King Kong (2005) vs. Godzilla (2014): Movie vs Movie Issue #7

King Kong (2005) vs. Godzilla (2014): which is the better remake?

Now that I’ve looked at the originals and the first set of bad remakes, I’ve finally come to the main event: pitting the 2005 remake of King Kong against the 2014 remake/reboot of Godzilla.

Both of these movies were box office successes, and were met with mostly good reviews from critics and fans (though not without some detractors). Directors Peter Jackson (King Kong) and Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) paid lots of respect to the giant monster characters and their roots, while also making entertaining blockbusters for modern audiences. I thought both movies were great, but which one was better? It’s a tough decision, so it’s time to break them both down and see which one comes out on top!

Plot:

King Kong:

Unlike 1976’s King Kong, Peter Jackson’s take is a very faithful one, which hits nearly all of the same story beats as the 1933 original. That doesn’t mean some things aren’t changed up, but story wise, it’s pretty similar. 

A film director finds an actress who’s out of work and recruits her for a mysterious sea voyage to shoot a film in “Singapore”. After angry studio execs call the feds, he has to hurry the expedition along and pays the captain off to have them leave immediately, which results in the director’s lead writer getting stuck on board the ship and joining them without any choice. They finally get to their mysterious destination: Skull Island, an uncharted land with a great rock wall and primitive natives living on its fringes, who worship Kong, a creature they soon discover is a 25-foot gorilla, who takes the actress into the jungle after the natives sacrifice her to him, and as the director and his rescue team pursue them, the beast and beauty develop a relationship, which of course ends tragically when Kong is brought back to New York, escapes, climbs the Empire State Building, and is shot down. 

It’s mainly in the character and monster sections/action scenes that this remake differs, but the point-for-point retelling works, simply because the original story is so good, there isn’t any need to alter it. Keeping it in the early 30’s when the original was made only makes it even more faithful, and effectively a period piece, instead of trying to bring Kong into the 21^st century. 

Godzilla:

It’s a very different story with Godzilla. While there was almost a 30 year gap between the King Kong remakes, the previous American Godzilla was only sixteen years prior, and Toho had since produced six new Godzilla films in the monster’s native country, to great success, but had again retired the character in 2004, so it was only ten years since Big G had been on the big screen. 

2014’s Godzilla had to distance itself from the abysmal Tri-Star movie, but also pay respect to the character and give him a new start. The plot is simultaneously original in that this exact story hasn’t been told before, but it’s also an archetypal, classic kind of Godzilla story, just with a modern setting. 

A creature awakens in 1999 when miners start drilling in the Philippines and it travels to Japan, where it enters a cocoon stage and starts feeding off the energy in a nuclear power plant, which caused it to collapse. Years later, the creature hatches into its new form and takes off, working its way to Nevada, where its mate is located and has also hatched. But chasing them both is the ancient alpha predator scientists call Gojira (or Godzilla, depending who you ask), and there’s little anyone can do to stop them, because the mating creatures have an attack that knocks out all electrical power. As a last act of defense, soldiers are deployed via a HALO jump into San Francisco, which has been destroyed by the monsters, and try to lure them away with a nuclear bomb, which they’ll then detonate at sea. 

It’s a bit like a hybrid of the 1954 original and Godzilla Final Wars. Godzilla is secondary to the other monsters, but still has an important role (though those who didn’t like the movie often cite Godzilla’s lack of screen-time as a major fault, more on that later). In general the story is pretty well layered—at least, for a Godzilla movie—and the first act in particular is really built up well. It’s not just a straight-forward monster fight for two hours, there’s a bit more going on. 

Gareth Edwards not only tributes Godzilla movies of old, but other sci-fi/horror classics, like Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (the main characters’ last name is Brody) and Jurassic Park (mainly with subtle references like sound effects, a character wiping a fogged window, and the model of helicopter used in the opening scene). He’s covering all his bases, for sure. 

This is a really hard call, because King Kong retells an already perfect story extremely well, and Godzilla forges a new story out of various old story parts and puts them together into something that’s new but also a throwback. I could give it the point for that reason, but ultimately, the story that compelled me more was that of King Kong’s, even though it was the same as before. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I liked the original King Kong’s story better than the original Godzilla’s, and nothing’s changed.  

King Kong just manages to get the point.

