 |
| Godzilla. King Kong. Let's get it on like... uh... Donkey Kong? |
King Kong vs. Godzilla
A fight 30 years in the making
I'm a sucker for a great kaiju film, who isn't? So, like every fan of the genre, I have to mention what was the ultimate fan service giant kaiju film of the early 60s - King Kong vs. Godzilla.
Kaiju films are a genre unto themselves in Japan. For those unfamiliar with the term, "kaiju" roughly translates from the Japanese as "strange beast", but is generally used to refer to monsters, and often of the giant variety. The origins of the giant kaiju movies lies with the 1933 film King Kong. The Japanese movie studio Toho wanted to create their own version of King Kong, so they created a giant gorilla / whale / lizard hybrid whose name was a portmanteau of those words in Japanese: "Gojira" that name became Westernized as "Godzilla". The original Gojira was a massive success which spawned numerous other giant monster movies, so it was only a matter of time before someone decided to bring the two grandaddies of the genre together. (Actually the behind-the-scenes story behind how Kong and Godzilla came together onscreen could fill a book, but I digress)
Now while the original King Kong, and the original Gojira are both A-list classics, few of the other kaiju films even come close. Sadly during the 1960s and 1970s Toho and its imitators cranked out scores of giant monster movies that are generally an hour + of boring exposition followed by the giant battle scene in the last 20 minutes. Not so with King Kong vs. Godzilla. This movie is pretty much goofy fun from start to finish. It suffers from a lot of silly pseudoscience, poor translations, and plot holes you could hide a Godzilla in... but if you're a fan of the genre, you really have to check it out.
*** out of *****
Kaiju films are a genre unto themselves in Japan. For those unfamiliar with the term, "kaiju" roughly translates from the Japanese as "strange beast", but is generally used to refer to monsters, and often of the giant variety. The origins of the giant kaiju movies lies with the 1933 film King Kong. The Japanese movie studio Toho wanted to create their own version of King Kong, so they created a giant gorilla / whale / lizard hybrid whose name was a portmanteau of those words in Japanese: "Gojira" that name became Westernized as "Godzilla". The original Gojira was a massive success which spawned numerous other giant monster movies, so it was only a matter of time before someone decided to bring the two grandaddies of the genre together. (Actually the behind-the-scenes story behind how Kong and Godzilla came together onscreen could fill a book, but I digress)
Now while the original King Kong, and the original Gojira are both A-list classics, few of the other kaiju films even come close. Sadly during the 1960s and 1970s Toho and its imitators cranked out scores of giant monster movies that are generally an hour + of boring exposition followed by the giant battle scene in the last 20 minutes. Not so with King Kong vs. Godzilla. This movie is pretty much goofy fun from start to finish. It suffers from a lot of silly pseudoscience, poor translations, and plot holes you could hide a Godzilla in... but if you're a fan of the genre, you really have to check it out.
*** out of *****
No comments:
Post a Comment