Christopher Nolan’s film baffled audiences – all they wanted in this most bewildering of years was to see a giant ape and a dinosaur going at it for 15 rounds
In any other year, Godzilla vs. Kong could be filed as just another bloated, unoriginal franchise flick. But this hasn’t been any other year. It’s a year that has seen trips to the movies stolen away by a global pandemic, as all blockbuster releases have either been postponed or shifted to a streaming-only release. This being the case, Godzilla vs. Kong has been welcomed as a thunderous return for the big-screen experience. And the numbers show it. The fourth film in Legendary’s MonsterVerse raked in more than £206m ($285m) at the worldwide box office during its opening days, the highest debut of any American film in the pandemic era. There is a strong chance that it could outperform MonsterVerse’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which was a financial disappointment in the pre-pandemic era in 2019, grossing $383m worldwide during one of Hollywood’s most lucrative years.
The joy with which Godzilla has been hailed contrasts with the muted response to the highest-performing Hollywood film during the pandemic: Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. After a seemingly endless number of delays to its release, Tenet was hyped by both the industry and the press as the film that would “save cinema”. For good reason: it was a new big-screen outing for a director who pushes the technological limits of film-making, bedazzling audiences with advancements in visuals, sound and cinematography. Everything Nolan touches turns to gold, it seems.
