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OT: Godzilla vs Kong (Theaters, HBO Max)

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
9 replies | jump to latest

Back in the 1960's when Psycho proved such an elusive "catch" for both broadcast and local TV (in the second half of the 60's), both King Kong(1933) and Godzilla(1954) were in pretty heavy rotation on a Los Angeles TV channel called KHJ-TV Channel 9. KHJ also had a radio station -- "93 KHJ!" -- which Tarantino has immortalized on the car soundtracks of his Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. The TV channel was -- back then at least -- an "RKO general" station. Which meant that "RKO movies" were on it a lot.

Like King Kong. I can still remember the night my entire family watched that movie -- a Friday night, end of the week, KHJ gave it "special event status." I recall being guided by the Depression-era memories of my parents(as kids) having seen it in their respective hometowns as kids in the 1930's and never forgetting it. My mother recalled how terrifying Kong's face in the window of the elevated train had been to her. HER Psycho, I suppose.

And I remember how, at the end, when Kong went through his death throes at the top of the Empire State Building...I cried. I was very upset to be watching a monster movie and ending up crying in front of my entire family. Kong surprised me, the big old guy.

Meanwhile, Godzilla was given the "Million Dollar Movie" treatment by KHJ-9. That was the series where a movie played once a night on weeknights and four times on the weekend. I recall Godzilla being on the TV that weekend like "wallpaper" in the background of household activities. It took THAT big guy a long time to show up; at least I had the "comfort food" of Perry Mason himself(Raymond Burr) as the star of the movie ...along with all those Japanese people.

Also in the 60's, a toy modelling company called Aurora had made a killing by releasing -- on a monthly basis -- models for kids to make of Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, The Wolf Man, and the rest of the Universal monsters. Once that series was played out (with The Creature from the Black Lagoon as I recall, who kept falling forward off his platform because of those big claw hands)...Aurora got clearance to release -- much bigger sized, in much bigger boxes -- both a King Kong model and a Godzilla model.

So those guys got paired a lot in the 60s.

And in 1962, Japanese Godzilla filmakers put together "King Kong vs Godzilla" -- THE pairing of the two biggest guys in movies at the time. It got a lot of TV commercials. And in my home...we didn't go out to see it. I'm afraid there was some snobbery afoot. Godzilla could play on the TV but we weren't going to see a Godzilla movie at the theater.

So I never saw "King Kong vs Godzilla," a childhood loss that has finally been made up for...decades later....as Warner Brothers this week debuted "Godzilla vs Kong" on its HBO Max channel while sending it out to some theaters.

I must say that after that Wonder Woman misfire(it felt like a TV movie) and that Denzel Washington serial killer bust, THIS one actually feels like a movie that would have done well in theaters. Its part of a rather half-hearted "Monsterverse" world that Warners has been trying to sell since its first Godzilla movie (2014.)

Am I damned to say that I have seen ALL of the Monsterverse movies? And that I found all of them -- save one -- to be pretty incoherent and extremely noisy films.

The one winner -- natch -- was the one about King Kong, which benefitted from the clarity of how that big guy looks these days(the facial acting by an actual person "powering the ape") and a cast that included the ubiquitous Samuel L. Jackson, the ubiquitous John Goodman, and the ubiquitous John C. Reilly. I was at HOME with those guys, not to mention they threw in Bree Larsen between her Oscar and Captain Marvel, plus some other good actors. THAT movie had heart. And Kong.

Meanwhile, as behooves the "Godzilla cycle" of decades of movies, the rest of the monsterverse was pretty overstuffed (all from my childhood, and maybe yours) with Godzilla and Rodan and Mothra and that multi-headed creature I can't pronounce and --- well, these movies have been making the case for a superrace of "apex" creatures who are gonna rule the world and we should just get out of their way.

Except -- in Godzilla versus Kong -- we learn that one of those superrich mad scientist types has decided to build an "apex APEX" monster that will allow "man to dominate the apex creatures, as he should." Got it. The mechanical "apex APEX" thing is a robot called "Mecha-Godzilla," and -- with plotting comfortably locked in at age 12 where it should be -- as much as Godzilla and Kong duke it out in this movie(and they duke it out pretty damn good, WWE style), our Two Big Boys are going to have to put their differences aside to take on the Evil Human's Apex Robot at the end.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Godzilla vs Kong benefits weirdly from its "sprinkling" of various characters -- actors of a certain level - popping up amidst all the mayhem.

