gottatalktothefake wrote: ↑Sun May 23, 2021 6:21 am
I love how utterly decimated the equals argument got. Godzilla kicked his ass handily WHILE HOLDING BACK.
Depends on how you define holding back, though. I don't think Wingard meant to imply that Godzilla was pulling his punches, I think it's more like he was giving Kong a bit of a leeway by playing along with him. Wingard does imply that Godzilla could have finished the fight at any moment, but he let Kong run around and have a go at him because he was having too much fun.
I think how Godzilla was fighting in the first half of the HK fight is pretty much a testament to Wingard's statement; Godzilla could've just mauled Kong right then and there when he evaded Kong's first axe strike and got a grip on his neck, but he didn't. Instead, he stubbornly tries to charge his atomic breath up close, which allows Kong to break free and recuperate. Same goes for when Godzilla was knocked down by Kong bringing the axe down on his head; he could have just evaded like he did the first time, but he insistently holds his ground and fires his beam even as the axe strikes him. Godzilla probably went full-force with his atomic breath and was trying to kill Kong with it, but he has other ways to kill Kong as well. He's fully capable of killing Kong in a physical fight, but he chose to use Kong for target practice instead, despite being more of a melee fighter himself.
But yeah, both the commentary and the special features explicitly state that Kong is not Godzilla's equal. He does have some advantages that Godzilla doesn't have, but that does not mean that they're equal. By Wingard's own words, Godzilla never even saw Kong as a threat until Kong landed an axe blow to his face, and even after that he merely saw Kong as an annoyance, one that he could get rid of if he wanted to.
According to him, Godzilla is basically a godlike, unkillable being, while Kong isn't. Godzilla is fully capable of killing Kong and has no problem doing it if he wants to, but Kong has no means of killing Godzilla whatsoever, which is why Godzilla was never worried about losing. (According to Wingard, the only thing that came close to killing Godzilla in the entire film was MechaG's "Kiss of Death", and he still leaves it ambiguous as to whether Godzilla could have survived it or not.) Which means that Kong needs all the advantages he can get just to make the fight happen. And even then Godzilla's victory was pretty much inevitable, so the best Kong could do was earn Godzilla's respect, which he did. But in the end, Wingard says that Kong did acknowledge Godzilla as the boss, although he may not have submitted to him.