I’m not gonna front. Godzilla vs. Kong had me hooked from the opening scene, where King Kong wakes up in the Skull Island jungle and scratches his ass like Steve McQueen in Bullitt.
Maybe the monster movie is an outdated form. Certainly, kaiju films are an acquired taste—or maybe appreciation of the inherent artistry of giant monsters pummeling each other just requires a closer contact with your inner middle schooler than many are comfortable with. Me? I’m not a sports fan, and never got into wrestling. Kaiju battles scratch that itch for me.
I did see Jerry Lawler wrestle in person once at a Coliseum Coalition event. He was years past his prime, but the grace and power of his movements were still compelling. It helped me understand the appeal of wrestling. If, as I wrote in my review of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Godzilla is the Cary Grant of kaiju, then King Kong is the Jerry Lawler of titans. He is the OG kaiju, making his debut in 1933. The thing you have to understand about Kong is that he’s not the villain of the story. Like Lawler, he has the occasional heel turn, but at heart, he’s a working class face ape. Kong was just chilling with his family of worshippers on Skull Island, hurting only the occasional sacrificial victim, when Carl Denham arrives on the scene with a tanker ship full of knockout gas and a Broadway contract. The destruction he laid upon New York City was richly deserved.
Those scenes on Skull Island, where King Kong fought an array of dinosaurs, were the genesis of the kaiju. Filmed 90 years ago, they still look miraculous today. But the most remarkable thing about King Kong is the depth of emotion stop motion animator Willis O’Brien was able to wring from a wire frame armature covered in rabbit fur and foam rubber. You always know what Kong is feeling, and what his motivations are. One look in the big guy’s eyes and you know he would never hurt Fay Wray.
Ishiro Honda’s haunting Gojira, made twenty years and a world war later, is Kong’s indirect descendant. Unlike the entirely artificial Kong, Godzilla was a guy in a rubber suit smashing up model train sets. On a deeper level, Kong symbolizes our fear of our colonial adventures returning for revenge, but Godzilla is our punishment for the arrogance of the atomic bomb. Where Kong was emo, Godzilla was an impassive force of nature, beautiful and terrible. He’s gonna smash up your city for reasons you can’t possibly understand, and you can’t do anything about it except hope he gets bored before he makes it to your house. In their first onscreen matchup, 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla, the King of the Monsters gets second billing, but steals the show, thanks to the mask of the Kong costume being less expressive than O’Brien’s stop motion creation.
In Godzilla vs. Kong, the billing is reversed, but this time, Kong steals the show. Director Adam Wingard, a veteran low-budget horror helmer, has studied Honda, O’Brien, and the greatest monster maker of all, Ray Harryhausen, creating a shrine to his creatures big enough to accept all worshippers. In Kong’s case, it’s a literal shrine, located deep within the Hollow Earth, where he keeps his axe collection.
Wingard and his writing team, including Thor: Ragnarok’s Eric Pearson, are conversant in the fringiest pseudo-science, which they put in the mouth of conspiracy obsessed podcaster Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry, charmingly frantic). Stuff like “plot” and “logic” have always been secondary considerations in films where a giant lizard fights a smog monster. Godzilla vs. Kong at least tries to construct a coherent universe where a dinosaur with atomic fire breath goes mostro a mostro with an axe-wielding ape. The humans are at least inoffensive. Wingard unleashes Millie Bobby Brown’s charisma as Madison, daughter of Monarch scientist Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) turned Godzilla whisperer. Kong’s connection to humanity is through Jia (Kaylee Hottle), a young deaf girl from Skull Island who communicates with her friend via sign language. Villain Demian Bichir meets satisfying comeuppance.
Godzilla vs. Kong’s twin set pieces top just about anything else in the genre since Honda’s swan song, Terror of Mechagodzilla. In the first, set in mid-ocean with Kong using a carrier battle group as stepping stones, is startlingly original. The second, set among the neon towers of Hong Kong, throws Mechagodzilla into the mix. As usual, real evil is a human construct. The kaiju are here to put us in our place.
Godzilla vs. Kong is in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.
