Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire sees two of the best movie monsters team up once more. So what better excuse for us to recap on the best monster designs we've seen on screen over the years? And there are plenty to choose from.
The original Godzilla was inspired by nuclear fears in the wake of the World War II. Today, the Hollywood Zilla can be read as an environmental message, but it's also a monster we can root for, restoring the planet's natural balance. Meanwhile, Toho's Japanese Godzilla remains bad, and downright weird if we include the rapidly evolving Shin Godzilla.
Part of the success was undoubtedly thanks to the decision to bring in the Swiss artist H. R. Giger, who based the xenomorphs on his dark 1976 lithograph Necronom IV . Giger's design has a vaguely human form but it's different enough to feel genuinely alien, and terrifying enough to take Alien to the border between the sci-fi and horror genres.
Clive Barker and producer Chris Figg brought in Bob Keen and Geoff Portass from Image Animation and costume designer Jane Wildgoose to bring his vision of sadistic extra-dimensional demons to life. Wildgoose said Barker asked her to design costumes for four to five 'super-butchers' who were to have"areas of revealed flesh where some kind of torture has, or is occurring" and a"repulsive glamour.
It's incredible to think this was just a year after the original Clash of the Titans because the practical effects here are still terrifying today, and they're actually more convincing than the CGI used in the 2011 remake. There are animatronics that crawl like crabs or wriggle like worms, all moving in the right way for The Thing's particular form. Most of them were designed by Rob Bottin, while the Thing's dog form was the work of Stan Winston.