King Kong (1933) vs. Godzilla
(1954): which is the better classic monster movie?
Any giant monster movie fan (A.K.A kaiju fan) will tell you
without hesitation that the original Godzilla
and original King Kong are two of the
greatest in the genre. Some, like myself, will go further, saying they may be the two greatest of all, and are both
crucial pieces of cinema.
Before I get into this match-up (which is, let me add a
reminder, just for fun), I must establish that both of these movies are great
and I recommend watching both, not just one or the other. But which one holds
up the best? Which one is the better made movie? Who really has the best movie
in the kaiju genre, Godzilla, or King Kong? It’s giant dinosaur vs. giant ape,
as I break both down to find out!
Plot:
King Kong:
The story of King Kong
has become almost a modern legend. It’s one that is so well-known, especially
the later part set in New York, that people often know it even if they haven’t
seen the movie. It begins with a filmmaker setting off to an uncharted island
in the Pacific called Skull Island, which they discover is populated by natives
who worship a giant ape called Kong that lives on the other side of a giant
wall/giant gate in the island’s interior, along with prehistoric creatures.
The natives kidnap lead actress Anne Darrow and sacrifice
her to Kong, who takes her into the heart of the jungle, and a rescue teams
pursues them. Anne is saved by Jack Driscoll, much to Kong’s dismay, prompting
him to break down the gate, kill a bunch of natives, and wreck their village,
before the rescue team uses gas bombs to put him to sleep.
They capture Kong, bring him back to New York, and put him
up for display on Broadway, but he soon escapes and wreaks havoc on the big
apple, eventually finding Anne and carrying her to the top of the Empire State
Building, where bi-planes shoot him and kill him, though as Carl Denham says,
“It wasn’t the airplanes, it was beauty killed the beast.”
It’s an epic story with so many memorable parts, there’s no
question as to why it’s lived on in the public consciousness for so long. But
how does Godzilla’s story shape up in
comparison?
Godzilla:
The plot of Godzilla
is not nearly as classic as King Kong’s,
but that doesn’t necessarily make it less important. The whole concept was a
metaphor for the destructive force of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during
World War II, and was meant as a cautionary, horrific tale, unlike King Kong’s roots in adventure.
Godzilla is more
of a slow burn, beginning with a strange incident
aboard a freighter, and an
investigation into this and other occurrences, until a scientific team
discovers a local island’s legend of a sea monster is true, only this monster
is the product of atomic weapons testing. Godzilla’s major attack on Tokyo is a
slow act of destruction, but this was intentional, meant to resemble the way an
atomic bomb slowly decimates everything in its path, without anything stopping
it. The aftermath of his attack is explored quite thoroughly, an element that
makes the movie feel somewhat more realistic than King Kong, despite the fantastical premise. Godzilla is killed in
the end with a more inconspicuous weapon than an A-bomb, but despite the
successful conclusion, it still has a somber ending, with one of the main
characters declaring Godzilla may rise again if nuclear testing continues.
It’s a more straight-forward story than Kong’s sprawling drama, and I don’t think Godzilla is a lesser movie because of it, but I have to give the
point to King Kong because the story
overall is just so incredibly imaginative, with every scene getting more and
more ambitious. Godzilla has a great
story and concepts, it just feels a bit one note compared to King Kong.
Point goes to: King Kong.
Characters:
King Kong:
In both of these movies, the human characters are not
overshadowed by the monsters, unlike certain sequels/remakes that came later.
Some of the acting might seem dated and flat by today’s standards, but I think
it still holds up pretty well.
Kong’s love interest is played by Fay Wray, in what is
surely her most famous role. She was the first scream queen before the term scream
queen was even a thing, fitting the damsel in distress role perfectly. Robert
Armstrong plays Carl Denham, the filmmaker who brings Anne and company to Skull
Island. His character is based on Kong creator Merian C. Cooper, and goes to
great lengths to make the best movie he can, which means putting himself and
his crew in some hairy situations (no pun intended). First mate Jack Driscoll
is played by Bruce Cabot, and he takes up the action hero role when he goes
after Anne on his own about halfway through the movie. There are a few other
minor roles, like those of Captain Englehorn and the leader of the native
tribe, but Anne, Carl, and Jack are the principal players.
They have some good character moments in the first act, but
the second and third acts become more about them responding to the
awe-inspiring (and horrifying) sights of Skull Island and Kong’s rampage
through New York, unlike the characters in Godzilla.
Godzilla:
An important difference between these movies is their country
of origin. Godzilla is a Japanese
production, and to clarify, I’m comparing 1954’s Gojira to King Kong, not
the 1956 American re-edit Godzilla: King
of the Monsters! with Raymond Burr inserted.
