In which I reflect on the first Godzilla vs. another monster movie on my list.
On Saturday (two days ago) we watched the next Kaiju movie on my list, King Kong vs. Godzilla.
Last week we watched Mothra, but with the Rifftrax and I've seen that one before, so I didn't feel like writing about it. This one was new. I've known about this movie since I got into Kaiju films as a child, but King Kong was never high on my list of Kaiju to follow. Partly because King Kong is originally an American production, and I tend to prefer Japanese kaiju, but mostly because King Kong is a mammal, a primate, and not a lizard. I just like lizards. I figure I AM a primate, so I want to look at things that are pretty far from me? I've never been excited by the apes and monkeys at the zoo (with the exception of the squirrel monkeys, which are of course adorable little examples of what it would be like if cats were omnivorous and had opposable thumbs) but I can spend far too long staring into a 10 gallon glass tank trying to find every last snake or skink or other lizard hiding in the underbrush. I think it's a fascination with the alien? Like, the further from my own experience, the more interesting it is. Can you imagine being cold blooded? Or having scales?
However, King Kong vs. Godzilla is the first "vs. Godzilla" movie on my list. Technically Godzilla fought Anguirus in "Godzilla Raids Again", so it's not really the first vs. movie, but poor Anguirus didn't even rate a title card, and he was offed relatively early in the film.
King Kong vs. Godzilla is also one of Godzilla's most famous matchups. Even people who aren't into Kaiju movies seem to have a sense that the giant lizard and the giant ape fought each other once. So it seemed important enough that I should put aside my disinterest in King Kong generally and give this one a go.
And I am certainly glad I did! The movie is amazing. We have had several serious movies about the unintended consequences of humanity's technological advances (the atom bomb testing waking Godzilla, for example) or of ignoring the warnings of people who live close to the land (Mothra, Varan). Godzilla Raids Again is almost entirely a tragic romance story, set to the backdrop of a giant monster attack. King Kong vs. Godzilla is a new direction for the series, in that it is practically a straight up comedy.
The plot revolves around a Japanese advertising company trying to make good advertisements. The movie opens with a science program asking questions of the universe and what we know compared to what we don't know, with the ad executive angrily asking why they spent money on the program. After an American nuclear submarine crashes into the iceberg Godzilla is trapped in as Godzilla is waking up (he had been buried in a glacier after Godzilla Raids Again, so presumably his bit fell off into the ocean. Early signs of global warming?), Godzilla predictably returns to Japan to wreak havoc. Seeing the news coverage of the giant monster, the ad executive rages... about how the news is preventing people from seeing their ads! Someone nearby (on their break) asks a friend who would win, King Kong or Godzilla, and the ad executive overhears, and immediately buys the idea. He sends two hapless stooges (basically the Two Stooges of the movie) to King Kong's island to fetch the giant ape.
After an attack by a giant octopus on the native village on the island, King Kong shows up, drinks the islanders red wine, and falls asleep. The stooges load him up on a raft and drag him back to Japan to fight Godzilla. On the boat the ad executive (basically the third of the Three Stooges) helicopters in to see King Kong, and almost blows up King Kong's raft by resting his arm on the plunger of the detonator for the TNT they rigged the raft with. The most amusing part was when they hit rough seas, and the ad executive opened a tiny yellow umbrella. (He was probably my favorite character...)
The boat with King Kong gets stopped by the Japanese coast guard, because they failed to declare they were importing King Kong. The only penalty is that the ad company will be held liable for any damage King Kong inflicts. Then they just let the giant ape into Tokyo. It's fantastic.
Godzilla and King Kong meet, they fight a bit, King Kong runs away when Godzilla sets him on fire with the atomic breath, rampaging happens, the military only shoots Godzilla with tanks for two minutes and then tries to do things like a giant pit trap or stopping him with a million volts in the electrical wires. I like how the tanks were just a brief "yeah we know this doesn't work but we have to try it anyway" moment. King Kong elsewhere disrupts the electrical repellant by eating the electrical wires he stumbles across? Apparently King Kong has electrical powers. The humans manage to put King Kong to sleep again with missiles full of animal tranquilizers and repeating the drum beat and song of the islanders where the ape is from. They pursue this strategy after King Kong saves(?) one of the lead women in the film and then carries her on top of the parliament building (no climbing Tokyo Tower? It may still be broken in half from when Mothra used it as a cocoon...) and they can't just shoot King Kong without hurting Fumiko.
They then airlift King Kong to Godzilla's location using giant balloons in possibly my favorite visual moment of the movie. Godzilla and King Kong fight again, Godzilla winning until a lightning storm supercharges King Kong with lightning fists, and they end up rolling off a cliff into the ocean. King Kong is seen swimming home, having had enough of the Japanese, and the movie ends with Godzilla's roar. Obviously neither could truly defeat the other, and they part on respectful terms in the ocean.
I really enjoyed the absolute absurdity of this movie, and just how much the movie embraced that absurdity. It was (I think intentionally) hilarious in many parts. The depiction of the native islanders was a little cringe-worthy racist, so warnings about that if you watch this (about as bad as the racist islander depictions in Mothra...), but other than that the monster fights were satisfactory and they didn't spend too much time on the humans other than to laugh at them. Godzilla and King Kong were both done by men in suits, and were both surprisingly emotive for such heavy costumes.
If you get the chance, I do recommend this one (the racism aside.)
I watched a subtitled version I found on Youtube.
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