‘Godzilla 2’ Director Michael Dougherty Just Revealed a Potentially Big Callback to the Original
Production on Godzilla: King of the Monsters is currently underway, and this morning director Michael Dougherty sent a message to fans of the franchise: be on the lookout for Easter eggs. He tweeted out a photo of a prop that’s a major callback to the Godzilla film that started it all.
It’s the Oxygen Destroyer, the same weapon used against the beast in the original 1954 Godzilla. There’s no telling what kind of appearance it’ll make in the movie, whether it’s integral to the plot or if it’s just one of those little things that might appear in the background of a couple shots, but either way it’s very cool to see this movie bringing back some of that iconic Godzilla history.
The Oxygen Destroyer does exactly what you’d expect it to: essentially, it removes all the oxygen from one area, asphyxiating any creature that has the misfortune of being within its blast radius. In the 1954 film, our heroes debated whether or not to use what amounts to a weapon of mass destruction, arguing that while it may kill the kaiju, it’s the kind of thing that could be used again, against something else — like people. Kinda like, you know, that other thing that happened in Japan nine years prior.
We know that Godzilla: King of the Monsters will feature our scaly friend going up against multiple other upsettingly-large creatures, so much of the plot may focus on humans trying to figure out what the heck to do while these god-sized terrors duke it out in the streets of major cities. Maybe the Oxygen Destroyer is their ultimate solution. Or maybe it’s one of those things that pops up once off to the side of a shot and is never seen again.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters hits theaters March 22, 2019.