Godzilla vs. Kong Discussion Thread - FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

[miguelnuva]

Well you can’t ever seem to say anything negative about the MV so I’m not sure how much merit any of your words carry….

Nine thousand and twelve posts, and you went through every single one of them to verify that?

Or is that another generalization?

Let it go Jnavs, he thinks Legendary was lying about their press release the other day because they sold shares off.

[shadowgigan]

Well Godzilla vs Kong got snubbed for best VFX

Not that I'm defending the Oscars or anything (I hate these award shows in general), but GvK's effects definitely had some very noticeably weak moments. Godzilla staring at the unconscious Kong through the burning wreckage of the battleship is the big one.



It looks more awful in motion. Something about it looks like a video game cutscene. I think it's the lighting and the way the fire is portrayed.

Then there's also the moments in the Hong Kong battle where monsters clip through buildings.

That's not to say GVK's effects aren't good overall, but best of the year? Ehhh... at least from what I've seen of this year, I'd give it to Dune.

I actually like this shot. Does this make me a cinema n00b?

[Thatguy4683]

^
I’m with shadowgigan, that shot is pretty great

[vastatosaurus]

the three spider-men looked like gummy worms in comparison to the VFX in their prior films.

That is a perfect description

[Spuro]

I actually like this shot. Does this make me a cinema n00b?

No, it doesn't make you a noob.

It's a shot that bugs me a lot, personally, but if you like it then hey, you do you.

[king_ghidorah]

So, examples were asked for….

The boat scene. Specifically Kong. As others have mentioned, when he’s been beaten by Godzilla but also more specifically when he snaps the restraint off his neck he looks like a video game.

Also before any of this, the scene of Kong eating the fish and then smiling looks….a little unfinished. Compare that scene to Kong eating the octopus in KSI for example.

Then there’s the scene of Godzilla sensing MG’s activation and turning in the ocean as the sun sets….it just looks a little plastic to me.

Then there’s phasing through the building.

The way the animation moves without weight (which I grant you can be a bit of a stylistic choice not necessarily indicative of bad anything per say).

The stuff at the end of G facing down Kong after defeating MG has to feature the worst G VFX out of any of the films. As others have pointed out, the lighting and everything else just combined to create something that’s really unpleasant to look at.

Sorry that this is so scattershot but it’s first thing in the morning….

There’s probably more but these are some of the most egregious examples off the top of my head.

[Voyager]

I can’t really find any shot of this movie where Godzilla really looks great.

[shadowgigan]

People on the internet are claiming that Andy Serkis played both Godzilla and Kong in this series. First of all, I wasn’t aware he played Godzilla, I thought that was someone else. Second of all, I was under the impression the studio did not utilize mocam for Kong. Can anyone verify this?

[king_ghidorah]

Serkis played Godzilla for maybe one scene in 2014. The scene where the building has fallen on him and Ford and him make eye contact.

Kong had mocap actors in KSI. Though I believe it was mainly body movement and no so much face animation.

TJ Storm did the mocap for Godzilla in most of G 2014 and all of GKOTM. To my knowledge, no mocap was used in GvK for either character

[miguelnuva]

Serkis did Godzilla in one scene in 2014 and did Kong in 2005. Someone could get confused by this and say he played them in this film.

[king_ghidorah]

Ah. Feel like I’ve been muted or something by someone lol. Oh well.

[miguelnuva]

Ah. Feel like I’ve been muted or something by someone lol. Oh well.

Hope your not talking about me.

[king_ghidorah]

Ah. Feel like I’ve been muted or something by someone lol. Oh well.

Hope your not talking about me.

Just feels like you’ve kind of breezed past my posts a few times now.

I know we don’t agree on virtually anything but I’m glad to see I am not blocked. It’s all good. Cheers

[vastatosaurus]

Second of all, I was under the impression the studio did not utilize mocam for Kong. Can anyone verify this?

That was a common knowledge because some articles described that GVK never had used mocap. And there weren't anything related to motion-capture department in the end credits.

But it turned out later that GvK actually generated Kong in mocap.

