him and Godzilla and to their entire race. So, he drops it now wanting to end a war that shouldn't have happened.
  • He probably dropped it to leave behind (unless needed in the future) since we don’t see it in in the mid credit scene and it was a sign of a truce/him submitting to Godzilla.

Why did Ilene protest to the harvesting of the Hollow Earth energy when it was the primary goal of the expedition?

• They have just discovered it and to Ilene, it is too early for Apex Cybernetics to swiftly harvest and capitalize on the energy since it is still a power source beyond human understanding.
• Not only that, Ilene must have pegged that the Hollow Earth energy isn't like coal or oil but the Earth's life force. She did not want to permanently damage the Earth all because for a new energy source.

Can Godzilla breathe underwater?

• Yes, gills are a well known example of the Monsterverse Godzilla.

Does Mecha Godzilla feel pain?

• Probably not as feeling pain requires nerves with the robot is unlikely to have (although with Ghidorah’s brain in control of Mechagodzilla anything’s possible)

Is Mothra really dead?

• According to the news story in the credits of King of the monsters, the egg was discovered inside "Mothra's territory," and was taken to a Monarch research lab for further study. By the time that Godzilla vs. Kong rolls around, it hasn't been forgotten, either. One episode of Bernie's podcast, Titan Truth, carries the title "Mothra Pregnancy Theory," and has the following subhead: "So who's the baby daddy?"
  • Mothra dying and being reborn/reincarnated via her eggs is a major aspect of her character.
  • An after credits scene featuring the Chen twins standing before a new Mothra was considered for both the previous film and this one, but neither movie ended up using it.

How did Bernie's wife die?

• In the novelization, Bernie's wife Sara is revealed to have been an employee of Apex since before Godzilla even became known to the world at large. She eventually quit her job only to die in a car accident a week later. While going through her things, Bernie found a note she had hidden revealing that Monarch had commissioned Apex to create a bomb to use against Godzilla, prompting Bernie to get a job at Apex to go undercover and to start his podcast. The novelization also reveals that this weapon was none other than the Oxygen Destroyer.

How does the Hollow Earth power source work, exactly?

• In the novelization, it is elaborated that it is some kind of unknown, quantum energy that Godzilla himself can produce. This energy's radiation is not dangerous, though Godzilla is stated to be able to convert nuclear energy into this unknown energy. Further, when Apex receives data from their drone in the novelization they also receive Godzilla DNA, which is used to quickly synthesize strange-looking cells that resemble neither plant nor animal cells but are capable of generating the energy. These energy-producing cells are what is used to power Mechagodzilla.

What caused the storm that killed the Iwi?

It's the same storm that continually rages outside of Skull Island, according to a graphic novel a titan called Camazotz caused the storm to cover Skull Island itself.

• Skull Island has a natural storm constantly surrounding it. The impression I got was that Ghidorah's awakening supercharged it, ravaging the environment.

What happened to Hollow Earth's human population, and why aren't there any signs they existed?

• The novelization includes a sequence in which Jia recounts an ancient legend of her people and the Kongs warring against the Godzillas and their human followers only to be driven from the Hollow Earth to the surface. In the ancient Kong stronghold there are signs of human handprints along the walls, including high up (which is taken to mean that they were held up to do so by ancient Kongs). In the epilogue, Dr. Ilene Andrews is studying writing left behind by the ancient humans.
  • There were also intended to be more scenes exploring the Hollow Earth that were cut from the film, including ruins of human made civilization.

What was Walter Simmons' dream?

• "This is how we, as a species, win," Simmons begins. "You see, 10 years ago, when Gojira was first revealed to the world, I had a dream. And in that dream, I saw one thing..." He never gets to finish. Just then, as Ghidorah's consciousness takes control, Mechagodzilla turns towards the window overlooking the launch bay. "And that beautiful, amazing thing was..." Simmons continues, right before Mechagodzilla kills him.
  • His dream was for humans to be the single Apex species. It's right there in the name of his company.
  • I think it was the Titans bowing to him - Simmons' plan, implicitly, was to use Mechagodzilla as an artificial Alpha to control the Titans, not wipe them out.

What happened to James Conrad and Mason Weaver?

• They were recruited into Monarch after the events of Kong: Skull Island. While Mason's fate hasn't been revealed much after that movie, the comic Godzilla: Aftershocks actually features a much older Conrad. He's much older here and is one of the organization's senior members alongside Dr. Serizawa and Vivienne Graham, and witnessed a battle between Godzilla and the MUTO Prime in Guam. There was an altercation with Alan Jonah that Conrad took part in, but Jonah escaped.