There isn’t a trio of principal characters quite like in King Kong. Here, there is a collection
of characters, but the most important ones are Dr. Yamane, a paleontologist who
thinks Godzilla should be studied not
destroyed, his daughter Emiko, her love interest Ogata the sea captain, and Dr.
Serizawa, who has the most important role of all: he’s the one who creates the
oxygen destroyer, the weapon that they eventually use to kill Godzilla. Emiko
is arranged to marry him, but wants to break it off because she’s in love with
Ogata. Serizawa, a man burdened by his destructive scientific discovery, kills
himself after the oxygen destroyer is used, thus keeping it from ever being
used again.
Not that a character has to be killed for a movie to be
impactful, but the fact that Serizawa not only dies at the end but sacrifices
himself, stuck with me more than any one character moment in Kong, while none of the main human
characters in King Kong died. As
classic as the characters in King Kong
are, I actually have to go with the characters in Godzilla as being better. They’re less archetypal, a bit more
fleshed out, and have interesting relationships to each other, and to the
monster.
Point goes to: Godzilla.
Monster:
King Kong:
Kong is only hinted at in the first act of movie, and his
eventual reveal as he crashes through the trees toward the tied-up Anne Darrow
is more than worth the wait. He’s a terrifying presence, and every second he’s
on screen is incredible. But, as he takes Anne into the jungle and the rescue
team follows, more creatures are introduced, starting with a stampeding
Stegosaurus, and from there each creature becomes bigger and scarier than the
last. There’s the Brontosaurus that chases the group and eats a guy in a tree,
the two-legged iguana that tries to eat Driscoll, and of course Kong himself
shakes things up when he dumps a bunch of guys off a log into a chasm.
The centerpiece of the movie is Kong’s fight with a T-rex,
which is still one of the best creature fights ever put on screen. After being shown
all the other horrors of Skull Island and seeing that Kong really is the King
of this world, he stops seeming quite as terrifying, and this leads to the real
reason Kong is such an incredible movie monster: he’s capable of being scary and sympathetic. Early in the movie Anne
is worried Kong is going to kill her, but it’s not long before she’s looking to
Kong to save her from such hungry beasts as the cave-dwelling Elasmosaurus and
flying Pteranodon.
By the time Kong gets back to New York, there’s been a
shift. Kong is no longer a mindless monster trying to kill everyone in the eyes
of the audience. He’s searching for the woman he’s fallen for, and gives his
life to protect her. In Kong’s final moments atop the Empire State Building,
you feel real sympathy for this beast.
Godzilla:
Godzilla is a totally different kind of monster from Kong,
despite being similarly large and destructive. Given he’s the embodiment of
nuclear destruction, Godzilla’s one and only purpose is to terrify, not be
sympathetic, and in this way, he delivers big time.
The build-up to his first big reveal is not as dramatic as
Kong’s, but actually more shocking. Keep in mind, no one had seen Godzilla
on-screen before this moment in 1954. The characters are told to go up the
mountain because it’ll be safer, so there’s the sense that the monster is
coming, but then as they’re going up the hill, without warning, a giant
reptilian head rises up from behind it, making everyone scream. Godzilla leans
over, roars, and then disappears as quickly as he appeared. It’s unexpected and
pretty effective.
Godzilla gets less screen time than Kong, but this helps to
make him scarier, and make his attack on Tokyo (the film’s central event) more
impactful. While the victims in King Kong
are casualties of the action and their deaths feel more shocking than scary, in
Godzilla the Tokyo attack feels real
and horrific. The camera zeroes in on a woman cowering with her kids as Godzilla
heads their way, and she tells them they’ll be with their father soon, and they
are mercilessly killed in the wake of the destruction. On that point, Godzilla
doles out more destruction than Kong, and has more impressive abilities.
While Kong is simply a gorilla that’s really big, Godzilla
is a much more original concept. He’s essentially a hybrid of a Tyrannosaurus
and Stegosaurus, with dorsal spikes, a long tail, and classic carnosaur
(meat-eating dinosaur) head. His skin is impenetrable, he breathes atomic
breath (not fire, as it’s often mistakenly referred to) capable of melting
steel and setting fire to just about anything, and he’s as good on land as in
the water.
What would later become a staple of Godzilla movies is having him fight an enemy, but many people
forget this never occurred in the original. Godzilla is the only kaiju in the
movie, and his only enemy is humanity, so looking beyond the main monster, King Kong gets the advantage by having a
wider variety of secondary threats (not that Big G alone isn’t an intense threat).
This is a tough decision, so I’m going to award a point to
each movie. Godzilla wins for having
a better individual monster, based on the originality of his design, but King Kong wins monster ensemble for
having more bang for your buck.
One point to Godzilla and one point to King Kong.