Characters:

King Kong:

Once again, unlike the ’76 remake, King Kong has mostly all the same characters as the original. Anne Darrow is still an actress, but her motivations are different. Anne is a much sadder character, and by default, makes the whole movie feel more like a tragedy than the original (but not any less of an adventure). She’s hesitant to go on the voyage, like in the original, but a big change is she was excited to go ashore in the ’33 version, whereas here clearly no one but Carl Denham is excited, because Skull Island looks straight up terrifying. 

Naomi Watts’ Anne also has more fight than Fay Wray’s. She tries to escape Kong, and even stands up to him, but the biggest difference is the post-Skull Island stuff, in New York. Fay Wray didn’t seem to miss Kong, and was pretty terrified when he came back for her and hauled her up the Empire State, then was relieved to be rescued at the end. Naomi Watts sort of has Stockholm syndrome, at first being terrified of Kong then falling for him, then when she gets back to New York, she declines to be involved with the whole Broadway show, then when Kong escapes and looks for her, she actually goes to him to be with him, and then is super heart broken when he falls to his death. But to sum her up, Naomi Watts gives a great performance, and actually has a stronger presence than Fay Wray in some respects. 

Carl Denham is still a movie director/producer, and he still puts his team in harm’s way, but this time, it’s a lot more extreme; partly because there are more scenes with him doing that kind of thing, partly because that’s just how the character is written. I still think Jack Black was an odd casting decision, but he actually isn’t that terrible. He’s not a great fit, but he’s okay, for Jack Black. 

The third main character in the original was Jack Driscoll, who was the first mate, but here he’s a writer, known for his theater work, hired by Carl to write his movie’s screenplay. He gets caught up in the adventure and falls for Anne just like in the original, and leads the rescue party just the same. This is one instance where I don’t love the change. It seems a lot more believable that a first mate on a ship could be an action hero, rather than a writer. Jack still evades the Skull Island critters and saves Anne, but it feels like there’s a lot more luck involved than in previous versions. Adrien Brody is good in the role, and he has more to do in the New York portion than Bruce Cabot did.

The 1933 original didn’t delve into the side characters much; the only ones to receive many lines were Captain Engelhorn and the Asian crewman, Charlie the Cook. Both of them return here (Charlie now being Choy) with more lines and more prominence, along with many new additions. Carl Denham is no longer a one-man film crew, which makes sense. Now he has an assistant, cameraman, sound recordist, and lead actor, all of whom are great. There’s Lumpy the cook, the second role played by Andy Serkis (the first being Kong himself), who’s a bit of a goofy character at times, then there’s Mr. Hayes and Jimmy, who get an oddly large amount of screen time and their backstories/history with each other is explored, but then it doesn’t go anywhere, so it feels pretty pointless in the end. 

But of course I have to talk about the natives. In the original, they’re a superstitious bunch (it’s an incredibly racist depiction and easily the most dated part of the ’33 film) but not particularly hostile, minus kidnapping Anne. Here, they’re straight-up terrifying. These natives are struggling to stay alive, they’re savage, with intense facial/body piercings, they barely wear any clothes, and there’s no speaking to them. This is an awesome update and probably my favourite of the changes; the natives have more backstory built into the way they look and behave, and have a real presence. It’s just unfortunate they don’t factor in again later like they do in the ’33 version, where Kong wrecks their village and kills a bunch of them. 

Godzilla:

The closest any characters in this reboot get to a character from the original Godzilla series is Dr. Serizawa, played by Ken Watanabe (his name being a reference to the scientist of the same name in the 1954 original). He’s also the only lead character who’s Japanese, and unfortunately, he’s pretty much wasted. He follows the major events throughout the movie, but is always just an observer, never an active participant, and aside from explaining what Godzilla is, he mostly just looks out at things in awe and says very little. 

There’s Bryan Cranston as Joe Brody, the scientist who works at the nuclear plant that gets destroyed in the beginning, and he is reliably great. Gareth Edwards has said in interviews if they had known they were getting Bryan Cranston for the role originally, he probably would’ve had a bigger part, which makes it an even bigger bummer that he dies at the end of the first act, and we’re left with the actual main character, his son Ford, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who really isn’t a great actor, and while he isn’t awful here, his character is pretty stock—just some bomb expert who becomes useful later when they try to lure the monsters away from the city with a nuke. I’ve heard arguments that he doesn’t have much emotion because he’s in the military, which I guess is fair, but it doesn’t excuse that he’s a dull lead compared to what Cranston could’ve been. 

