Oh man. Look at that poster. Look at it! It's beautiful. I will never not be excited for a Godzilla movie. I mean...giant radioactive lizard smash! Am I right? Oh, and I guess Kong will be there too. Which brings me, kind of, to the point of this blog. Recently I got asked why I didn't like King Kong as much as Godzilla. And aside from the obvious answer of... ...it got me thinking. I mean, Kong is cool, I guess in his own way, smart monkey, but then in the same vein, why was the original American Godzilla (hereby stripped of honor and referred to as Zilla as it should be) so hated. I mean...it had a cool design. And an ever cooler animated series. So what didn't work? I mean, come on, that's cool, right? Godzilla climbing the Empire State building?!

“Monsters are tragic beings; they are born too tall, too strong, too heavy, they are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy.” - Ishiro Honda

When I wrote my Kaiju novel ​Up from the Deep, it was with this quote in mind. It's also a point that the original Gojira! movie drives home and is, I think, even more apparent in the more recent Shin Godzilla, since that abomination is constantly in unholy agony and was forced to exist against its will. Like a teenager, but with a violent purple death beam.

So what does this have to do with Kong vs. Godzilla. Well, they're both monsters and in their respective first appearances they are tragic figures. Godzilla is in pain and angry so he attacks Tokyo/humanity for the sins of the nuclear bombs that created him. Humanity then, in their infinite wisdom uses another untested weapon to kill him (This totally doesn't come back to bite them in the form of another monster named Destoroyah). Kong makes the mistake of wanting an interspecies romance and gets shot down by planes for it. But remember, it wasn't the planes, but beauty, that killed the beast. Okay. Yeah. Sorry, trying to be objective here. Kong was dragged to a strange place, and in his fear searches for the one friendly face he can remember. And then we kill him with planes.

It's not really until after these origin stories that we start to see a shift in the type of stories these monsters seek to tell. And this is somewhat unfair because Kong only gets remake after remake after remake and occasionally something like Son of Kong which...yeah. Whereas Godzilla gets 36 movies, and at least one statue in his honor. But here's the big difference. Ignoring Kong: Skull Island, Kong always dies, and that's it. He doesn't come back. Sure his movie is remade, but it's supposed to be the same Kong and he meets the same fate. Godzilla, on the other hand, shows back up every few years like... ...and it's the same Godzilla (usually, I'm generalizing a bit here)! So why does Godzilla get to come back over and over to wreak havoc and dole out radioactive smackdowns left and right, and Kong is always doomed to make a huge chalk outline on a New York City street. And while popularity is a technically correct answer, I'm going ignore it. I think it's a difference in what monsters represent and how monsters are viewed by their respective societies. I would like to point out here this is all my opinion, and while it will be based entirely in what I know, I don't know everything, nor do I claim to...out loud. You can also disagree. I can't stop you.

Godzilla - Initially represents a living incarnation of mankind's blantant disregard of the effects of nuclear radiation. More simply put, he represents the atomic bomb and all it's badness.

Kong - Represents a savage untamed wilderness. 

Again, generalizing here a bit, but boiling it down, you can say that Godzilla as a monster represents "the sins of mankind" and Kong represents "the unknown". I mean, he's called the 8th Wonder of the World for Godzilla's sake.

Kong represents the unknown, and Kong is a particularly American creation and idea. This is important because, well...what does any proud American do when they discover the unknown? They conquer it and claim it as their own. Like America. Kong is a force to be conquered. Not just because he represents the unknown, but because he is everything we say we aren't: primal, savage, wild.

We have to show that we are at the top. The our science and progress and military might will always triumph over such things. Because if we lose to that, what's going to hold the order. Order must prevail, and Kong is disorder. As a society, America wants to see themselves win. To come out on top. Because we think we always will. We like victory. If we win, it doesn't matter how much destruction there was, because we won. By force. This is equally apparent in the 1998 Tristar (God)Zilla movie. With the power of bridges and missiles, the American military defeated the monster. It's for this reason that Shogo Tomiyama named the monster Zilla. In his words TriStar "took the 'God' out of 'Godzilla'". They made him just another animal. And they killed him.

