The latest installment of the ever expanding Monsterverse films, Godzilla: King of the Monsters finally brought us some of Toho’s classic heavyweights like King Ghidorah, Rodan and my favorite Mothra. This was a welcomed sight for Godzilla fans as the first film, Godzilla from 2014 had introduced us to new adversary, MUTO. With the film’s upcoming release on Blu-Ray/DVD, Rue Morgue had the opportunity to speak with the director of the film Michael Dougherty.

One of the topics of the film was the process of the design of the classic Toho Titans that were featured, as well as the new Titans that were introduced in the film: Behemoth, Scylla and Meuselah. What is interesting is that if it was up to Dougherty, he would have preferred to have used other classic Toho monsters like Anguirus, Gigan or Biollante. So why go through all the trouble of creating new ones? He explains in his interview.

“Toho was involved with the designs of the Big Four: Gozilla, Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah, but I had total freedom with the designs of the new titans. Originally I hoped to use other monsters from the Tohoverse, like Anguirus, Gigan, or Biollante, but every single Toho monster comes with a price tag — something we didn’t have the budget for. So instead of moping about it I decided to embrace the opportunity and add new titans to the gallery: Behemoth, a sort of wooly ice age titan; Scylla, an ancient armored cephalopod based on Greek myths; and Methuselah, a hybrid monster that is part animal, plant, and rock. I also brought back a female MUTO only because I loved Gareth’s designs from the previous film and like the idea that other members of that species might have survived. So as much as I would have loved to bring other Toho beasts into the curtain call, designing original monsters was a ton of fun. I spent months with our VFX crew looking at dozens of different sketches and coming up with backstories for each of the animals — talking about how they moved, what their natural environments might be, how they would hunt or fight etc. But the best part has to be seeing how much the fans embraced the new titans, creating posters for them, sharing fan art on social media, etc. I’m especially glad that Behemoth seems to be everyone’s favorite because he’s definitely mine. Mammalian kaiju are so rare!”

It turns out that Toho didn’t mind letting Legendary and Warner Bros. use their characters as long as they paid for them. Something that as we can see by the comment above by Dougherty, they did not have the budget for. This of course led them to create the monsters that were featured in the film. This in my opinion was probably the best move as a lot of fans would have probably found it a disservice to features so many classic characters in one film. I look forward to seeing if in the upcoming Godzilla Vs. Kong film, there will be any other classic monsters.

Would you have liked to have seen other classic Toho characters in the film? Or were you happy with the new Titans that were introduced? Let us know in the comment section below!

Legendary/Warner Bros. Pictures’ Godzilla Vs. Kong currently has a theatrical release date of March 13th, 2020. Godzilla: King of the Monsters is now available on digital platforms and will be released in Blu-ray/DVD August 27th, 2019.

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Source: Rue Morgue