Something to consider here: human characters are almost never the focus in Godzilla movies, and they’re usually bland; it’s always Godzilla who should be the star. However, this is an instance where the movie expects the audience to care about the humans, so there’s no excuse.

The other characters are all pretty forgettable. Serizawa’s assistant is boring, Ford’s wife is no different, the navy admiral is generic, and all the soldiers are character-less. Unlike the original films, King Kong sports the significantly more interesting characters than Godzilla. It could be because there are more scenes spent with them (King Kong runs a full hour longer than Godzilla) but even still, I wouldn’t have wanted to spend more time with Godzilla’s cast to get to know them. When Kong’s cast are in peril, for the most part you feel concerned for their wellbeing, whereas Godzilla’s cast feels dispensable. Had Bryan Cranston lived through the whole movie and been the main character, it may have been a different story. 

Point easily goes to King Kong.

Monster:

King Kong:

Peter Jackson spared no expense when it came to the wildlife of Skull Island. Remember how in the ’76 remake there was only Kong and a giant python and nothing else? This is the total opposite to that. In the ’33 film, there were the dinosaurs Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus, and T-rex, as well as a Plesiosaurus and Pteranodon (and that weird lizard with no back legs) and that’s not counting creatures in deleted scenes—a respectable amount of creatures, especially for back then. The ’05 film has an entire herd of Brontosaurus, which were purposefully designed to resemble the now outdated look from ’33, and the herd gets chased by a newly-created creature, the Raptor-like Venatosaurus, in a spectacularly over-the-top but exhilarating action scene that’s just a taste of what is to come. 

The famous T-rex battle doesn’t get outdone here, but not for lack of trying. This time three rexes are thrown into the fight and Kong takes them all on at once, all while juggling Anne instead of leaving her in a tree. The fight doesn’t go on too long (though it might for some) and ends with a one-on-one duel that very closely recreates the original fight, complete with jaw break, chest pound, and all. Something else to note here: though they look like T-rexes, these creatures are actually called Vastatosaurus-rex, meant to be a fictional evolved form of T-rex, like a “what if they hadn’t went extinct and kept evolving” kind of thing. They too were purposefully designed to be reminiscent of the old-school look. 

Then there’s the spider pit sequence, a famous scene cut from the original Kong and lost over time, where the men who fell into the chasm are eaten by giant insects. Peter Jackson not only does his own version of the scene, he makes it as epic as he can. There are so many different crazy and creepy critters in this, I feel like I see a new one every time I watch the movie. 

And I haven’t even got to the monster star himself. King Kong is a true character here like he was in the original, both scary and sympathetic. The motion capture by Andy Serkis is excellent, rivalling what he did for Gollum in Lord of the Rings. He doesn’t appear for quite a while, but once he does, the movie really takes off, and there’s a great balance of action scenes with him kicking ass and quieter scenes with Anne where he really starts to become a relatable character.

Godzilla:   

Legendary’s Godzilla looks like the real Godzilla. I like the design, I don’t love it 100 %, but compared to Zilla, yeah, it’s fantastic. This Godzilla also has atomic breath and spikes that light up, which is another huge plus, and I even didn’t mind that they saved it for the final part of the final fight, it made the moment even more impactful when it came. Godzilla was also a true force of nature; there was nothing any human could to do stop him or even slow him. But here’s the problem. No, it’s not that Godzilla wasn’t the focus, it’s the part he played in the story. 

Before I get to that, I’ll touch on the villainous monsters, Mutos. I didn’t mind that they got a lot of screen time (more than Godzilla) because they were new and I doubt we’ll ever see them again in a sequel but we know there will be more Godzilla in future movies, so I wanted as much Mutos as I could get, and I got it. The design isn’t anything amazing, they’re just amalgamations of other monsters of the past, like Rodan, Orga, the Cloverfield monster, etc. but I loved the sound effects for them, I loved their attack, and I loved that they literally ate nuclear missiles. 

What I didn’t love was how Godzilla factored in. Godzilla’s origins are hinted at then explained by Serizawa in act one, that the nuclear tests in the Pacific in the 50’s was the military trying to kill him. Cool, it’s close to the origins of the original Godzilla, but slightly different. They also explain Godzilla and Mutos (and probably lots of other monsters we don’t know about yet) are ancient creatures from when the planet was more radioactive and have since gone deep in the ocean or underground to survive. I love that they’re true monsters, not just dinosaur hybrids. But Godzilla is described as an alpha predator, and he is going to come and kill the Mutos simply because nature has a way of balancing itself, according to Serizawa. So Godzilla finally shows up, fights the first Muto, it gets away, he follows, they fight again, it gets away again, the second one comes, they go to San Francisco to lay their eggs and nest, Godzilla shows up there, fights them, beats them, falls down, naps, gets up, and leaves. I have several problems with all of that. 

