"Godzilla vs. Kong: Rise of an Empire" grossed over 600 million yuan in China in 9 days

According to Maoyan Professional Edition data, the movie "Godzilla vs. Kong 2: Rise of an Empire" has been released for 9 days, and the total box office has exceeded 600 million yuan, with more than 14 million viewers, continuing to top the box office list of imported films in 2024.

Godzilla vs. Kong 2: The return of the monster movie

The secret of success: return to the essence, visual spectacle

The box office success of Godzilla vs. Kong 2 stems from its return to the essence of a monster movie. The film combines the two "top monsters" in American and Japanese film history to create a visual spectacle from beginning to end. Although it was criticized as a brainless popcorn blockbuster, it still gave the audience a surge of adrenaline and achieved great success.

The role of monsters has been greatly increased

Compared with the previous work in 2021, the second part focuses more on the monster fighting scenes. In the first part, the ratio of monsters to humans was about 30:70, while in the second part, the ratio was reversed, with monsters accounting for 70%. The human drama was weakened and became a tool, giving way to the monsters to avoid overshadowing the main plot.

A variety of monsters appear

In the film, many monsters appeared one after another, including Mothra, "Mini-Gun", spider monster Scylla, sea monster Tiamat, war bats, and "Barbie Godzilla" made a surprise appearance. The second half of the film was a bombardment mode, which made the audience very excited.

The director's original intention: to revisit the classics and create a pure monster movie

The film's director Adam Wingard said that he has been a loyal fan of monster movies since he was a child, especially the movies in the late Showa era (1980s) in Japan, which had the greatest influence on him. He admitted that "Godzilla vs. Kong" rekindled his love for monster movies and prompted him to watch every monster movie in the past. This also made him think about the original intention of making movies: "I tried to revisit, understand and make the kind of pure and shocking monster movies that I wanted to watch when I was a child."

China's box office performance: Reversing the decline of Hollywood blockbusters

In 2021, "Godzilla vs. Kong" earned 1.232 billion yuan in the Chinese mainland film market, ranking eighth in the annual box office list and second in the imported film box office list. Although the current "Godzilla vs. Kong 2" is unlikely to surpass the box office performance of its predecessor, it has reversed the decline of Hollywood blockbusters in China to a certain extent. In recent years, Hollywood blockbusters such as "Fast and Furious" and "Transformers" have long lost their box office appeal due to over-development of IP. However, "monster blockbusters" like "Godzilla vs. Kong" are still fresh to the audience.