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!

King Kong (1933): Favourite Films Series

King Kong (1933): Favourite Films 

As far back as I can remember, I have loved dinosaurs, but never as much as I did at five years old. I watched every TV show and movie and documentary I could about them, and in almost every one of the documentaries I watched, clips from the same really old black-and-white movie were always being used. One in particular, Dinosaur! Hosted by Christopher Reeve, used more footage than any other. “What do you call this thing?” one guy asks, as they walk past a Stegosaurus so large all that fits on screen is the dorsal plates. “Why, something from the dinosaur family!” the other guy exclaims.

Later in the doc, the scene I would later discover was one of the film’s most-famous scenes shows a giant jet-black monster, like an ape or something, attack and fight a T-rex (my favourite dino back then), and brutally break its jaw and kill it. The scene left me so shaken and so devastated, I always fast-forwarded the VHS past that part, for fear of seeing my favourite dino murdered again. What kind of monstrosity could kill the king of the dinosaurs? 

I asked my mom what movie that was, and she said it was a really old monster movie called King Kong, but I wasn’t allowed to see it just yet. When I was nine years old, I was finally allowed to rent the original from the video store, and figure out why there was a part where a giant ape killed a T-rex, the most awesome of dinosaurs.   

Kong vs. T-rex: the most-famous monster brawl ever

I was glued to my seat the entire movie, until the T-rex strode out of the jungle and spotted the woman Kong had left in a tree, at which point I dashed behind the couch and watched the battle in full (I had never seen the whole fight, only clips), constantly ducking down thinking the T-rex’s end was near, but then I’d look back because the fight was so spectacular I couldn’t look away. By about the halfway point of the fight, I was fully attentive, and I soon returned to the couch to watch the rest of the movie. The most shocking part, the part I never anticipated, was actually feeling bad for Kong at the end as planes shot him off the Empire State Building and he fell to his death. This beast, the one I had hated at five years old for killing my then favourite dinosaur, had won me over. 

I don’t think I need to explain the plot of King Kong, not because the movie has been around for so long, but because it’s just such a well-known fable that, chances are, if you’re reading this, you know the story, whether from this version or the 70’s remake or the 2000’s remake, or some reference in another movie or TV show. Unfortunately, a lot of people haven’t seen the original version, and are turned off from it because of this notion that it’s “old” and “outdated”. I’m not trying to convince you otherwise, I’m just giving my take on it, and hopefully after reading you feel compelled to check it out of if you haven’t, because King Kong is not just some old B-movie about dinosaurs and a giant ape, it’s an all-time classic of cinema. 

A shot from the colourized version

King Kong has aged incredibly well. I always knew it was old, but I had no idea just how old it was until I was much older. When I saw it for the first time, I saw a colourized version on VHS. In retrospect, I think I enjoyed it more because of this, even though many purists think the colourized version is blasphemous. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that, but I definitely think the black-and-white version is the way to go. I know many people who won’t watch black-and-white movies (though I’ll never understand why) so if the B&W is making you apprehensive about seeing it, fear not. 

In my most recent re-watching, I really took note of how complex some of the shots in this movie are, especially on Skull Island. For instance, the shot where the T-rex finds Fay Wray in the tree. In the foreground, there’s Fay in the tree, then behind that is some layers of jungle, probably part of a set or a matte painting, then behind that the T-rex, which is brought to life by stop motion animation, a technique that takes hours, and behind the T-rex is more jungle, and all of this is meshed together into one cohesive shot. And that’s not

A promotional image, showing the impressive effects

even the most complex shot in the movie! Even today, I wonder how they got some of those shots. As impressive as cgi has become in today’s movies, I still find the old methods of filmmaking even more fascinating.  

But like the best effects-heavy movies, it’s easy to be swept up in the action and story and forget about how they made what’s playing on screen, and just be entertained. Admittedly, the first 30-40 minutes are a little slow and tedious at times, at least I found they were as a kid, but it’s really a good setup for the characters and adventure to come, and the pacing is damn near perfect. 