What went down between Kong and Godzilla's ancestors, and where did that axe come from?

• In the novelization, Jia recounts to Ilene an ancient legend that her people were worshipers of the Kongs who opposed the Godzillas and their own followers. The axe was presumably made by the Kongs from a dead Godzilla.

Where Is King Ghidorah’s Third Head?

• One of Ghidorah’s three heads was in Apex’s Hong Kong base, and another was presumably inside Mechagodzilla itself. So where’s the third?
  • Ghidorah's three heads (along with his body) was completely burned to ash by Burning Godzilla. The implication in the film is that two pieces of Kevin's severed head (recovered in The Stinger of KotM) were used to make Mechagodzilla, the skull for the "cockpit" and probably the preserved brain in the Mecha. The novelization apparently states that one skull served as the cockpit and a second, complete skull served as the control interface within the Mecha, but this raises more questions than it answers.

How Does Mechagodzilla Work?

• Apex Cybernetics dedicated itself to a singular mission in the era of titans – creating a weapon that can protect humanity by going toe-to-toe with any monster. To that end, they build Mechagodzilla, but the actual logistics and practicality of the robot are fuzzy, to say the least. From a strictly mechanical level, there’s a lot about the beast that doesn’t seem to make much sense. Why does it have spikes? Why does it have a tail? Why do they need Ghidorah’s brain to power it?
  • From a out of universe standpoint it looks like Godzilla because it's Mechagodzilla and that's what Mechagozilla has always been. For an in-universe reason one can say it's because it was designed to kill Godzilla and to replace his role. One way to do that is to design something that is like Godzilla but better.
  • As for needing Ghidorah, it's likely because the human brain is simply not designed to control a body that big, and thus using Ghidorah's brain, which is evolved to do that, bypasses the issue entirely.
  • Ghidorah's brain is for the telepathic communication the heads shared. It was stated the necks were so long they wouldn't be able to efficiently communicate without telepathy (granted, this exposition comes from crazy Conspiracy Theorist Bernie, but it is still exposition). Essentially, two parts of Ghidorah formed the basis for a telepathic control signal that would let a human pilot control Mechagodzilla. Without Ghidorah, Apex would have had to invent Electronic Telepathy; with him, they just had to figure out how to hack it.

How Did King Ghidorah Survive?

• The version of Mechagodzilla that appears in this film is powered, and partially controlled, by the brain of King Ghidorah. Apex Cybernetics has one of Ghidorah’s skulls wired to a computer system connected to Mechagodzilla, which is then tapped into by a human pilot. Bernie mentions that a second skull must be present somewhere in the robot itself, as Ghidorah’s heads can communicate with one another telepathically. but it doesn’t explain why a skull, even a titan skull, can continue exuding basic brain functions years after death.
  • Because neurons were also preserved inside it and Ghidorah's biology is so strange and alien that what's dead, even for Earth Titans, doesn't exactly apply to him.
  • The novelization essentially says that Ghidorah's consciousness wasn't limited solely to its brains, but spread throughout even its bones. Director Adam Wingard also clarified in a Reddit AMA that Mechagodzilla's mind was a combination of what was left of Ghidorah's consciousness and the A.I. built into the robot, creating a unique being.

How was Kong able to roar back?

• When Godzilla stomped on his chest twice pinning him down and then bellowed in his face to get him to submit Kong was somehow able to roar back wouldn't he be trying to gasp for air instead?
  • You're assuming the damage inflicted was of a sort that would prevent him from roaring in that instance. All we know about the injuries his chest suffered is that they caused his heart to start failing.
• Probably through sheer force of will.

Question about Hollow earth's gravity

• Something I don't get but when Kong enters the hollow Earth portal in Antarctica he's free-falling but when Godzilla drills a hole down into the hollow Earth to challenge Kong he doesn't enter a free fall when he goes into Hong Kong instead he just climbs out of the hole that Godzilla made.

The Kong dome on Skull Island

• So they kept Kong confined in a dome on Skull Island with an Artificial Outdoors Display. Question is, how did they get him there? How did they build something so fast if the storm on Skull Island came so suddenly? And how do they sustain him there, given that his diet appears to be other giant monsters such as Mire Squids?

