As a fan of giant monsters who grew up when the “old” movies were still fairly fresh, I’ve been waiting for our beloved King Kong to get a rematch with Godzilla, the King of the Monsters. I couldn’t wait to see the epic showdown in Godzilla vs. Kong.
The Japanese release of Kingu Kongu tai Gojira was nearly sixty years ago (1962). The dubbed version reached our shores a year later. It was a household tradition to watch annually in the ’70s. By the time we learned there was a version that was not dubbed but subtitled, the rest of the family had lost interest. It was all the same to me. The plot wasn’t too important. It was only about seeing Katsumi Tezuka in the rubber reptile suit battle it out with Shôichi Hirose in the Toho version of a Kong suit. King Kong, with his orange fur, had ping pong ball-shaped eyes that resembled a poorly-designed muppet, but that still didn’t matter.
As a fan of kaiju, Godzilla, and especially King Kong, it was torture spending the day not running to HBO Max for a small-screen peek. A friend rented a Cinemark theater for a maximum of twenty people in a seventy-seat room. It was important to everyone in that theater to see it on the large screen. No one was disappointed.
The fights could not have been larger, though the endings to each round felt improbable. Realistically (can you believe I dare to use that word?), these titanic beasts would have torn each other to shreds, and even the victor would have limped away only after the other was sufficiently dead. So, let’s do ourselves the favor of remembering that watching a giant gorilla and a radioactive lizard duke it out at every corner of the world requires a suspension of disbelief that reaches from the ozone layer to the center of the Earth.
The art direction, scene concepts, fight choreography, storyboard angles, and movements were insanely good. It may be worth watching them over and over on the small screen—not that anyone would have to do that. There were only a small handful of confusing Transformers-esque moments. For the most part, the visual story is abundantly readable. The world hasn’t seen giant monsters look this good in any fight. Every take in every scene looked like a moving painting to study and admire.
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Where Godzilla vs. Kong loses the viewer is where most giant monster movies lose me. The plot is ridiculously convoluted, with throwaway characters who don’t need to be there. Watching several groups of people run around with unbelievably lofty motivations is distracting when you don’t care about them. There is no emotional attachment to any of the people, save for perhaps one. And she’s the lone survivor of a grossly convenient off-screen, between-movie massacre that wiped out the human population on Skull Island. The tiny Jane Goodall is our communication with Kong.
Kong’s arc as a character is, well, a bit comical. They are definitely in over their heads building this cinematic MonsterVerse. Investors were in on the brainstorming session and had specific requests for video game and theme park tie-ins. Details would only spoil some of these surprises, but suffice it to say Jules Verne is spinning in his grave trying to find the number for his lawyer. King Kong suffers from overexposure and too much explanation that turns him far too sentient than necessary. Godzilla is reduced to an angry reptilian Highlander whose territorial disposition makes me question how he got top billing in the title.
As a kid, I never cared much about the invaders from Planet X or their politics. I never cared about the awkward romances or the choppy dialogue of the human protagonists (which I used to attribute to the translations). The story never mattered. The billions of dollars it must cost to rebuild destroyed cities never occurred to me. The countless lives lost never crossed my mind. The quadrillions it must cost to build tunnels through the planet and develop outlandish technologies, even for science fiction, never came up. I keep telling myself the people in giant monster movies don’t matter. The plot is as relevant as a fourth head on King Ghidorah. I want to laugh at the people and stare in awe at the monsters when they fight. No one has ever said, “Golly, the script to this giant monster movie should win an award!” Why do they continue to try?
My only regret is not being able to fast-forward through the human interactions. Many of us will find ourselves doing this at home while viewing Godzilla vs. Kong on HBO Max.