The truth behind Hollow Earth in Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire

“Once you’ve seen Godzilla and Kong have the most ultimate battle in ‘Godzilla vs. Kong,’ what’s next?” asks Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire director Adam Wingard. “The obvious answer is: the team-up … I like the idea of two people who are actually on the same team fighting because of a misunderstanding. There’s always gonna be this sort of uneasy truce to it all. They’re a buddy-cop duo.”  

But what could bring buddy cops Godzilla and Kong together, along with other legendary titans like Mothra? “Because of the humanity within Kong’s character, we were able to come up with a villain like the Skar King (a giant ape like Kong, but evil). It opened the door where we could tell that same ‘evil side of humanity’ story, but from the monster perspective,” says Adam. “In the way that humans have armies and weapons of mass destruction, the Skar King’s got his version of that, and it’s gonna take all the hero monsters in the world to band together to be able to stop him.” 

It’s a conspiracy nut’s dream: Scientists and the government are hiding a deadly war beneath the surface of the Earth from you! Monarch – the government’s crypto-zoological agency – is studying how super-apes, mutated by radiation, are waging war beneath our feet with monsters who eat nuclear waste. 

With Titan sightings making the news all over the world, we now bring you five mind-bending facts about the hidden world beneath us.

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1. Skar King is based on real cannibal killer apes

The Hollow Earth ape dictator Skar King mixes cocky human attitude, with behaviour and an appearance inspired by real-life cannibal and baby-killing chimpanzees – first brought to the world’s attention in Jane Goodall’s documentary films about the Gombe Chimpanzee War. 

Production designer Tom Hammock reveals, “Within the great ape community, where you have certain apes, particularly with the chimpanzees, that live off of hunting other monkeys, live off of hunting other apes. They have this look to them that’s unlike other primates. There’s something very primal, something really evil about them. They have this incredible strength. And so we really started looking at this one group of apes – that’s how they live, and that’s what they do – and drawing facial features, how they use their hands, things that they do, and these became the basis for our character. 

In animating Skar King, VFX Supervisor Alessandro Ongaro blended that intimidating and violent ape behaviour with the attitude and swagger of humans who rule through violence. “We wanted to give the Skar King this attitude – he thinks he’s the best in the world. He doesn’t care about anybody, doesn’t respect anybody,” Alessandro explains. “We wanted to make sure that this personality came through his body language. His walk was a little bit inspired by the orangutan, but with a lot of attitude. He’s the real bad guy in the movie. He has slaves that work for him. He feels invincible. When he fights Kong, there is no hesitation, because he knows he’s the strongest.”

2. Godzilla is just a big pussy

Production designer Tom reveals that director Adam Wingard was inspired to create the scene in which Godzilla curls up in Rome’s ancient Colosseum for a nap on the behaviour of his cat, Mischief. “Part of Godzilla’s journey, as we meet him in the film, is he’s preparing for this battle. So, he goes to sleep in the Colosseum. We originally didn’t know where to have him take his rest, his catnap, but we wanted to have him somewhere iconic,” reveals Tom. 

“Adam and I were brainstorming this over at his house, and Adam has this black cat named Mischief. Mischief would constantly sit there while we were working. And at one point, Mischief curled up in her cat bed, and we’re like, ‘Oh, my God, it looks like Godzilla in the Colosseum!’” 

3. Godzilla joins the Pink Pony club

Adam was also determined to bring a pink Godzilla to the big screen. “That I wanted to give Godzilla a new look, but I wanted to make sure that it was also motivated by something going on in the movie and that we would actually see the evolution happen within the film,” he says. “It’s just one of those things where my favourite colour’s pink. So it was only natural that I push Godzilla in that direction. Godzilla does change his skin. He becomes a new thing in this movie and this new design allowed us to push Godzilla a little bit into that Showa [1980s animation] era absurdity.”

Tom adds, “Adam was fascinated with the original art from a lot of 80s toy boxes … kind of the last era where original paintings were done for, say, He-Man or ThunderCats. So, we really looked at how colour was used – greens mixed with purples, the heavy use of primaries – and tried to bring that colourful language to this Monsterverse.”

Given that palate and the idea of evolution, Allesandro reveals of Godzilla, “After he evolves, his proportions change – Godzilla is a little bit taller and definitely leaner. The legs are more muscular, the arms longer, the head a little bit smaller and the upper body is more defined, which allows him to move a bit quicker. His skin is also slightly different. We kept the same basic colour and basic texture, but we added some extra spikes on the elbows, the head and the back, and also changed them. They are now charged with pink energy.”  

4. Hollow Earth is Down Under

Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire shot in Rio, Rome, Morocco, Iceland, Hawaii and Gibraltar. With Queensland in Australia taking a starring role for Hollow Earth’s jungle scenes. 

“I’ve always believed that the audience can detect real from fake, and even though they know Kong and Godzilla are not real, the more we can put Kong and Godzilla into someplace real, it’ll actually make them feel more real. The audience will be more connected to them,” explains producer Eric McLeod. “As we were doing our research early on, it came to our attention that the Daintree (in Australia) is the oldest tropical lowland rainforest in the world. Immediately when I heard that I said, ‘We have to shoot there.’ We sent scouts up there, and when the pictures first started coming back, they were just incredible – different plants and vegetation that we hadn’t seen in any of the films.”

“The process of shooting in Daintree, it was incredible, but it was a big logistical challenge,” admits Tom. “Daintree is about 24 hours’ drive from where we were based, and the climate’s quite extreme, in terms of rain, heat, leeches, ticks, snakes, cassowaries, saltwater crocodiles. We had watchers for saltwater crocodiles, specialist biologists keeping the cassowaries away, and just everybody having to suffer through the leeches.” 

But while the cast and crew suffered, production went all-out to protect the environment. “We actually came in and did a LiDAR [high-res 3D] scan of every single tree; then we designed our set to fit in-between these individual trees, so we didn’t have to harm a single one,” reveals Tom. “We created sets that could be broken down and carried in, piece by piece, then assembled to fit within the living trees … so we could get the incredible production value of this rainforest while being respectful to the forest itself.”  

5. It’s all about crystals, man!

But how do you get a tropical jungle without sunlight? Director of photography Ben Seresin explains, “In this film in particular we were faced with the challenge of if there’s no sun in Hollow Earth, which clearly there isn’t, where does the light come from? Adam had developed this idea that there were energised crystals in Hollow Earth that allowed us to have a source of light that was variable, could change colour, was sometimes bright, sometimes dark, sometimes very strong and dominant, sometimes very subtle in the background. In the story, there’s a very large pyramid that is comprised of many tens of thousands of glowing crystals within it. That’s really what it’s made of, so we got really excited early on as this gave us a great source of light. In contrast to the surrounding parts of Hollow Earth, which are really full of very green, very dense vegetation, we were able to create an environment which was vastly different, very colourful and alive.” 

Ben then shot footage of the real jungle in a way that concealed the sun as a light source. “By using a combination of smoke, shooting at specific times of day, shooting in the forest where the sunlight would only come through in very minimal amounts, we were able to bring in some degree of control over the natural elements.”

Would you like to know more? Climb aboard the Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicle (HEAV), because we’re about to go monster spotting. Stream Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire now.