Before Gareth Edwards became famous for making Godzilla, the filmmaker was best known for his work on the 2010 indie film Monsters. That feature felt like a bit of a test run for Edwards’ take on one of Kaiju cinema’s most enduring creations, even if it was quiet and restrained where the Godzilla films of old were often boisterous and destructive. Monsters garnered so much love from the general public that a sequel seemed like a viable idea – albeit without Edwards sitting behind the camera -- and you can see the first trailer above.
Tom Green (no, not the comedian who gave us Freddy Got Fingered…) has stepped in to guide the follow up film, Monsters: Dark Continent, through the arduous gauntlet of production. Today we’ve got the very first trailer and the following logo for his take on the material, thanks to the folks over at The Flickering Myth.
If there’s any truth to the old saying about the value of first impressions, then Monsters: Dark Continent appears to be in good shape. Tom Green’s film looks to be completely different tonally than Gareth Edwards’ original offering, upping the level of action, the size of the cast, and the amount of monsters shown on the screen. You know what they say about sequels – go bigger or don’t bother. While this might disappoint fans of the original Monsters, it should help win over those folks who thought the first film was too subtle for its own good.
Green appears to have taken the sequel maxim to heart, offering up a tale that appears to draw its inspiration from classics like Aliens to more forgettable knock-offs like Battle: Los Angeles. The trailer introduces a small group of soldiers who are tasked with rescuing another group who’s gone missing. This puts them right at monster ground zero in the Infected Zone, where their weapons seem fairly insignificant against all these Lovecraftian horrors.
Monsters: Dark Continent is due in theaters on November 28, and features an ensemble cast that includes Johnny Harris, Sam Keeley, Joe Dempsie, Kyle Soller, Parker Sawyers, and Nicholas Pinnock. The Thanksgiving release window is certainly unusual, but perhaps Monsters: Dark Continent can find an appreciative audience amongst all the folks who want to avoid Black Friday, and the deluge of Oscar contenders and family flicks that tend to clog up the local multiplex during the holiday season. If nothing else, this should be a decent stopgap until we get Godzilla 2 and Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim sequel.