Other Factors:
Music:
Both scores are incredible and compliment the tones of each
movie. Akira Ifukube’s is haunting and somber, the main theme is memorable and
was re-used for many future Godzilla movies,
and it fluctuates between fast-paced and exciting (like when depth charges are
being dropped in an attempt to kill Godzilla) to slow and melancholy (like when
Godzilla is destroying Tokyo). Max Steiner’s is an all-time classic soundtrack,
with the kind of boisterous score that inspired countless others. It hits all
kinds of beats, and the main theme is a thrilling piece of music all on its
own.
Ifukube’s score has more memorable pieces for me than
Steiner’s, but I have to hand it to Steiner, because there had never been a
film score like his in the history of movies up to that point, and it
communicates a wider range of emotion, with pieces that sound fun, scary, sad,
or a bit of all three, whereas Godzilla’s
score is primarily somber. I realize that’s simply because of the two different
tones here, but I’m going with personal taste on this one.
Point goes to King Kong.
Special Effects:
James Rolfe once said, “There’s a difference between
something that’s old school and something that’s outdated.” You could argue the
effects for both of these movies are outdated, and comparing them with today’s
visual effects, sure, I can understand that. But I don’t think they are, I just
think of them as classic effects that still hold up. Sure, you know Kong is a
stop motion model and Godzilla is a guy in a rubber suit, but that’s no
different than knowing the new Godzilla and Kong are cgi models created and
animated in a computer. One day that will be a classic effect, but those
effects, like the originals, are so good for their time, they’ll hold up,
despite being old school.
But getting down to the nitty gritty of it, Godzilla’s effects were viewed even back
in 1954 as inferior to King Kong’s. King Kong features incredible stop
motion animation with creatures battling and eating people and climbing things,
but that’s the nature of the movie’s premise. Godzilla is just one monster
stomping through a city. The miniature’s and the suit hold up pretty well, but
both movies have elements that simply don’t hold up. King Kong’s robotic head
looks silly, with a vastly different aesthetic than the stop motion model’s
head, and its movements are pretty limited. The Godzilla suit becomes extremely
obvious in one shot when he turns and the jiggly rubber bounces loosely on the
legs. It’s a toss-up, but I’m giving it to King
Kong, just because the effects were so ambitious for their time, and hold
up so well. Godzilla being played by a guy in a suit may have become tradition
(one that I love, may I add), but the suits got better over time, whereas the
stop motion Kong never was bested or duplicated via stop motion ever again.
Point for King Kong
Legacy/Sequels:
King Kong had one
sequel, Son of Kong, which was
actually made and released in the same year as the first King Kong, and had Robert Armstrong return as Carl Denham. I’ve
still never seen this sequel, but have heard it’s pretty underrated, though not
as classic as the original of course. No other direct sequels were ever made,
but King Kong has stood the test of
time anyway.
Godzilla is the
longest-running movie franchise ever, but if not for those sequels, I think the
character of Big G may have fallen into more obscurity. Godzilla hasn’t been
around as long as Kong, and the actual elements of his premiere movie aren’t as
recognized as Kong’s. I’m pretty sure more of the general public is aware of
how Kong met his demise than Big G’s. But, by having more sequels, Godzilla was
more talked about in the decades following the first movie’s release than King
Kong.
Regardless of sequels, ultimately both characters have
transcended their original films and become staples of pop culture. Kids know
about Godzilla and King Kong before they even see any of their movies—at least,
that’s how it was for me—so I’d say they’re on an even playing field in terms
of legacy, even if King Kong has been
around over twenty years longer.
No points awarded.
Conclusion:
What it comes down to, for me, is what impact these movies have
had on cinema, and so for that reason, I’m declaring King Kong the winner. Just to think, a few years before it came
out, sound hadn’t even been incorporated to movies, then here comes along this
movie full of epic music and roaring creatures and full-scale action the likes
of which had never been seen before. And then, to have lasted so long and held
up so well (as of writing this, 83 years old!), when so many movies since then
have faded into obscurity, is just as incredible of a feat.
Godzilla is an
excellent giant monster movie, no question, with strong political roots and
frightening imagery, but King Kong is
even more epic in its scope and imagination. When you think of Godzilla, you think of the character,
but when you think of King Kong, you
think of the character plus the mythology (Skull Island, Empire State Building,
etc.).
King Kong wins.
But it doesn’t end
here. Watch for my next royal rumble, as I compare the 1976 remake of King Kong to the 1998 American remake of
Godzilla, coming soon!
Godzilla vs. King Kong image from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d58GiWI1Lco
The Shallows Review
There’s some action peppered through acts one and two, and
it wasn’t overly explicit or cheesy, it felt real, and that’s perhaps my
biggest praise I can give The Shallows,
90 % of it felt totally believable. There was some stuff in the third act that
felt more monster-movie-ish than real-life survival drama, but I can’t knock
the movie for it because it made for a satisfying climax. 
