Godzilla, King of the Monsters

[Lord Liaden]

You could be right about an age thing. Many millennials did not grow up watching old Godzilla movies on afternoon TV. Their programming tends to be a lot more fragmented and based on specific demand, so they might be less exposed. OTOH in America Godzilla has almost always carried the stigma of "kids" entertainment, like cartoons. Maybe a lot of people figured they had to grow out of liking them.

 

But hey, Kong is an American monster, while Godzilla is unquestionably Japanese. Maybe nationalist "home team" has something to do with it?

[Dr. MID-Nite]

3 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

You could be right about an age thing. Many millennials did not grow up watching old Godzilla movies on afternoon TV. Their programming tends to be a lot more fragmented and based on specific demand, so they might be less exposed. OTOH in America Godzilla has almost always carried the stigma of "kids" entertainment, like cartoons. Maybe a lot of people figured they had to grow out of liking them.

 

But hey, Kong is an American monster, while Godzilla is unquestionably Japanese. Maybe nationalist "home team" has something to do with it?

 

There is definitely a case to be made for this theory. Godzilla's strongest fan base seems to be in the 30-60 age range. They would have seen classic kaiju films either in theaters or on TV if they're closer to the end of the age range. Those closer to 30 would have had the benefit of VHS and the Heisei series of the 90's to strengthen their interest.

[Spence]

20 hours ago, zslane said:

Am I the only person who gets the distinct impression that American audiences at large did not get terribly excited for these new Godzilla movies until Kong was added?

 

20 hours ago, Starlord said:

For my own experience, I never hear anyone being excited about King Kong.  At all.  

 

I'm with Starlord.

People talked about the Godzilla movies, but never really mentioned KK.

 

For this movie it is more "Yay Godzilla!....King Kong? WTF?"

 

 

 

 

[Starlord]

48 minutes ago, Spence said:

 

 

I'm with Starlord.

People talked about the Godzilla movies, but never really mentioned KK.

 

For this movie it is more "Yay Godzilla!....King Kong? WTF?"

 

Well, those I know who are kaiju/Godzilla fans are far more excited by the prospect that we might see Mechagodzilla in this movie because K vs G has to be a swerve of some kind.  The one person I know who is a 'King Kong' fan is more a fan of the movie King Kong because it's a great and tragic story about man exploiting, then destroying nature.  King Kong is not a kaiju creature and doesn't belong in a kaiju movie in my opinion.  I feel like the fans who are excited just because "Cool, KK is fighting Godzilla!" are similar to those fans who were excited about Batman vs. Superman just because "Cool, Batman is fighting Superman!"  I mean, no offense to those folks, but we just have different tastes.  YMMV. 

 

PS:  If there is some added excitement, I'm not seeing it.  Perhaps its just because it got a Super Bowl bump.  I mean, there seems to be a new Fast and Furious movie out also, and I do hear that people are pretty excited about that.  I haven't seen the last 5 or 6? of those though.  I had trouble with these 'street level, gritty drag racing characters' - which I kind of liked - undergoing this massive and wonky transformation into what seems to be The Avengers With Cars.

[Spence]

3 hours ago, Starlord said:

 

Well, those I know who are kaiju/Godzilla fans are far more excited by the prospect that we might see Mechagodzilla in this movie because K vs G has to be a swerve of some kind.  The one person I know who is a 'King Kong' fan is more a fan of the movie King Kong because it's a great and tragic story about man exploiting, then destroying nature.  King Kong is not a kaiju creature and doesn't belong in a kaiju movie in my opinion.  I feel like the fans who are excited just because "Cool, KK is fighting Godzilla!" are similar to those fans who were excited about Batman vs. Superman just because "Cool, Batman is fighting Superman!"  I mean, no offense to those folks, but we just have different tastes.  YMMV. 

 

PS:  If there is some added excitement, I'm not seeing it.  Perhaps its just because it got a Super Bowl bump.  I mean, there seems to be a new Fast and Furious movie out also, and I do hear that people are pretty excited about that.  I haven't seen the last 5 or 6? of those though.  I had trouble with these 'street level, gritty drag racing characters' - which I kind of liked - undergoing this massive and wonky transformation into what seems to be The Avengers With Cars.

 

Pretty much spot on. 

I mean I loved to watch kaiju movies but until it was mentioned up thread I never even recalled the 1962 movie that used KK.  I guess I just never considered KK as Kaiju and just forgot about it.

