Why Kong Is As Big As Godzilla In Godzilla vs Kong

Now that the first Godzilla vs Kong trailer has released, many people are wondering just how Kong is as big as Godzilla when the King of the Monsters should be towering over him. It’s been seven years since the MonsterVerse launched with Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla and, while that was a necessary first step in introducing Western audiences to a new version of Gojira, things are much more different now than they were then. A new version of King Kong has appeared on-screen and dozens of new monsters have since joined the franchise.

As of the ending of Michael Dougherty’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, every Titan in the MonsterVerse bows to Godzilla, except for Kong. In the first (and so far only) Godzilla vs Kong trailer, the human characters have stated that Kong “bows to no one,” thus indicating that at least one reason the two iconic monsters fight each other is because Kong is refusing to accept Godzilla as the alpha predator, though it may not be the only reason, seeing as Godzilla and Kong’s species are ancestral enemies as well.

When Godzilla and Kong do eventually come to blows, as they do in the trailer, they will be relatively evenly matched because Kong is now just as big as Godzilla is. It’s unclear just how big Kong is exactly, but considering what’s shown in the Godzilla vs Kong trailer, he should be between 350-400ft, given Godzilla is 393ft (unless he’s grown in time since Godzilla: King of the Monsters). Kong was originally just 104ft tall in Kong: Skull Island, but he was a teenager then and, notably, still growing. Now that decades have past since the events of that film, Kong has grown into an adult, one who is considerably more powerful than he was when he took on the U.S. military.

What’s interesting is that there’s a scene in Kong: Skull Island that may go against Kong growing in size. When the human characters in that movie went deeper into the island, they discovered a graveyard with Kong’s parents, whose skeletons were roughly the same size as Kong was at the time. So either they were killed before they were fully grown, the idea of Kong growing larger was instituted later on, or it was an unfortunate compromise for the scene (to get everything on-screen at once).

Regardless of the specifics of Kong’s growth and how much he grows per year, he’s now larger than he’s ever been before. In King Kong vs Godzilla, the two monsters’ first and only fight thus far, Kong was 148ft tall, which remained the tallest version of the gorilla for 59 years. Kong was smaller than that in Kong: Skull Island, but now every version is dwarfed by the creature on display in Godzilla vs Kong.

About The Author

Mansoor Mithaiwala
(1885 Articles Published)

Mansoor Mithaiwala is Screen Rant’s TV Lead Editor. He originally joined the site as a freelance writer on the Lists team before moving over to News and Features, eventually becoming an editor in 2018. Over time he’s done quite a few different things, including helping launch gaming on the site, often handling news, features, and guides simultaneously. Now he sticks primarily to movies and TV, and spends way too much time looking at analytics. It sure seems like he’s put his Political Science degree to good use, huh?

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