While Godzilla vs. Kong puts the focus on its two marquee Titans, the kaiju are joined by another fan-favorite monster to throwdown against: Mechagodzilla. And the design of the MonsterVerse's take on the mechanical behemoth was developed by acclaimed visual effects studio Scanline VFX.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Scanline VFX visual effects supervisor Bryan Hirota revealed that he and his team worked from initial designs developed by filmmaker Adam Wingard that had been approved by both Legendary Entertainment and Toho. For the prolific studio, this meant rendering a design of Mechagodzilla that was more agile and visibly functional in its multiple points of articulation. Also included are process photos from early renders to how Mechagodzilla appears in action in the finished film.
"Adam worked on the design with concept artists and worked out a design that he liked and got approved by Legendary and Toho; everybody signed off on this design. I know Adam wanted to have a more agile Mecha than the previous versions that [had been] seen," Hirota tells CBR. "We inherited a model that was approved and then our job was to sort of flesh it out and make sure all the joints could articulate without penetrating. We built in all these mechanisms to slide around and we put in all these additional pistons and gears in all of the joints, hands, feet and ankles. We beefed him up with all these weapons: We added shoulder rockets and back thrusters, we turned the tail into a drill and added the Mecha atomic breath laser. There’s this whole laser lensing thing that assembles inside his throat and it opens up before he fires; you can see it a few times in the fight but also when they’re developing it and he slices a Skullcrawler in half."
Using pre-shot backdrops in Hong Kong where Godzilla vs. Kong's epic, final showdown takes place, Hirota and the rest of the Scanline VFX team developed a new take on a classic kaiju, bringing the blockbuster film to an explosive conclusion. For Hirota, it was all a matter of staying true to the filmmakers' designs while making him appear as practical as possible in the movie.
"For us, it was taking an approved design and sticking within the design language and the basic model they had established but trying to flesh out details and weaponize him more than he was and just make sure all the points of articulation would function," Hirota continues. "There was some mechanical basis for him for the animations that Adam would want him to do."
Directed by Adam Wingard and written by Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein, Godzilla vs. Kong stars Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall and Brian Tyree Henry. The film is now playing in theaters.