Nathaniel and Ryan looked at three main areas that would impact a fight between Godzilla and Kong: anatomy, geography, and intelligence. So when the two logged onto Zoom, a conversation ostensibly about using science to settle a decades-long debate quickly became a way for each to hash out their relationships with the iconic monsters. But there’s a difference between collaborating on a piece solely about Godzilla and weighing in on a battle royale between lizards and apes. Ryan watched the black-and-white Godzilla movies as a kid on Saturdays, while Nathaniel saw them as a teenager while watching Mystery Science Theater 3000.
They each grew up with the original versions of the characters. In 2019 over coffee, the two professors forged a bond when they realized they could write a paper examining Godzilla’s evolutionary growth in cinema dating back to the 1954 original.
