I’ve just about made my peace with Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla. Sure, it didn’t live up to that amazing Comic-Con teaser trailer, and sure, Aaron Taylor-Johnson couldn’t have been flatter as the hero and, let’s face it, when the entirety of Godzilla’s onscreen time can be contained in an eight-minute YouTube video that might be a problem. However, on a rewatch, I can at least respect the movie for treating its titular behemoth with the Old Testament shock and awe he deserves. All that’s why the Comic-Con trailer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters pushed all my kaiju-lovin’ buttons.
And, true to the promise they made when setting up this cinematic universe, we got a look at who everyone’s favorite radioactive mutant lizard will be throwing down with next summer. On screen were King Ghidorah, the three-headed monster renowned as one of the most destructive in Toho’s mythology; Mothra, one of the more environmentally inclined monsters and potentially the most visually haunting, and Rodan, who looks in this trailer to present a danger simply by existing – destroying houses in the same way a nuclear blast would simply by flying over them.
Those three creatures are all featured in the gallery below, which includes a number of screenshots pulled from King of the Monsters‘ first preview that take us up close to all those incredible moments.
Clearly, the studio knows the value of keeping the precise reveal of these monsters under wraps until closer to release, so in the trailer we got to see them encased in ice, shrouded in smoke and glowing in the distance. This fits in nicely with the way the human characters in the film react to them – as if they’re vengeful gods manifesting on Earth in revenge for the harm mankind has inflicted upon the environment.
It’s a hell of trailer, with Warner Bros. and Legendary staking out May 31st, 2019 as the weekend that some of cinema’s most iconic giant monsters come to town and commit more destruction than we’ve ever seen before. Right now, the MonsterVerse looks like one to watch, and we can’t wait to head into theaters for Godzilla: King of the Monsters next year.