First of all, Godzilla is at his best when he’s the attacker. Here, he’s actually kind of a good guy. Sure, he’s still wrecking a lot of stuff and inadvertently killing people and doesn’t care, but he’s not going out of his way to cause destruction. In general, there wasn’t enough city destruction in this movie. Another big complaint people had was Godzilla doesn’t get enough screen time. What people mean to say is he doesn’t get a well-balanced amount of screen time. The camera cuts away from his first big battle with Mutos, which I didn’t have a problem with, but then it does it a second time, which bummed me out, and then it unevenly cuts back and forth during the final battle between Godzilla fighting the Mutos and the human characters trying to get the nuke through the destroyed city. The final battle is worth the wait, and it’s awesome, but there’s definitely a lack of Godzilla action in act two. 

So in the end, I really liked this new take on Godzilla, in terms of the monster, I just didn’t like that he played second fiddle in the story to the Mutos, and while the Mutos were cool, they weren’t cool enough to overshadow Godzilla himself. While Godzilla left much to be desired in terms of monster fights, never once did King Kong make me think “I wish there was more creature action.” I didn’t even mention Kong’s extended version, which has added sequences of even more creatures.  

King Kong definitely beats Godzilla for better reimagining of the monster, and not simply because King Kong is the better monster by nature (recall who won in the battle between the original movies). Kong is undoubtedly the star of the movie. Even though Kong and Godzilla don’t show up until almost an hour in to each of their respective movies, Kong leaves a far greater impact. 

Another point to King Kong. 

Other Factors:

Music:

Both the King Kong score by James Newton Howard and Godzilla score by Alexandre Desplat are excellent. They have strong original themes, but also draw inspiration from the original scores, giving them both a classic, old-school sound. 

Desplat’s is reminiscent of Akira Ifukube’s, but also scores like John Williams’ score for Jaws, and hits some big moments, like when Godzilla is first revealed in full. However, James Newton Howard’s score hits more big moments than Desplat’s, and has numerous smaller, quieter moments. On top of that, it recreates music directly from Max Steiner’s 1933 score, and uses identical music in the scene where Kong is on stage and the tribal dance is recreated. 

While Desplat’s score is good, it sounds a little more generic when compared with Newton-Howard’s multi-layered score—which, by the way, he only started working on seven weeks before the movie was released. 

Point goes to King Kong. 

Special Effects:

The cgi effects for King Kong are just as impressive today as they were in 2005. At the time, it had the most digital effects shots of any movie, which you might think are all to do with Skull Island and the creatures, but actually a lot of it was recreating 1930’s New York. It’s these kind of invisible effects that are so great: effects that are there but they don’t register as special effects. Peter Jackson not only made great use of cgi, but also miniatures and some practical effects too, which is nice to see, even if those are quite minimal compared to the abundant cgi. As I’ve said, Kong transcends his computer generated monster form and becomes a character, and all the dinosaurs and creatures look great.

Godzilla’s effects, though more recent, are still equally impressive. Most of the cgi is pretty seamless, but there’s some city destruction that looks a little fake at times, due to cgi overload (so much stuff on screen that isn’t real that it stops looking real altogether). Godzilla himself looks good in cgi, definitely better than the Tri-Star one, but in general, the effects just feel too clean at times. Everything is so computer generated, whereas King Kong has some grit and the cgi blends in better. 

Really, both movies have great modern effects, King Kong just has a bit of the unfair advantage of being a number of years older than Godzilla and still holding up, but it also showcases a wider range of effects (recreating old New York and Skull Island and the creatures and Kong, while Godzilla just has giant monsters and city destruction and not much else) 

Point just goes to King Kong.

Legacy/Sequels:

As we’ve seen with the previous King Kong’s, the follow-ups are never as good. While ’33’s version got Son of Kong and ‘76’s version got King Kong Lives, ‘05’s version got no follow up. It ends with Kong’s death, Carl Denham uttering the famous beauty killed beast line, and fades to black. Kong instead lived on at Universal Studios with state-of-the-art theme park rides and in the homes of kids with Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Game. 

