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!