So why didn't the original American Godzilla work (for Godzilla fans, I should clarify)? Because Zilla wasn't anything special. A true monster in size alone, it's just a big lizard (And let me just add, I do enjoy this movie as a monster movie where I pretend its not supposed to be a Godzilla movie, and I love the monster design, just...again, not as Godzilla) doing big lizard things in the wrong place. And he's defeated in the same way he's created: violence. No one learned anything. Sure New York was pretty beat up, but they won. They can rebuild. Zilla is no more. We blew up the thing that we created by blowing up the thing! Woohoo! Now lets look at Godzilla. The real Godzilla. I said he represents the "sins of mankind". Sins are a weird concept. But in this case, I don't mean it in a religious sense. More that, humanity fucks up...a lot. Read a history book, pretty much every chapter has at least one moment where you just have to blink and wonder what the hell happened. Humanity is "sinful" in that we always fuck up. We cause destruction, death, poverty, war, slavery, etc. Again, religiosity aside, we make mistakes, and sometimes, we make them on purpose, and that, is what Godzilla represents. In particular, he most often represents humanities sins towards nature...

"Nature has a way sometimes of reminding man of just how small he is. She occasionally throws up the terrible offspring of our pride and carelessness, to remind us of how puny we really are in the face of a tornado, an earthquake, or a Godzilla. The reckless ambitions of man are often dwarfed by their dangerous consequences. For now, Godzilla, that strangely innocent and tragic monster, has gone to Earth. Whether he returns or not, or is never again seen by human eyes, the things he has taught us remain." -The Return of Godzilla

...though in one case he is distinctly a revenant of mankind's sins towards mankind. Looking at you, ghost/zombie World War II angry spirits Godzilla from GMK.

Regardless, Godzilla is less an animal, and more a force of nature. Sure he's a living creature, bu he cannot be stopped or killed (permanently). His motivations change on a whim, which explains why sometimes he's a hero sometimes not (the same rain that waters your crops can devastate as a flood). And he always comes back. Because mankind keeps causing problems. It's a different perception of monsters. In this case, they aren't things to be conquered or destroyed, though you might try. They're reminders, equalizers, punishments. Monsters show up when humanity gets too big for its britches, so to speak. And yes, Godzilla has been purely heroic, but even in those situations, he's protecting the planet, more than he's protecting mankind. We just happen to be here, and he still wrecks a bunch of our stuff in the process. Hell, in Destroy All Monsters (one of his more heroic movies) he straight up refuses to fight on mankind's behalf because of all the problems we cause. Mothra has to intercede on our behalf!
​ And this is where the new Legendary Godzilla movies get it right...mostly. They swap up Godzilla's origin story to him being a pre-prehistoric creature that existed when the world was a hell of a lot more radioactive. And the Bikini Atoll tests were attempts to kill him. Cool. Sure, we once again sweep the nuclear horror we caused under the rug there, BUT we get a new Dr. Serizawa who is there to remind of us of those particular horrors. Which works out really well in part to Ken Watanabe's acting but also character pieces like his stopped watch. He carries the tragedy with him, not Godzilla. And it works. Why does it work? Because we assign Godzilla a similar but different role while still keeping him a force of nature. We learn that as the Apex Predator, Godzilla acts as a natural balance for his territory, which happens to be the whole damn world. Ah, balance. This Godzilla in particular is still more animalistic than his Japanese siblings, but he is every bit the force to be reckoned with that they are. Humans can't do anything to hurt him (again, without repeating the mistakes of using untested weapons that work out so well), and while the other Titans give him a fight, he ends up on top and shakes off the fight like a champ. And here's the thing: Godzilla isn't on our side in these movies, not really. He's on Earth's side, which, in G14, is kind of our side because the MUTOs are dangerous, but he DEVASTATES San Francisco, which causes problems that carry over into G:KOTM, where again, he's fighting with us because King Ghidorah is a huge threat and we really aren't. Here we see Godzilla's intelligence also displayed in that he can distinguish between "friend" and foe. And from what we can tell from Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla isn't on our side anymore...presumably because we did something to upset the balance, and that's what Godzilla represents balance. Sometimes it's in your favor, sometimes it's not.

The storytellers for the Legendary Godzilla understand that Godzilla is meant to be something more than just a big animal (and also that if they had fucked this up they would never have the chance to touch Godzilla's rights again). And they run with it. He's the King of the Monsters, in a more literal sense than ever. Once he pulverizes Ghidorah, the other Kaiju literally bow to him. And he seems able to dictate how they act, in the way a mother standing at the door staring down her misbehaving kids gets them to act. There's respect there, that isn't present in Zilla.  All Hail But Alex? What does this have to do with that quote about tragedy that you started with? Yes. Right. Getting there.