1st official image from Kong: Skull Island

Now, the future of Godzilla, and Kong, for that matter, looks to be even brighter. Godzilla 2 is slated for release in 2019, but before that, we get a brand-new take on the eighth wonder of the world. In 2017, Kong: Skull Island comes out, which takes place in the same cinematic universe as 2014’s Godzilla. You know what that means? After Skull Island in 2017 and Godzilla 2 in 2019, we get Godzilla vs. Kong in 2020! Seriously, 2020 cannot come fast enough. I’ll talk more about those movies as they get nearer, but for now, it’s just future hype. 

No points awarded.

Conclusion: 

When I set out to compare these two remakes, I had no clear winner in mind. Now that I’ve re-watched them and broken them down, it’s obvious which one is superior.

Godzilla was a solid reboot for the character. And yet, it didn’t feel like his movie. His role felt almost like Spider-Man’s in Captain America: Civil War. He was a supporting character who we had seen before in a version most people didn’t like, and now here’s the new version, and he’ll be back in the next movie soon. And honestly, I’m okay with that, because this movie had to be different from the Tri-Star version, and it was. Aside from the opening credit sequence, they’re really nothing alike. I’m just hoping Godzilla 2 lets him have more of a presence. 

King Kong, on the other hand, was a homerun, as far as I’m concerned. Peter Jackson was hot off the heels of Lord of the Rings and all its success, so he had free range to pretty much do whatever he wanted, and what he wanted was to pay his respects to the original King Kong, but also make an epic monster movie, and he did both. 

Both of these remakes were epic, but King Kong was more epic, with more emotion, more action, pretty much more of everything, and was a one-and-done straight-up remake that stands on its own and didn’t try to outdo the original. Godzilla was a good reboot, but left many fans unsatisfied and wanting more. 

King Kong wins. 

That concludes my comparisons of Godzilla movies and King Kong movies. I hope you’ve enjoyed my retrospective look at all six movies, maybe you agree or disagree, but one thing is for sure: no other giant movie monsters can compare to these two. 

King Kong (1976) vs. Godzilla (1998): Movie vs. Movie Issue #6

King Kong (1976) vs. Godzilla (1998): Which is the worse remake?

The first remake of King Kong was one of the lamest remakes I have ever seen, while the first American remake of Godzilla was a total disgrace for the character. Both remakes are bad, but which one is worse? Who got disrespected more, the eighth wonder of the world, or the king of the monsters? Time to review both and find out!

Plot: 

King Kong: 

This is definitely a direct remake in the sense of keeping the overall events the same, but there are a lot of big differences throughout, mainly in the way the characters get to Skull Island. Instead of it being about a film director setting out to make a movie, it’s about oil workers looking for the island because it apparently holds a wealth of oil, and one guy stows aboard because he’s heard legends of the great ape known as Kong and wants to find it. The tone is a lot different, as well. The original has an old-school adventure feel, but this one is a weird mix of dour and campy. 

Kong’s love interest gets captured the same way, and the team pursues them the same way, but the events on the island are quite less chaotic than in the original. Kong still gets captured at the end of act two, though this time he falls in a pit instead of being knocked out with gas bombs, and they get him to New York City. One of the most notable differences is during the final sequence, where Kong climbs the World Trade Center instead of the Empire State Building (the woman Kong takes captive mentions at one point she’s afraid of heights and went to the top of the E.S.B. when she was a kid and freaked out) and he fights off helicopters instead of biplanes, but still gets shot down just the same. 

Most of these changes don’t really impact the way the story unfolds, but the one change I really don’t like is the reason they go to the island. I get that the writers were just trying to make it fresh, it just takes away from the adventure aspect that makes the original more exciting. The call to adventure made it a harrowing but thrilling experience of getting to the island and exploring it, whereas just trying to find some oil isn’t nearly as interesting.

Godzilla:

While 76’s King Kong was a remake of the original American movie, 98’s Godzilla was a new take on the character, who had only appeared in Japanese productions by Toho. They had already made fifteen Godzilla movies from 1954 to 1975, then took a break and made The Return of Godzilla in 1984, which was a sequel to the original and ignored all the sequels that had followed, so it was sort of the first unofficial Godzilla remake, because it was more or less the same (event-wise) as the original, just with updated special effects. Six sequels followed the ’84 movie, then Toho put the character to rest again, with plans to revive him sometime in the future. But before Toho brought Big G back, Tristar delivered their own version. 