Funniest to me was the villain "Walter Simmons" -- an all-American character played by the handsome, suave Damian Bichir with his Mexican(?) accent fully in place, Walter Simmons be damned. A beautiful actressEiza Gonzalezed, plays his equally villainous daughter.

But you've got Kyle Chandler popping up in this -- he was in the first two Monsterverse movies and hey - he was in Peter Jackson's King Kong back in 2005 -- which really set up the whole "facial acting" thing we have in this today.

And we've got Rebecca Hall and Alexander Skarsgaard and Millie Bobby Brown and Brian Tyree Henry and Shaun Oguri and, well...its a lot of people propping up a WWE monster mash. There's also a sweet-faced little mute girl who is "the only one" who can control Kong....she's his pet, he's hers. Its all very ET.

Others have mentioned this, so I will too: when things get to the main "Godzilla vs Kong" event at the end, its photographed in a Hong Kong that is like a giant multi-colored pinball machine of lights and colors...real eye candy for the monsters to be crashing through and into and beneath.

Here's what I don't know: does "Godzilla versus Kong" finally END the Warner Brothers "monsterverse" project? The movies at once seemed to give fans every single monster from their childhood they might want to see -- with no real care about any of them EXCEPT the always-sympathetic Kong and the rather cool Godzilla.

In the meantime, Warners seems to have FINALLY delivered a "real movie" in its 2021 HBO Max line -up.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

That said: All "Sopranos" fans eyes on are September or October of 2021 when we finally get the "Sopranos prequel" The Many Saints of Newark. Evidently Warners has moved that one late in the year in hopes of open theaters and real Oscar consideration. And they will put it out on HBO Max as well. Photos of James Gandolfini's son playing young Tony Soprano have some real "oomph" to them -- they do look alike, and the son has been photographed looking quite threatening even as a teenager. And we will get "young" versions of Livia Soprano(now played by Mrs. Bates herself, Vera Farmiga) and Uncle Junior and a re-cast Johnny Soprano(Tony's dad.) All hopes are that we will get the kind of dialogue and flavor of the series so many of us loved...til those last 30 seconds.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

My mother recalled how terrifying Kong's face in the window of the elevated train had been to her. HER Psycho, I suppose.

King Kong (1933) is filled with simple but incredibly memorable shots like that (which often feel like they've been dredged up from the deep, shared unconscious), i.e., as well as the truly spectacular sfx shots.

I played most of KK 1933 for a group of 8-10 years olds a few years ago and after a few minutes acclimating to the B&W they dug it. It still works. KK 1955 was one of the first films to have an full orchestral score with lush themes etc., and it still *sounds* great and exciting today. It was the Star Wars 1977 of its time; a whole generation of kids had their worlds rocked. They had no idea a movie could be that much fun, look and sound that good, be so exciting & memorable.

I've watched a few of the recent 'monsterverse', Kong and Kong-adjacent films but haven't really connected with them, and I just checked out some MechaGodzilla clips on youtube. Does the current movie have any explanation of why the apex apex predator has to look like a big robot dinosaur as opposed to just being a big transformer robot or whatever? (Come to think of it, I vaguely remember dinosaur-robots showing up within the Transformers-universe at some point. I don't think it got any motivation there beyond 'That's a new toy line we can sell!')

[–] liscarkat (18388) 4 years ago

Good thing you posted stuff about Godzilla and King Kong here on the "Psycho" board, since there's no actual place on Movie Chat to post about Godzilla and King Kong.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

King Kong (1933) is filled with simple but incredibly memorable shots like that (which often feel like they've been dredged up from the deep, shared unconscious), i.e., as well as the truly spectacular sfx shots.

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Its a classic in so many ways...perhaps mainly in how its 1933 effects and "feel" have not been truly bettered all these decades later in terms of the achievement they were in 1933.

I suppose one might note that King Kong was, in some ways, the Psycho of its time. It was a very big blockbuster -- playing 24 hours a day in some theaters....and considered very frightening (among other things, in terms of how much almost EVERYBODY gets killed on Skull Island, save the three leads. ) I think it was in the 70's that certain "violent cuts" were restored and they are brutal indeed: one native dying in Kong's massive jaws; another being stepped on like a bug; the "wrong blonde" being dropped to her
death(those of us who cried when Kong died might have felt a BIT less sympathetic. And then there is the restored scene where Kong takes off a few of Fay Wray's clothes....all that said, I suppose the 1933 version -- LESS all those clips -- was plenty scary and amazing -- and moving -- enough.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I played most of KK 1933 for a group of 8-10 years olds a few years ago and after a few minutes acclimating to the B&W they dug it. It still works. KK was one of the first films to have an full orchestral score with lush themes etc., and it still *sounds* great and exciting today.

