The following post contains minor spoilers for Godzilla vs. Kong.

If you’re a fan of The WireBosch, the John Wick movies, or a million other things and you watch the new Godzilla vs. Kong, odds are you might be confused — and maybe even a little distracted — by actor Lance Reddick’s incredibly brief appearance in the film. Reddick is eighth-billed in the opening credits, behind only the movie’s biggest non-monster stars like Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, and Rebecca Hall, but doesn’t show up at all until an hour and 15 minutes into a two hour movie and then only has maybe a minute of screentime and less than a handful of lines. The credits bill him as “Guillermin,” but if that name’s spoken aloud, I never caught it; in my review, I called him The Guy Who Stands Next to Kyle Chandler, Looking Concerned.

Normally, you’d never cast an actor of Reddick’s stature for such an inconsequential part. Surely, something must have gotten trimmed out of the film, right? Right — Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard explained exactly what happened to Reddick’s intended role in an interview with GamesRadar:

Originally, Lance's part was a little bit bigger as he plays the Monarch director, he's running the organization. There was a scene earlier in the film, a big board room scene where they're setting up the mission. He had a larger role, but ultimately we didn’t need that scene, we changed a couple of plot details during the editing process, so that earlier stuff got cut. Now, that stuff just counts as a fun cameo. He is still top credited, it's still part of his contract. It's funny because he shows up in the opening credits and then turns up for four lines, maybe three, in the movie ultimately.

Wingard calls Reddick’s performance a “fun cameo,” but this sort of thing always distracts me in movies, because it makes me wonder if I missed something. Surely, Lance Reddick can’t be playing The Guy Who Stands Next to Kyle Chandler, Looking Concerned — I must have missed something! And so even as the movie continues, and Reddick briefly announces he is evacuating Hong Kong before Godzilla can destroy it (how does he have the power to do that?!?) my mind starts drifting, trying to think if we’d seen this guy before, or wondering if Reddick had a role in one of the previous MonsterVerse movies, and whether we’re just supposed to know who he is. (He doesn’t, and you’re not.) Unless it was also in Reddick’s contract that he had to be included somewhere in the movie, I would have cut him out completely instead of having him popping up without context or explanation so late in the film.

Godzilla vs. Kong is now playing in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.

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