Godzilla doesn't finish the job

• Godzilla's entire motivation was to destroy the last remaining traces of Ghidorah, but he seems to stop after Mechagodzilla is destroyed and leaves to the sea, even though Ghidorah's skull is still in APEX HQ and still intact, just deprived of a body to exert his will? If he was really that hellbent on disposing of his nemesis permanently he'd have like, smashed the skull at APEX to make sure, it's just in the mountain close to Hong Kong and is probably still emitting telepathic signals.
• It’s possible Godzilla did finish the job and destroyed the brain off-screen before he departed and we didn’t see it so as to not undermine Kong’s victory.

Bernie's podcast

How could Bernie publicly spill his scoops on APEX without ever being found out? A teenage girl managed to quickly figure out his identity using very basic detective work.

• One gets the feeling Bernie and his podcast are not popular, probably ignored by the general public (besides Madison, coincidentally) and considered the ramblings of a crazy man.

Godzilla drilling into the Hollow Earth Part 3

• This is something that I think was explained somewhere, but I'm not sure: how did Godzilla figure out that Kong was in Hollow Earth? Is there some sort of connection he has between the dorsal plates in the temple? Did Godzilla "detect" the power signatures spiking? There's something that just didn't seem clear to me.
  • The energy Godzilla uses/produces appears to be the same as the Hollow Earth energy source (hence why his breath weapon powers up Kong's axe), so the implication is that the activation of the Hollow Earth energy resonated with Godzilla's own. The dialog in the movie specifically states its this energy he sensed, not Kong specifically. However, having lived through the Kong vs. Gojira species war, Godzilla would have likely known/remembered what such a energy activation meant, and even if he didn't he still knew that "something" was messing with that power source and it enraged him enough to want to attack it.

Question about Hollow Earth?

• Let's go by the movie geography; our planet is a big matrioska.By diagrams shown, this Hollow Earth would be by the Earth's core, thousands of miles deep. They enter from a portal in Antarctica. And yet, Godzilla later in the movie burns a random hole in the ground in Hong Kong deep enough to reach it, roars through it and Kong hears it, and easily climbs it to reach the surface. Even admitting you can do the magic "1,000 miles in 2 seconds" warp anywhere, the scale is ridiculous.
  • What is the question here exactly?

why didn't Kong crush Mechagodzilla's head

• When he rips Mechagodzilla's head off why didn't he crush it afterwards because can't someone use the monster zero Ghidorah aka Kevin's skull inside Mechagodzilla (as Bernie said they're must be a severed head inside Mechagodzilla) to recreate him the other skull was used by Ren as a cockpit but still. Or why didn't Godzilla disintegrate the severed head with his atomic breath. Also didn't Ghidorah just lose one head the one Godzilla bit off before the Oxygen Destroyer was deployed when did he bite off another of King Ghidorah's head because near the end he disintegrated him into ash when he became Burning Godzilla.
  • In order: Kong didn't destroy Mechagodzilla's head because he didn't know about Ghidorah being involved. Godzilla may have destroyed it offscreen - or maybe Mechagodzilla itself destroyed the skull in the APEX facility to cut off any remaining connections to the humans. And there was only a single Ghidorah skull used in the construction of Mechagodzilla, but it was divided into pieces to get the telepathic connection.

question about Kong's axe

• In it's charged up state it does alot of damage shown when Kong cuts off Mechagodzilla's limbs how was Kong not able to cut off Godzilla's leg when he stabbed him with the axe all it left was a giant wound and it didn't faze him only when Kong punched him in the axe wounded leg later. Hypothetically would the charged up axe have killed Godzilla if Kong got him in the head with it if it didn't explode on impact due to the Gman's atomic breath overloading it.
  • Mechagodzilla was a stronger combatant than Godzilla overall, but may not necessarily be more durable than him, being made of mundane earthly materials instead of whatever ambiguously divine matter titans are composed of. It got a lot of good hits against Godzilla and Kong but never seemed to no-sell anything they threw at it.

Kong's status as an Alpha Titan

• Was Kong's title as a rival Alpha Titan to Godzilla ever stated in the movies prior to this one? Kong being referred to as an Alpha in this movie thoroughly confused this troper. Though in Kong: Skull Island the post credits scene has Brooks saying that Kong isn't the only "king" around but it didn't feel like that was an explicit classification of Kong's Alpha status.
  • In Kong: Skull Island, Monarch's understanding of the titan hierarchy was severely limited, given they weren't sure most of the titans even actually existed. Kong himself is never mentioned (though he is seen in the credits) during the film version of King of the Monsters, so there's no opportunity to state he's an alpha. It would have become clear to Monarch during those events though, since they monitor Kong and would have seen he did not come under Ghidorah's influence, something only other alphas like Godzilla and Mothra can attest.
  • That makes sense! This troper's curiosity is satisfied.