The story doesn’t really resemble any of the previous Godzilla movies, but if you had to compare it to a Toho original, I guess it’s most like 1954’s Godzilla (but in some not-so-good ways it’s more like Son of Godzilla). The tones of Godzilla movies have gone in one of two directions: either they’re dark and brooding, like the original, or cheesy and action-packed, like the majority of the sequels. Godzilla (which I’ll refer to from here on as G 98) takes the serious route, for the most part, but it sidelines the monster and focuses on human characters who often act dumb, goofy, or both. 

Godzilla movies became famous for pitting Godzilla against another giant monster foe, or multiple foes, and featured him as a hero, or anti-hero, or straight-up villain. Fans became used to the idea of Godzilla fighting an enemy, and that’s actually one of the reasons the first movie of the second series, The Return of Godzilla, wasn’t beloved by the fans, but the subsequent movies were, because they all had him fight enemies. So having Zilla confront the military instead of another giant monster was an instant strike against G 98, as far as fans were concerned. The logic would dictate that, if he wasn’t fighting another monster, then it had to be like the ‘54 or ’84 films, with the dark tone. Well, not really.

It’s not surprising that G 98 has a very similar tone to Independence Day, a big dumb alien invasion blockbuster directed by Roland Emmerich, who also directed G 98, but instead of Zilla coming to simply destroy a city out of anger, he’s come to a city (Manhattan) to lay a clutch of eggs. That was actually a new concept for a Godzilla movie, but not really something fans were craving to see. Toho’s Godzilla had had a son, Minilla, but his egg being laid and hatched was never chronicled. A huge portion of G 98 concerns the baby Zilla’s trying to eat the human characters in the destroyed Madison Square Garden. If only this was the worst part of the plot…

In the history of Godzilla, he’s only been officially killed twice: in Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, from his radioactive heart melting down (but his energy flowed into his son and basically made a new Godzilla, so he technically died but not really) and in the original by a special weapon called the Oxygen Destroyer, the plans for which were destroyed right after its one and only use. Godzilla is an unstoppable force of nature, but Zilla gets killed with missiles on the Brooklyn Bridge. How could Zilla be killed so easily? More on that in the monster section, but as for plot, when compared with the rehash of King Kong, I’d consider it less bad. Not better. At least they tried something original (and I use that term loosely, because it’s kind of like they took the plot of 54’s Godzilla and mashed it with The Lost World: Jurassic Park), unlike Kong’s step-by-step retelling of the story just with some elements altered. 

Point begrudgingly goes to: G 98.

Characters:

King Kong:

The basic character archetypes are the same—a greedy business-type guy, a heroic young man, a damsel in distress—and the island natives are portrayed in more or less the same manner, but the actual characters are all new. 

Jessica Lange in the clutches of the beast

Gone is Anne Darrow the actress, replaced with Dwan, played by Jessica Lange in her first role, who is lost at sea and gets found by the crew. She says her name is Dawn but she switched the letters around to be different; I’m pretty sure the writers were just combining the names of Anne and Darrow. Even without comparing her to Fay Wray’s character, she’s still not compelling, and the way she’s introduced to the crew is awkward. They find her adrift at sea, apparently because something happened to the yacht she was on, and then once she wakes up and finds out what happened, she’s all of a sudden chummy with the crew, and wanting to explore once they land on the island. At least with Anne Darrow, the whole reason for her being there made sense. From here on I’ll just refer to Dwan as ‘the girl’, to doubly refer to Anne Darrow and her, because they are essentially the same character.

The natives kidnap the girl just like they did originally, tie her up, and Kong takes her. One way they made an honest effort to improve the girl is make her do more than just scream every time Kong stops to look at her, or pick her up, or move her, or do anything with her, but her lines are stupid and cringe-worthy most of the time. She still needs rescuing from the guys just like before, anyway, so I’d say the attempt to flesh out her character was pretty much a fail. 

Carl Denham, the director who eventually captures Kong and puts him on Broadway, comes in the form of Fred Wilson, an executive who works for the oil company. He’s played by Charles Grodin, and to be frank, he’s terrible. He hams it up and delivers his lines with maximum cheesiness. As for the Jack Driscoll character, the young first mate, he’s now Jack Prescott, played by Jeff Bridges. Prescott is a primate paleontologist, and is the one who stows aboard the ship. He’s the best of the three main characters, but still doesn’t have much to do (he does all the same stuff Jack Driscoll did). Jeff Bridges looks as scruffy as he did playing The Dude in The Big Lebowski. In fact, he might be even scruffier.   

