The new preview for Godzilla: King of the Monsters combines footage from the film with the classic Wizard of Oz song, “Over the Rainbow”. It’s the latest trailer for the Godzilla (2014) sequel to juxtapose footage of the movie’s kaiju wreaking havoc on the planet (or one another) with soothing music, as a way of making the whole thing feel more operatic and sweeping. The trend began with King of the Monsters’ original San Diego Comic-Con trailer, which was set to the classical tune “Clair de Lune”.
King of the Monsters itself is the third entry in Warner Bros.’ MonsterVerse, following the Godzilla reboot and 2017’s Kong: Skull Island. The movie pits Godzilla against a trio of equally-massive opponents in the forms of Rodan, Mothra, and Godzilla’s greatest enemy, the three-headed King Ghidorah, in a winner-takes-all battle for supremacy over the planet. And yet, thanks to its marketing, the sequel feels less like a down and dirty giant monster brawl and more like a symphony of chaos, as these Titans clash and claw at one another to the death.
Case in point: the newest King of the Monsters promo is set to “Over the Rainbow” and is quite literally titled “Beautiful”. Check it out for yourselves in the space below.
As this new promo emphasizes, King of the Monsters sees humanity join forces with Godzilla, in an attempt to stave off their extinction and stop the other Titans from wiping out human civilization. (Or, to quote Ken Watanabe’s Monarch scientist Dr. Ishiro Serizawa from the second King of the Monsters trailer, humanity becomes Godzilla’s “pet”). That feels like a natural evolution of the Godzilla reboot, which concluded with the big guy actually defeating the other MUTOs in the film. Godzilla has long oscillated from being humankind’s savior to its enemy in his many, many previous movies, but for the time being it seems he’ll be fighting for Team Humans.
Beyond that, King of the Monsters continues to look like a pretty visually gorgeous Godzilla film in this new promo. Writer-director Michael Dougherty (Krampus) has said he tried to combine the grounded texture of the Godzilla reboot with Kong: Skull Island’s vibrant colors in his sequel, and the results seem quite spectacular right now. There’s still the concern that King of the Monsters will ultimately get bogged down in shaky hand-held camerawork and frantic editing that makes it near-impossible to appreciate the dazzling visual effects shots. Thankfully, at the moment, that doesn’t appear to be a problem here.
MORE: King of the Monsters Set Photos - Every Story Reveal
Source: Warner Bros. Pictures
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