Other

• Mechagodzilla roaring like Ghidorah serves to highlight whose brain is in control...but one stops to wonder why Mechagodzilla is even designed to be able to make such vocal noises.
  • Seeing as Mecha G was designed to not only kill, but replace Godzilla, the ability to vocalize was likely included in order to facilitate its control over the other Titans.
  • Considering how Ghidorah's cockpit skull was producing psychic Ghostly Wails all on its own (which is in fact what draws Madison's attention to the Skull Room in the first place), and seeing how Mechagodzilla has a piece of Ghidorah inside the actual Mecha as a receiver, it's not improbable that when we hear Mechagodzilla producing Ghidorah vocalizations, the Mecha is emitting them telepathically via its onboard Ghidorah receiver rather than physically vocalizing them.
• So how exactly does Kong interact with the little girl at such a scale? Ann Darrow being doll-sized to 2005 Kong makes their interaction plausible, but Kong is basically holding hands with an ant at one point...
  • Very carefully.
• Kong was stated in the film set in the 1970s to be a "teenager" and "still growing". The thing is...he is 300 feet now, but only 100 feet in Kong: Skull Island, which is barely waist-high and more the height of a toddler.
  • Which also brings up another issue: if an adult Kong is THAT big, how did the Skull Devil/Ramarak/The Big One manage to kill both Kong's parents if it was just barely bigger than 1973 Kong and far smaller than 2021 Kong?
    • #10 was almost as big to Mechagodzilla as Ramarak was to teen-Kong. Evidently, skullcrawlers can get MUCH larger than we first thought.
  • Ramarak had other Skullcrawlers to assist him during that time. Kong's parents were basically the only giant apes left and Kong was literally born in the middle of the carnage. His parents deaths fueled the hatred within Kong, giving him the aggressive urge to actually kill any other Skullcrawler in his sights. Since Kong was still growing as an adolescent and grew more and more active. If there was no Skullcrawler that isn't Ramarak, it was easy pickings for him, and it would just leave him and Kong to duke it out even if Ramarak gave him a difficult fight. It's heavily implied that Skullcrawlers seem to go through the same Stronger with Age thing just like what Kong went through.
  • It's also implied Kong is abnormally huge for a Kong, as neither of his parents skeletons are nearly that big.
    • Actually it seems that this is true only in recent times since there's evidence that members of Kong's species have faced off against Godzilla's species in the distant past.
  • Also, who says Kong isn't also affected by nuclear radiation?
    • That's assuming there's even nuclear radiation for Kong to feed off on in Skull Island. From what we know there isn't and that Kong just grew naturally. Considering how big he is compared to his parents and that cave paintings indicate that another Kong fought against a Godzilla before, Kong is very likely to be the first of his kind to actually reach full adulthood in years.
• What right does Kong have to call himself King of the Hollow Earth? He just showed up, found a throne, and declared himself king by implication. Isn't that the definition of Manifest Destiny? Sure members of his race once lived there, but saying that this gives him the right to call himself King of the Hollow World is kinda like saying that it gives any old Native American the right to call themselves the President of the USA.
  • I think Kong was just too enamored to be within a place that was once called home to his race.
  • It's clear that Kong becomes King of the Hollow Earth because he's an Alpha Titan same way Godzilla is. From what the movies have shown, Alpha Titans have a natural ability to subjugate other Titans like how Ghidorah managed to turn all of Earth's non-Alpha Titan monsters to his side with just one call. Godzilla shows this same feat later where, despite being tired after his fight with Ghidorah, he managed to get Rodan and the rest to submit to his rule with just a glare. While Kong hasn't shown this exact ability himself, his strength as an Alpha Titan isn't really in question considering his battles against Godzilla. Unless another Alpha shows up within the Hollow Earth then there isn't going to be much challenge to Kong's hold on the title.
  • Kong showed up in Hollow Earth and within minutes killed two Warbats, which considering their immense size are likely the apex predators of the region. If that doesn't give him the right to declare himself King, nothing does.