First of all, some mocap related credits were added in the imdb page after some time.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5034838/fu ... _=tt_ql_cl
(search "mocap" and "capture")

Matthew Jeng ... motion capture technical director (uncredited)
James Van Der Reyden ... motion capture td
Sinead Lau ... mocap production manager: Weta Digital

And there were more professional articles about VFX used in GvK:

https://beforesandafters.com/2021/04/15 ... -was-made/

https://www.artofvfx.com/godzilla-vs-ko ... nline-vfx/

https://www.awn.com/vfxworld/creating-m ... la-vs-kong

Just search "capture" on these pages.

Motion-capture was provided by frequent collaborator Allan Henry for Kong as well as the non-humanoid creatures. “Allan would act out some of the scenes in a mocap suit,” explains Clayton. “We could take that resulting motion, slow it down, and pose it differently to get more of a silhouette value while retaining all of the richness and nuances that plug into your mind as being real when you watch it. We were able to use the best of both worlds there.” Most of the shots required Kong to act rather than fight.

On almost all shots, our animation supervisor, Eric Petey, actually performed most of it in full body and facial capture. We did a full body and Faceware facial capture together for the majority of the shots that we did, because we wanted to have a real base. There’s always, of course, some kind of retargeting and keyframing you need to do, just because of the physiology being different. Eric would shoot a bunch of takes, and then I’d sit down with him, and we’d make selects. From there, we’d clean that up and hand that off to the keyframe animators.

Can you tell us more about the animation differences between natural titans (Godzilla, Kong) and the mechanical titan (Mecha Godzilla)?

Eric Petey: We had to approach the animation of the three titans quite differently. The two « flesh and bone » titans were more bound to both the expectation of what Kong and Godzilla have always been, and the fact that they are living creatures. Kong, in particular, is still a gorilla; even if he is over four hundred feet tall, we still needed to ground his animation in what is very familiar to most people. With that in mind, we used Scanline’s in-house motion capture stage to generate much of Kong’s motion and facial animation. Unsurprisingly there are many types of action, particularly in a fight sequence, which are impossible to capture without broken bones and lawsuits. Luckily there is no shortage of online videos featuring people doing insane things.

Godzilla’s animation, though not possible to motion capture, is well established with over sixty years of material to look back on. The challenges with his animation were related more to his anatomy. Finding ways around the limitations of his relatively short arms, and his back full of long spiky plates, was often a huge challenge.

So, they even revealed the mocap actor.

It's this guy:
https://gcm.co.nz/artists/allan-henry


To summarize, they used mocap for Kong in GvK. For Godzilla, no.

I don't know why these people were uncredited. That caused all of the misunderstanding. In fact, I found it hard to believe from the beginning that they didn't use motion capture in GvK. Because it's certainly much more efficient way to generate Kong's action scenes.

[shadowgigan]

vastatosaurus, thanks for that, I was too lazy/busy to look up all of this myself.I agree nearly 100% with everything you said. Don't know why the Andy Serkis rumor is being promulgated on Twitter. I suppose it gives people something to talk about.

[vastatosaurus]

These information had been strangely buried so far. Not commonly known in the fandom yet. You're welcome.

[DynomikeGojira]

Surprised TJ Storm didn't come back

[king_ghidorah]

Surprised TJ Storm didn't come back

That is odd. There were a few scenes where I felt Godzilla’s movement looked a little unnatural and would have benefited from mocap.

They did pretty good without it all thing considered though.

[darthzilla99]

Surprised TJ Storm didn't come back

That is odd. There were a few scenes where I felt Godzilla’s movement looked a little unnatural and would have benefited from mocap.

They did pretty good without it all thing considered though.

I'm guessing it was a cost savings measure. Mocap can be expensive compared to other cgi.

[Major sssspielberg!]

That does explain why Godzilla had a different vibe in GvK. It could just be me gaslighting myself but I definitely feel like TJ brought a nice continuity to Godzilla's portrayal between 2014 and KotM (which was nice given the tonal difference between the two).
Godzilla still works though, there's quite a few scenes where it makes sense in retrospect that he's a non-mocap creation but based on the "60 years of content" preceding GvK.