Godzilla: 

G 98 doesn’t have any principal characters from any of the Toho films—in fact, the only Japanese characters are in the first few minutes, but they get killed by Zilla when he attacks a fishing boat, and the one survivor names him, but the name becomes mistranslated, which is how Gojira becomes Godzilla. This is one of the very few things I actually like from this movie. 

Matthew Broderick, looking like a goof

The main character is nuclear worm expert Nick Tatopoulous, played by Matthew Broderick. Y’know, if the main character had been written as a cocky, cool young scientist in the vein of the character Broderick is most well-known for, Ferris Bueller, then I could maybe see his casting make sense, but he really gives a bad performance, his character is thinly written (as are all the human characters), and he just doesn’t fit as an action movie hero. The only character I like is the French secret agent played by Jean Reno, because that guy is great in everything he’s in. Everyone else is boring or annoying or forgettable.    

Point barely goes to: King Kong.

Monster:

King Kong: 

In what seems like a step backwards, Kong is depicted by a man in a suit rather than through stop motion. To be fair, Toho’s version of Kong (the one who fought Godzilla in 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla) was a man in a suit too, but because Godzilla already was depicted in that way twice before, it worked fine, and it’s not like that Kong was really interacting closely with people anyway. 

Kong, sitting there like an idiot

Once Kong finally shows up about an hour into the movie, his reveal is actually pretty good, and it gives you false hope that he’ll make the movie live up to its title. But sadly, it all goes downhill pretty fast. As soon as Kong gets his big robotic paws on the girl, the majority of his scenes on Skull Island involve him picking her up, roaring, leering at her, putting her down, walking (not running) after her as she tries to escape, and repeating. And he does all of this very, very, slowly. While the original Kong was a quick-moving, aggressive ape monster, this Kong is lethargic and bumbling. 

The suit doesn’t look too horrible (you can take it more seriously than the Toho Kong) but the performance is disappointing. Makeup artist Rick Baker performed in the suit, and I guess the idea was having a real person playing Kong would give him more humanity, but it doesn’t work. His facial expressions are actually less emotive than the stop motion model of the original, and as I said, he doesn’t perform any cool movements, he just reaches for stuff and walks around. The director put a lot of emphasis on the robotic hand that’s constantly used in close-ups of the girl being picked up, which looks okay, but the green screen effects are terrible, and don’t hold up at all. 

Remember the scene in the original where Kong sits with the girl in his hand and tickles her and tries to un-clothe her, and how it was kind of funny and freaky and strange? Here it’s just creepy. Remember when Kong smashed through the big gate in the original? Here it’s boring and tensionless. And that’s how it is throughout the whole movie: every scene that’s re-created from the original feels campy in comparison, and any new additions don’t add anything. 

Kong fighting a...snake?

But perhaps the biggest letdown of the whole movie is the lack of other creatures on the island. Gone are the dinosaurs and pterodactyls and creepy crawly critters. Remember the epic T-rex battle Kong has at the heart of the original movie? Here his big fight is with a giant python, and it lasts about a minute. There’s a total lack of action throughout the movie, especially concerning Kong, but one positive thing I will say is they kept the scene where Kong flips the rescue team off the log into the chasm. It’s not anywhere as good as in the original, but at least they tried in that way. 

Godzilla:

This is where G 98 crashes and burns. Here’s a breakdown of the Godzilla monster, as depicted in the original, and all sequels: a giant, radioactive dinosaur-like (note that distinction) creature with atomic breath, impenetrable skin (meaning anything the army throws at him is useless), and a knack for fighting other monsters. Well I’ve already covered how he doesn’t fight another monster and gets killed by missiles, so that’s two huge changes for the worse right there.

Zilla, being hungry but cautious

Zilla doesn’t have atomic breath either, there’s only one moment where he breathes on a tank and it flips over and turns into a fireball or something, I don’t even really know how it happened, but no, doesn’t have atomic breath. Godzilla’s look has changed plenty since 1954, but you can take him out of any of the Toho movies, show it to a random person, and they’d be able to tell you it is Godzilla. When you look at Zilla, you think dinosaur, but not in a good way. 

In the original movie, scientists hypothesize Godzilla is a hybrid of a Stegosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus-rex. I can see that, he’s got the T-rex head, Stegosaurus spikes, sure! Zilla has those features too, kind of. His spikes are small, his bottom jaw is strangely thick, but the worst part is how skinny he is. He looks anorexic. Add to that his feet looking exactly like the T-rex’s from Jurassic Park and his hands looking all skeletal, and what you end up with is a giant monster that barely looks like Godzilla anymore (which is what led to the distinction of it being called Zilla). 