Kong's first on-screen appearance

As soon as they get to the island, things start ramping up to the eventual reveal of Kong, and from there, every scene becomes more epic in scale and action. In a day and age where comic book movies bombard the screen with countless explosions and characters and clock in well over two hours, King Kong doesn’t waste your time and doesn’t bore. It’s easy to think of old movies as slow and boring in comparison to more modern movies, but that’s not the case here. For instance, the entirety of Kong’s time in New York lasts about twenty minutes, and it is twenty well used minutes. 

I guess one thing to take away from this movie is that it’s a family film, as strange as that sounds. Many people, such as myself, saw it at a young age and were inspired by it, but you don’t have to be a kid to see it for the first time and love it. For instance, at age nine I watched it with my dad, who had never seen it, and we were both equally into it. Much like Star Wars, there’s stuff for everyone to love, regardless of age or gender or interests. There’s action, romance, adventure, creatures, intriguing story, interesting characters, and so much more, all packed into a movie that’s under two hours. It isn’t overly scary or violent, either, despite being a monster movie. As a kid I knew what I was seeing wasn’t real, but that didn’t make the effects any less effective. It shouldn’t traumatize kids, but shouldn’t bore teens or adults either.     

"Kong: The Eighth Wonder of the World!"

King Kong isn’t one of my favourite movies of all-time just because I saw it at a young age. It’s as impressive of a feat today as it was back in 1933. It’s a crucial part of pop culture, one that’s been around for decades, and will remain around for decades to come, and that isn’t by some random chance. It really holds up that well, and deserves every ounce of respect it’s received. 

The Shallows Review

The Shallows Review

I can safely say The Shallows is the best movie about a killer shark since Jaws, and not just because (like the Great White itself) it has little competition.

This is going to be a brief, spoiler-free review, because I don’t want to give too much away about the movie. It really is a simple premise, but not in a boring way. 

Blake Lively plays a surfer who goes to a secluded beach in Mexico alone, and while out on the water, she encounters a ferocious Great White Shark. It bites her, and she becomes stranded on a barren rock isle, only a few hundred feet from shore. 

I wasn’t sure Blake Lively could carry a movie like this, but she does, and I really liked that her character wasn’t a helpless bimbo. She’s actually quite smart and tough. Sure, she still does a fair amount of screaming and hollering, but wouldn’t anyone in this sort of situation? Also, I’ll address the obvious: seeing her in a bikini for nearly the entire run-time was a plus. 

There’s more to the plot than what I described, and I was pleasantly surprised to find several elements not spoiled in the trailers that came as welcome surprises, and weren’t corny but rather endearing and original. This isn’t some mind-blowingly original premise, but it’s well executed, despite being somewhat cliché and predictable. 

It’s not a spoiler to say the shark isn’t shown much in the first and second acts, but honestly, it didn’t really need to be. At this point, I think just about everyone knows what a Great White looks like. The way its presence is implied worked effectively, and the movie didn’t feature an over-abundance of Jaws-isms, like POV shots from below and slow, dramatic music (on that point, the music was a bit generic, but it wasn’t distracting, either, it fit well). The shark is cgi, but it’s definitely the best cgi shark I’ve ever seen. I don’t think there was a single shot where the effects sucked. 

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. 

I can’t say I was ever really scared at any point, but it didn’t feel like the director was trying and failing to make the movie scary. It was definitely suspenseful and nail-biting at points, but never truly scary—of course that’s just for me, if you’re not a big horror fan you might enjoy this because it isn’t a full-on bloody horror show, it’s a suspenseful, conservative thriller.   

Overall I’d definitely recommend The Shallows to fans of survival movies and/or shark movies. It’s not a cheesy, silly time like Sharknado, it features a character who is easy to sympathize with, and a shark that you hope doesn’t eat her. I wouldn’t say you necessarily have to rush out to the theater to see it, but if you’re watching Shark Week this week, it’ll make a nice addition to your programming.