10 Most Paused MonsterVerse Moments
2. The 1998 Godzilla Reference
As stated previously, Roland Emmerich’s take on Godzilla was an unmitigated failure and it is now regarded as one of the worst movies from the 1990s. However, despite the film’s shortcomings, the marketing department at TriStar did their job brilliantly, with a set of enticing trailers and poster designs.
One such poster was so good, that this year’s Godzilla vs. Kong paid homage to it during the film’s final fight. As Godzilla is battling MechaGodzilla, the great lizard falls to the ground, and we cut to an extreme close up of his eye, in a shot that matches up nicely with a poster from 1998 that does the same.
The MonsterVerse has made plenty of references to the classic Toho films, so it’s nice that they threw in a little easter-egg to probably the worst movie in the entire franchise. Godzilla vs. Kong is expected to be the last film in the MonsterVerse (for now at least), so if ever there was a time to make it, it was now.
This moment was also heavily paused when it was briefly shown in an international trailer for the film, as it gave audiences their only look at MechaGodzilla before the film’s release. Granted, you can barely make out its face and you only really see its glowing eyes, but this tiny moment confirmed long-standing theories that the Ultimate Destroyer would be the real big bad of the movie.