Dumb Zilla babies

And then there are the baby Zilla’s, which look the same, just miniaturized, but they act like Velociraptors, chasing the human characters down through Madison Square Garden. There’s more of this than full-sized Zilla action. I wouldn’t have complained if the movie had delivered on the full-sized action as well as something new with the babies marauding about, but the baby Zilla’s just feel like discount Velociraptors and you don’t care about the human characters anyway so the action all feels inconsequential. 

This was not a faithful redesign of the creature, but had it turned out looking badass despite being quite different, I’d be accepting of it, but this thing looks wimpy. It’s no surprise missiles killed it. They kept the roar almost the same, but even it sounds wussier. 76’s Kong has a stock roar that’s re-used tirelessly, which is the only thing I’ll say is worse about Kong compared to Zilla, but overall, it’s no question about which monster got reinterpreted the poorest. 

Point most definitely goes to: King Kong.

Other Factors:

Music: 

Neither score is memorable, but G 98’s score isn’t even noticeable while you’re watching the movie. King Kong at least has some nice moments of music that you can appreciate while watching, even if you won’t be whistling them after.

Another point for: King Kong.

Special Effects:

I’ve covered this a bit throughout, but to sum it all up, both of these movies strayed away from the traditional methods used in the original films, and neither for the better. The original Godzilla used a bit of puppetry and stop motion, but mainly featured a man in a suit, and the original King Kong used a mechanical Kong head and hand for some closer up shots, but Kong was mainly a stop motion model. Zilla is all cgi, some of it looks okay, most of it is dated, but no amount of great effects could salvage the poor design. Kong’s suit wasn’t as good as the stop motion model, but at least he actually looked like King Kong. I’ll take the mediocre-looking faithful reinterpretation over the slightly better-looking but worse reinterpretation any day.

King Kong gets another point. 

Legacy/Sequels:

Though the sequels don’t have any bearing on the films at hand, I’ll give a quick look at what these movies spawned. 

G 98 ends with one of the eggs surviving and hatching. Like they thought anyone would actually want a sequel. Well the story continued, but on the small screen instead, with a cartoon series that had the baby Zilla grow up, somehow gain the ability to breathe green radioactive fire, and he fights other giant monsters. It’s pretty much what the movie should have been in the first place. It still sucks, but it’s a cartoon, so I really don’t care. 

As for King Kong, despite ending the same way as the original, with Kong falling to his death, there was actually a sequel made, King Kong Lives. Some scientists give Kong a heart transplant and find a female Kong (Lady Kong?) and the two giant apes cause mayhem. To sum it up, it’s one of the worst sequels ever made. I don’t like 76’s King Kong, but I loathe King Kong Escapes. It’s incredibly stupid, boring, and forgettable. 

No points awarded.

Conclusion: 

So who wins? Going by points awarded, it’s King Kong. I don’t recommend either of these remakes, but if someone were to force me to pick between the two, I regret to say I would go with G 98.

Both of these movies suck, that’s for sure, but here’s the thing about King Kong. It’s more or less the same movie as the original, just with all of the good stuff cut out. There are no fights with dinosaurs, there’s actually less time spent in New York, and no sense of adventure. It’s extremely slow-paced, cheesy, and dull.

Zilla raping a building (and the Godzilla name)

G 98, though a disgrace to the Godzilla name and character, is a movie, much like Independence Day, where if you kind of can turn your brain off you may enjoy seeing Godzilla wrecking buildings and stuff getting blown up. If G 98 had featured a different monster attacking New York (like, oh I don’t know, Cloverfield?) then it would’ve just been a mediocre giant monster movie. There’s still some okay action scenes and destruction. As a kid, I liked G 98, but revisiting it now, yeah of course it’s bad. I didn’t like King Kong as a kid, and I don’t like it now, either. 

I would rather not watch either of these remakes ever again. While I would say King Kong is probably the better movie in terms of a remake, G 98 is slightly less boring and cheesy. 

Godzilla wins by decision, but not by much.  

To end this trilogy of cinematic battles on a high note, I'll be comparing two remakes that I loved but have been struggling with trying to pick which one is better. Check out round 3, King Kong (2005) vs. Godzilla (2014) coming soon!