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The Monsterverse introduced a striking Godzilla design in its 2014 reboot. They took inspiration from animals to create the broad, towering, expressive take on the King of the Monsters fans love. Depending on who you ask, Titanus Gojira is the tenth or eleventh live-action design. Most new iterations upgraded his destructive potential. Godzilla will evolve in Godzilla x Kong, but pink or otherwise, he’s already the King of the Kings of the Monsters.
Monsterverse Godzilla Has Some Absurd Feats
How strong is Godzilla? The answer is always how powerful he’d need to be to perform his latest feats. Kaiju franchises can compare their monsters but don’t generally provide Dragon Ball Z power levels. Fans can watch Godzilla grow from a local threat to a beast capable of sinking a continent. The Monsterverse made Godzilla into a planet-burster. The original 1954 film saw him visibly wounded by conventional explosives. The 1995 entry, Godzilla vs. Desotroyah, featured the King’s Burning form, which could have resulted in an apocalyptic explosion. Almost a decade later, Godzilla: Final Wars gave him a massive upgrade for his 50th birthday. That iteration was his mightiest before Legendary got the rights to the character. Monsterverse Godzilla, before and after his pink evolution, would outclass every other live-action variation.
Godzilla fans typically invent terms for their favorite Kaiju’s different iterations. The monster appearing in King of the Monsters and Godzilla vs. Kong is DougheGoji, after the 2019 film’s director. His physical strength is tremendous, but every Godzilla could bench press the Chrysler building. DougheGoji outclasses Final Wars Godzilla, or FinalGoji, in durability and destructive potential. It all comes down to two feats. DougheGoji survived the asteroid impact that caused the Permian Extinction and fired his atomic breath through the Earth. Depictions vary, but it’s implied he was within visual range of the estimated 72-teraton yield blast that killed the dinosaurs. Godzilla vs. Kong is less ambiguous on the second feat. He charges his atomic breath for a while, then uses the nuclear blast to burn through to the Hollow Earth. Those two feats are all Monsterverse Godzilla needs.
Pink Godzilla Is Strong for a Reason
Any long-running character will see their power fluctuate over the years. Superheroes accomplish feats that previous iterations would have found impossible. Godzilla’s power has always been relative. He’s either mightier than the other Kaiju, or he isn’t. There’s only been one instance of Godzilla fighting an earlier version of himself, and it was a gag to illustrate the weakness of Rolland Emmerich’s terrible film. Power creep, the process by which constant updates leave previous examples underpowered, affects Godzilla. He has gained abilities in almost every new iteration. The fact that the Monsterverse’s take on the character could defeat another example stems from an increased budget and desire for spectacle. It’s more capable because modern VFX technology can visualize more impressive feats. The minor city destruction of 1954’s classic is heartrending, but it doesn’t take the breath away from a world forever changed by Pacific Rim.
The Monsterverse is a shared universe in the Marvel model, but its growth came much faster than the original iteration. Legendary has the history of the franchise as a toy chest to play with. Every new development has ties to the first sixty years, even if many are too subtle for most to catch. In many cases, the mightiest feats of fictional characters often happen by accident. Adam Wingard didn’t compel Godzilla to burn a hole through hundreds of miles of solid and molten rock to prove he could. That scene summoned Kong to the third act showdown’s urban arena. The fact that it also canonically established Godzilla’s potential ability to destroy the Earth on two minutes’ notice is secondary. However unintentional, that feat of pure destructive power demonstrates how far the King of the Monsters has come as a global threat.
Godzilla was introduced as a living embodiment of justified fears of nuclear apocalypse. We didn’t need him to destroy the world to prove that point. Burning down Tokyo worked just fine. Later iterations saw him throwing other Kaiju, using his atomic breath to fly, or reaching a boiling point that threatened the world. Godzilla became a superhero shortly after his introduction. His evolution mirrors any other hero’s similar slow growth. Monsterverse Godzilla is the strongest live-action iteration of the character, and his pink form will only escalate his never-ending growth.