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Yes , it does.

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It was the Star Wars 1977 of its time; a whole generation of kids had their worlds rocked. They had no idea a movie could be that much fun, look and sound that good, be so exciting & memorable.

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I said Psycho of its time, above...Star Wars is likely more on point given kid audiences and the effects. That said, I recall reading an article on the Star Wars 1977 audience phenomenon that posited...Psycho (and not Jaws and not the Exorcist) as the movie that matched and preceded Star Wars in taking over the talk and obsession of the whole nation in its year of release and beyond.

Note in passing: on my personal list of favorite films, I actually gave Peter Jackson's 2005 King Kong my "favorite of the year slot." Yes, it shouldn't have spent over an hour getting to Skull Island, and yes, Act II has perhaps too MUCH CGI action but...the third act was filled with wonder and great sentiment at the end(Kong's death scene is moving in ways it had never been before). I like bits like how Kong tears his way up the loge seats at the theater ....to GET ONE GUY(Adrian Brody as his romantic rival.) That would be pretty scary -- Kong wants YOU, and only YOU.

Meanwhile, Act II takes the "Kong versus T-Rex" solo match-up from the original and turns it into Kong versus TWO T-Rexes and the attendant action sequqence(with the woman protectively in Kong's hand for the whole fight) is a lollapalooza.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I pit my love for the 2005 King Kong against my deep hatred for the 1976 King Kong, which Time Magazine helped try to sell as something special -- when it was really a movie that had "a guy in a gorilla suit" for most scenes and a famously malfunctioning 100 foot tall "robot Kong" in one other. Despite cool actors like Jeff Bridges(hero), Charles Grodin(villain) and newly debuting Jessica Lange(heroine)...King Kong 1976 was an insult to the 1933 original and stands as proof that 70's filmmaking could be very, very bad --- I was still remembering an atrocious "nothing" fight between Kong and a badly animated snake in the 1976 film when I watched that "lollapalooza" Kong vs two T-Rexes fight in 2005 (and yes, by then, Jurrassic Park was getting "cited" within the King Kong remake, too.)

The 2005 King Kong is pretty good -- if overlong and overindulgent. The 1976 King Kong is literally worthless.

But looming about them all is the 1933 version...perfectly timed to get to Skull Island nice and early, perfectly played to get to New York City and some great final scenes.

I can't say that I keep a list of "favorite movies per year of the 30's," but if I did, King Kong would win 1933 going away..and give The Wizard of Oz a run for the money as "best of the decade."

In my book...

PS. The "monsterverse" "Skull Island" can't beat the 1933, but seems to use the 2005 to maintain quality. And it stands out apart from the Japanese-based rest of the monsterverse.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I've watched a few of the recent 'monsterverse', Kong and Kong-adjacent films but haven't really connected with them,

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They are hard to connect WITH. I'm not sure that modern young audiences are all that invested in the ever-sillier Godzilla VS Something movies of the 60s and 70s. The original Godzilla is a pretty serious affair -- he really HURTS Tokyo and environs, as if out to kill everybody in a vengeful rage. But the later barroom brawls with men in lizard suits -- is WWE time.

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and I just checked out some MechaGodzilla clips on youtube. Does the current movie have any explanation of why the apex apex predator has to look like a big robot dinosaur as opposed to just being a big transformer robot or whatever? (Come to think of it, I vaguely remember dinosaur-robots showing up within the Transformers-universe at some point. I don't think it got any motivation there beyond 'That's a new toy line we can sell!')

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I can't really answer that, swanstep. There is a pretty funny bit where the "head villain" is interrupted in a funny way before he can fully explain his own MechaGodzilla, but yeah....it looks like a giant toy and the deal is that Zilla and Kong gotta take it on together.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I flashed back to this: back in 1989, the SECOND time I saw Tim Burton's Batman, I took a date. A woman in her 30's. I wanted to see the movie again(the first time had been with a small group), I thought it was good and that she would like it. Luckily, I had known her for awhile , because she reacted badly, about 30 minutes in: "This is a KID's movie! Why are we at a KID's movie!?" I recall saying that I thought Jack Nicholson made the film "adult" and that the Joker's murders were pretty evil (including the mass murders where people died smiling.) We didn't walk out -- she was a sport about it, but when it was all over she kind of shook her head: why'd we go to a KID's movie?

Well, Godzilla vs Kong IS a KID's movie. Trying to apply too much critical theory to it isn't very helpful. Its written to play to, and for, Kids.

Which everybody still is...