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Who wins in Godzilla vs. Kong? Definitely not Hong Kong, as city is trashed in yet another Hollywood blockbuster

  • In the film’s new trailer, Hong Kong is used as a battleground for a climactic stand-off between the two titans, causing considerable collateral damage
  • It uncannily echoes Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 kaiju slugfest Pacific Rim, while Marvel’s Doctor Strange also left the city in ruins

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Godzilla takes a walk through Central on Hong Kong Island at night in the upcoming film Godzilla vs. Kong.
James Marsh

What does Hollywood have against Hong Kong? The first trailer for Godzilla vs. Kong dropped this week, and the city features prominently in the kaiju-fronted blockbuster.

The film expands on Warner Bros and Legendary’s ambitious MonsterVerse franchise, which began in 2014 with Gareth Edwards’ moody take on Godzilla , before continuing with the 1970s-set Kong: Skull Island (2017), starring Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson, and 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters , which starred Zhang Ziyi and added a host of other classic creatures to the mix.

Godzilla vs. Kong, directed by Adam Wingard ( Blair Witch , Death Note ), appears to use Hong Kong as a battleground for a climactic stand-off between the two titans, causing considerable collateral damage to our hometown in the process. But this is not the first time that Hong Kong has suffered at the hands of overzealous filmmakers – even Godzilla has visited these fair shores before, in Toho’s Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995).

The new trailer bears an uncanny resemblance to Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 kaiju slugfest Pacific Rim , which transformed Victoria Harbour into an octagon for one of its many plus-sized showdowns between beasts from an inter-dimensional portal beneath the sea and giant, human-powered jaeger suits.

Hollywood has frequently employed our scenic and aesthetically diverse city as a backdrop for scenes of grand-scale devastation. Michael Bay sent Mark Wahlberg and Stanley Tucci scrambling across the rooftops of Quarry Bay as they fought giant intergalactic robots in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), causing enough carnage to warrant holding the film’s world premiere at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre.

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