This is actually a point where I think Kong and Zilla succeed, maybe even a little more than most of the Japanese Godzilla movies (exceptions being Gojira, The Return of Godzilla, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Godzilla vs. Destroyah, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, and Shin Godzilla). You feel bad for the monster in these movies. Both Kong and Zilla are just animals out of their element, trying to do animal things (we're gonna kind of ignore the weird Blonde/Kong romance here) and getting killed for it. Hell, Kong literally didn't even want to be there. He had no choice. The tragedy here is that these creatures are just trying to survive, to eke out a living just like us, and we kill them for it. Zilla needs a nest? Kill it and it's babies. Kong was brought here against his will and is seeking out the one positive human connection he ever had? Shoot him full of holes. It's tragic. Personally, I always find myself close to watery-eyed during Zilla's final moments. But I'm an emotional wreck, so take that as you will. It hurts because you know the creatures aren't doing anything wrong, they're just out of their element. Same reason I feel bad for foxes that get killed for attacking farmer's chickens...the fox is only wrong by our standards. It's just trying to survive the way it knows how to.

You do get this in some of the Japanese movies, particularly in The Return of Godzilla, where in order to keep Tokyo safe they drop Godzilla into a volcano and all the human characters lament this because again, Godzilla wasn't trying to cause destruction. It's not his fault he eats radiation, it's ours. And you see it again in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah where. in an attempt to get rid of Godzilla via time travel (yep...time travel), not only do they cause his extended suffering, Godzilla still ends up being born, only stronger and somewhat more emotionally wounded. Damn. To be killed by the creature that saved you so many years ago... And in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla you see the disrespectful lengths humans will go to, when they defile the corpse of the original Godzilla to make a new Mechagodzilla...and it knows, on a DNA level it feels what's been done to it and it both hurts and infuriates it, causing it to rampage out of the control of its human operators.
the red line is meant to represent a tear running down its face ​You pity the harm and trauma done to these creatures. We made them evil via our perceptions, our need to be superior, or our own cruel indifference. Yes, even Kong. Neither he nor Godzilla chose to be what or where they were. Me personally, I prefer my monsters as unstoppable forces of nature that humanity can only hope to deter or survive. Forces of nature we make by our own failings. But I like them to be sympathetic as well. I want to feel for them.

I think this is why I dislike King Kong so much...in 99% of his movies, he goes down like a punk. And yes, there's the tragedy of his death, and perhaps the greater tragedy of humanities penchant to kill things they don't understand without stopping to think about it. But no lessons are learned. Nothing changes when Kong lives and nothing changes when he dies. His death is...treated as a good thing. A success. But Godzilla...he just keeps coming back. Like Hurricane Season, but with a radioactive lizard. Godzilla Season. Every year.

So how can you feel bad for a hurricane? Simple, make the hurricane represent something. Bonus points if it's something bad that humans collectively feel guilty for. Global Warming has caused an uptick in more powerful hurricanes that cause tremendous damage. And while we as people don't feel bad for the hurricane per se, we feel bad that it exists and that it's our fault...BECAUSE it's our fault (I guess I'm generalizing here, because not everyone does). Similar with pollution, and animal extinction. Our fault.

Monsters are a black mirror that we look into and see the wrongs in the world...or in the context of the more modern Godzilla movies, they act as a reminder of where humanity stands in comparison to nature. And the wrongness of challenging that. Either way, they reveal something about us. Something deep and ingrained that will always be there unless we work to change it. These are our tragedies. And the monsters are our tragedies brought to life. And sure, maybe you kill the monster...but the thing is...sometimes, they come back. That got a little dark there at the end. Monsters are deep. It's just my opinion that monsters, at their best, deal with tragedy, either ours or theirs. And sometimes both. And man this was a long form way of explaining why I don't like King Kong that much.

Lastly, I don't want to discredit monster movies that don't plumb into dark psyche of humanity. Pacific Rim is a good and fun movie. I love it! But while the characters literally jump into each others psyche, the movie is just giant robots punching giant monsters. That's pretty much what it was made to be. And that's awesome!

On the other hand, Colossal deals with trauma and tragedy on a more personal and individual level. Focusing on abuse, and grudges. It's also a really good movie.

Even the Tristar Godzilla is a good movie, separate from what it claims to be.

Or most of the 60s/70s Godzilla movies, are kid-friendly and campy and don't really touch on too many deeper, darker themes (again, there are exceptions), but they're still enjoyable and some of them are quite good.

At the end of the day: MAKE MORE KAIJU MOVIES!

So, um, did I mention I have a Kaiju novel out? Check it out!