“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is almost here, and theGrio caught up with star Brian Tyree Henry ahead of the film’s release, breaking down his relationship to monster films, working with Dan Stevens and what he hopes audiences can take away from this blockbuster action-adventure film.
A follow up to “Godzilla vs. Kong,” the film continues the story after the two legendary titans went head to head in the previous installment. In the new film, the two must come together to face “a colossal undiscovered threat hidden within our world, challenging their very existence—and our own.”
Henry returns as technician and conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes, who is once again recruited to help save the world when a new threat is unleashed. For Henry, starring in these monster films is a bit of a dream come true. Recalling his childhood, he told us, “My problem was that when I watched monster movies, I had a floor model TV, you know, back in the day … I would sit too close. Like I was always sitting really close to the screen and turning them up.”
“I mean, they’ve always been there, right? They’re a part of our fabric,” he explained. “That’s a part of, cinema, period. It’s been over 100 years since these creatures have been around.”
With these new films, the tradition of monster films can continue but in an “elevated” way, with Henry saying they are often “for people who probably were like, ‘We don’t really watch ‘Godzilla’ like that,’ but now they’re like, ‘Oh, we actually really like this ‘Godzilla.'”
Both Henry and Stevens broke down how they fleshed out and humanized their characters in the film. Stevens explained that he believes it was something they “sort of discovered on set.”
“Obviously, I knew who Bernie was a little bit from the previous movie,” Stevens said, “but we’ve sort of created afresh, and bringing these two characters from very different worlds, as Brian and myself are, but finding that we actually have a huge amount in common as people and then, you know, finding that with the characters as well.”
Henry explained how the “MonsterVerse” films are about much more than monsters, saying that it’s “truly like holding up a mirror to society, to relationships, to who we are.”
“In the first installment it was ‘Godzilla vs. Kong,’ right,” he added. “So we just wanted to see a battle. We just wanted to see these two. But in this one, it’s like, well, what does it look like once all of that no longer matters? Who are we when we unite? What does uniting really look like? What does family look like? How do we fight for what we really believe in?”
“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” from Warner Bros. Pictures opens in theaters only on Friday, March 29.
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