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 21st 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.
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