Godzilla vs Kong Reveals Skull Island's Major Makeover

Godzilla vs. Kong takes audiences back to Skull Island for the first time since Kong: Skull Island [...]

By Brandon Davis

Godzilla vs. Kong takes audiences back to Skull Island for the first time since Kong: Skull Island hit theaters in 2017. This time around, the world which Jordan Vogt-Roberts' movie visited in a 1973 setting has undergone some significant changes. Not only has Kong grown quite a bit in the more than 40 years which have passed since the events of Skull Island but humans have come in and messed everything up for Kong and the island. This reveal is made clear very early in Godzilla vs. Kong but it's an interesting note for those who are invested in the MonsterVerse.

Mild spoilers for Godzilla vs. Kong follow!

In Godzilla vs. Kong, Skull Island has become a containment center for Kong. The Titan does not enjoy being kept in the controlled environment run by humans but thee humans are keeping him contained as a means to prevent Godzilla from finding him. As Rebecca Hall's Ilene put it, taking him off-site "would be a death sentence." This is something humans likely learned from the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters. In that film, set about 4 years before the events of Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla takes on other Titans to assert his dominance over Earth and emerge as the Alpha, the apex predator of the world. Godzilla would (and later does) see Kong as a threat to his dominance.

"The movie opens on Skull Island, which has changed a lot in the 40-something years since we last saw it in Kong," Godzilla vs. Kong producer Alex Garcia explained to ComicBook.com on the movie's set. "When the movie first opens, we are witnessing the beginning of a really massive event, a massive mission that is being undertaken to stem this global threat."

Skull Island's containment center is officially dubbed, "Monarch Outpost #236." Back in 1973, there was not much modern technology on Skull Island, at all.

"Even though Kong is a little bit different in this film, it's only because he's aged from the time of the last movie," Garcia said. "So he's a little more grizzled and all those kinds of things, but I guess what I'm trying to get at is that part of the problem with King Kong versus Godzilla, the original movie, is that we'd already established Godzilla, he looks basically like he did in the earlier films, but this was sort of a new King Kong."

The Skull Island sequence of Godzilla vs. Kong did use some of the same locations from Kong: Skull Island but also mixed in a considerable amount of computerized animation to bring the containment center to life. "It was a little bit of both, because there has to be the contained bits and then the jungly bit," Rebecca Hall told ComicBook.com. "So we had some sets and then we also go to go to Hawaii which for me was pretty... I wanted that to happen."

Have you watched Godzilla vs. Kong yet? did you see it in theaters or on HBO Max? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram!

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