SenseiTeriyakiV wrote:My biggest complaint is probably just the fact that they aren't building up more before GvK.
From what i've seen, the key to a successful cinematic universe is a lot like a tree. The monsterverse is more like a stump.
At least they're doing better than DC, whose diagram would look like a plate of spaghetti. I mean, at least with their big vs. movie, they've actually given each of the participants at least one film beforehand.
vibramrunner wrote:I understand the premise here, but I don't know what else they can reasonably do before GvsKK. You have a.) Godzilla backstory, b.) Kong backstory, c.) big thing/fight/storyline that happens that directly affects one player and directly/indirectly affects both and d.) the climax where the stories converge.
I agree that there's not a lot else they could've done- after all, Godzilla vs. Kong has far fewer players than the Avengers to build up beforehand, and wouldn't have a lot more relevance to do repeatedly (especially Kong; contriving to get Godzilla onto Skull Island or Kong off will be hard enough once; to do more Kong films in-between would require even more back-breaking; repeatedly finding a way to either make this isolated location relevant to the wider world or tease its guardian off of it). I mean, I completely agree about the buildup of a cinematic universe generally, and what made Marvel successful- I'm just not sure it's applicable here because of the nature of this crossover.
Two things to consider, though:
-This is the exact number of movies in the franchise (unless you count Son of Kong) that the actual Toho series had... two Godzilla films and one Kong, followed by a meetup.
-Take any given pair of characters from Avengers (let's use the Iron Man/Thor fight from Avengers for now), and this is exactly the setup they'd had at that point. Like Godzilla, Iron Man had had two films (the second one introducing additional characters that would pay off later; Black Widow and War Machine... indeed, if, say, King Ghidorah comes back as a big bad in GvK while Mothra doesn't but comes back later, the analogue would be almost perfect for Black Widow appearing in Avengers and War Machine being saved for Iron man 3 and beyond), and like Kong, Thor (or Cap, or Hulk, for that matter), had had one.
In other words, if you strip out the films for characters not appearing in the two-character model, they've had exactly as much development as each of the respective characters in Avengers did. (That's part of why I get ticked off at the repeated 'maybe Kong saves people from Godzilla's careless rampaging' speculations; to my mind, Godzilla is the Iron Man here... the focus character, and the nominal hero against other challengers (though, like Tony, he has his rough edges and may cause some havoc or get into fights with other 'good guys' and sometimes end up in an antagonist role, he nonetheless is never meant to the villain). Of course, we'll see if KoM bears out that interpretation.)
All that said, I do envision Godzilla vs. Kong as more like the Avengers (or, loathe as I am to use an example from the Dumpsterfire-Comics-Cinematic-Universe, the Batman v Superman) of the universe, in that it's not meant to be the climax or culmination of the universe, just a first major stepping stone along a journey which is meant to continue longer. So I don't see the current setup as a failure of sufficient buildup, since what's being built up to is not meant to be the end-all, be-all of the franchise. However, series profitability, contracts, or simply creative team choices that I haven't heard of may render that belief wrong, too.
