Godzilla vs Kong

After a storm wiped out Skull Island, Kong has been moved to a carefully controlled habitat, but the great big gorilla chafes at his confinement, and his protectors realize that they must undertake an arduous journey to return the pugnacious primate to his ancestral home… deep within the center of the earth. Meanwhile, Godzilla, the King of the Titans, is attacking the evil Apex Corporation across the globe. The belligerent beast’s reasons put these two titans on the road to an inevitable tussle. But when a new threat emerges, the ancient rivals must set aside their animosity, or cede the rule of this planet to a new kind of monster.

The original film featuring this fracas was called King Kong vs. Godzilla, and it was released in Japan on August 11, 1962, with Kong victorious after "a spectacular duel on the summit of Mt. Fuji,” as the Toho English-language film program described it. It was the third film in both the King Kong and Godzilla franchises, and the first time they both appeared in color and in widescreen. It grossed ¥352 million, and was not only the second highest grossing film in Japanese history at the time, it’s still the most attended Godzilla movie in Japan—although we’ll see about that after the release of Godzilla Minus One—and its success is considered to be the main reason why Toho Studios decided to continue making Godzilla films. An Americanized version of the film was released in the U.S. on June 26, 1963.

It’s the mother of all franchise battles.

So it was only natural that they do it again nearly 60 years later.

This new version was released in 2021, part of the Kaiju Shared Universe called The Monsterverse, which includes Godzilla (2014), Kong: Skull Island (2017), and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) too. I rewatched this recently as a lead-in to the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters tie-in show currently streaming on AppleTV, and it is still just as spectacular. It might the best American Godzilla movie ever, easily doing everything that the film Pacific Rim tried to deliver, but just couldn’t.

The story of Godzilla vs Kong goes like this…

Godzilla and King Kong fight.

That’s it. That’s the plot. There’s more going on, of course, but that’s basically it. It’s just been awhile, and now it’s time once again for the Big Boys to Battle. Meanwhile, the human characters in the film run around and try not to die, and a few of them are successful at this.

It’s awesome.

Godzilla vs Kong is a modern day pulp era story, there’s giant kaiju, secret societies, super science, ancient mysteries, and global conspiracies in a film filled with atmospheric storms, long sea voyages, ancient worlds, Arctic exploration, and of course, the classic city-stomping spectacle. It’s big and goofy, but also sincere. And, for being a massive Hollywood blockbuster about massive warring beasts, it isn’t overstuffed, or overly-wordy. It’s quick, fun, and focused, all while giving its two big stars plenty of character, thanks mostly to the amazing motion-capture acting of the great Terry Notary and TJ Storm as King Kong and Godzilla respectively. The film also finds time in between all of the raucous rumbling to make the human characters interesting enough that they don’t seem superfluous to the story, which is always a nice bonus. The filmmakers understand the assignment too, which I appreciate. They know why we’re all here, and they don't spend a whole lot of time pretending that we can't all see where this thing is headed. It really isn’t difficult to guess why Godzilla is attacking the Apex Corporation. The only real questions are: How soon until Godzilla and Kong fight, who will win, and when will they finally team up?

The central idea behind the Monsterverse is that the kaiju don't hate us. They don't even mean to do us harm—some of them do enjoy a quick human Amuse-bouche on occasion, and if you fire a missile at them, they’re going to hold that against you—but for the most part, they're just really big animals jockeying for dominance over both territory and each other. This is mostly our fault too, because we’ve screwed up the planet so much with our pollution and radiation, which is what woke them all back up. As a result, in the world of the Monsterverse, the constant, almost extinction-level threat of giant monster attacks are treated like the threat of an air raid meeting the threat of a Natural Disasters, like hurricanes or earthquakes. There’s public shelters and evacuation routes and Civil Safety Corps to direct people toward their best slim hope of safety as the world explodes around them.

So it only makes since that the ultimate bad guys in the film are the Corporations and Governments. It’s their greed that woke the monsters up. It’s their greed that led to the climate change that destroyed Skull Island. It’s their greed that sets off Godzilla’s rampage. They’re even the ones behind the push to return Kong to his ancestral home, deep underground in the region known as Hollow Earth, not because they want to help the enormous ape, but because they want to find the energy source hidden there, and to use it for their own evil designs, mainly involving Mechagodzilla.

Hollow Earth is the idea that the planet is entirely hollow, or contains some substantial interior spaces. Possibly starting back in the late 17th century, the notion will pop up every now and then, often regaining popularity amongst sci-fi writers who love to use it for “lost worlds” filled with dinosaurs and various blah, blah, blah like that, before fading away again, back to being mainly the purview of quacks and conspiracy theorists, especially the racists and the Nazis amongst them, who love to intertwine the idea with “lost” Aryan super-civilizations, biblical giants, and ancient astronauts of “pure blood.” Much like genre fiction that uses a lot of Nordic Runes, any time the Hollow Earth idea comes up in the story, you need to start stepping carefully and cautiously, and be on the lookout for Nazis, not just within the story itself, but meta-textually too.

Thankfully, in this movie, it’s only used as the ancient home of the Titans.

So, as I mentioned, I rewatched this recently, and I did it for two reasons. One being that it’s a pretty damn good time. The second is the new show on AppleTV… Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

Much like Nick Fury and SHIELD in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Monarch has been the connecting thread through the films of the Monsterverse. Formed in the late 1940s in the wake of WW2, Monarch is a secret joint coalition of several governments, an organization that stretches across the globe, with the mandate to hunt, study, and prepare for the giant monsters who inhabit our world. The Monarch tv show is telling the story of both the early days of the organization, as well as the modern day, as the events following Godzilla (2014) shake the world. The first episodes are streaming on Apple TV already, and I loved them. I especially loved how Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt are playing the same character, just at different points in the character’s life.

It’s fun stuff, much like this movie.

Godzilla vs. Kong is a excellent kaiju film, as well as a pro-wrestling sci-fi spectacle and conspiracy thriller, with a nice bit of big loyal animals and their human pals to make you cheer. It’s an all around good time, with everything you want, and it does it all really well, all while looking great. If you don’t watch many of these kinds of films, then I’d recommend giving this one a shot, just like I would recommend checking out Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on AppleTV.

They’re both good.