[zslane]

22 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Maybe nationalist "home team" has something to do with it?

 

I tend to think so. We've had other "East vs. West" cultural moments, for instance Bruce Lee vs. Chuck Norris (Way of the Dragon). Seems to be a thing that crops up now and then.

 

45 minutes ago, Spence said:

I guess I just never considered KK as Kaiju and just forgot about it.

 

Well, Kong isn't a kaiju until you make him one. The Japanese turned him into one in 1962, and now Legendary has done the same. Kaiju have resurfaced in Hollywood lately with movies like Godzilla and Pacific Rim, but alas America doesn't have a native kaiju to bring to the table. But we do have Kong, and so he gets pressed into service. Quite understandable.

[Lord Liaden]

J.J. Abrams has stated in interviews that his movie Cloverfield was motivated by a desire to create the kind of iconic monster for American audiences that Godzilla is for Japanese. Setting aside the implied hubris of that , Clover is of course part of a different franchise and different universe. OTOH given the premise they've set up for that universe, a crossover is theoretically possible.

[pinecone]

But...the American Kaiju is only seen as a Lens Flare! Million dollars please!😁

[Spence]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

J.J. Abrams has stated in interviews that his movie Cloverfield was motivated by a desire to create the kind of iconic monster for American audiences that Godzilla is for Japanese. Setting aside the implied hubris of that , Clover is of course part of a different franchise and different universe. OTOH given the premise they've set up for that universe, a crossover is theoretically possible.

 

29 minutes ago, pinecone said:

But...the American Kaiju is only seen as a Lens Flare! Million dollars please!😁

 

American Kaiju?

I don't remember, but I don't think we ever even saw the monster in Cloverfield.  For me the interest in a Kaiju movie was the cool monsters.  If the Kaiju is never actually shown, can it really be considered a Kaiju movie?

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, Spence said:

American Kaiju?

I don't remember, but I don't think we ever even saw the monster in Cloverfield.  For me the interest in a Kaiju movie was the cool monsters.  If the Kaiju is never actually shown, can it really be considered a Kaiju movie?

 

While they do tease out the monster over the course of the film, and we rarely get a scene lingering on it, it is shown in some detail from various angles. Like these.

 

 

 

[Matt the Bruins]

And like the monsters in the 2014 Godzilla, it seemed to be constantly following the main characters around the setting despite them being too small for it to take any notice of most of the time!

[Spence]

15 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

While they do tease out the monster over the course of the film, and we rarely get a scene lingering on it, it is shown in some detail from various angles. Like these.

 

I guess I missed those scenes, but everytime I tried to watch it I was so bored I fell asleep or got distracted with something else and missed whole chunks of the movie.  

[zslane]

In 1954, Godzilla was an avatar of mankind's disregard for the power of atomic weapons, and served as a manifestation of the Japanese anxiety still lingering from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 2008, Clover wasn't really an avatar for anything of social consequence but was simply a manifestation of the American anxiety still lingering from 9/11. Moreover, the Clover "franchise", such as it was, doubled down on anxiety and paranoia and never strayed into the "rock 'em sock 'em" monster battles territory that made kaiju movies so enduring in Japan. In short, the Clover movies just weren't fun to watch. Consequently, Abrams' attempt to construct an American kaiju failed to launch thanks to a misguided understanding of what kaiju fans want from kaiju movies. Pacific Rim got it right, I think, but felt only vaguely "American" as the monsters looked more like Japanese designs merely rendered with a Cloverfield-like realism.

 

That leaves Kong as inheritor of the "American kaiju" mantle, especially when you consider that being a primate very distinctly sets him apart from the Japanese tradition of lizard/dinosaur-based kaiju. To Legendary Pictures it must surely have seemed like a perfect choice.

 

[Lord Liaden]

I just want to point out that Kong has a fuller history in popular media than some in this discussion may assume, as well as a larger past connection to Toho Studios. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_(franchise)

[Dr. MID-Nite]

7 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I just want to point out that Kong has a fuller history in popular media than some in this discussion may assume, as well as a larger past connection to Toho Studios. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_(franchise)

 

And I'll note that 1967's King Kong Escapes is a lot of fun. It features a ton of Toho cast regulars, a great score, and...Mechani Kong!

[Pattern Ghost]

21 hours ago, zslane said:

Hollywood lately with movies like Godzilla and Pacific Rim, but alas America doesn't have a native kaiju to bring to the table

 

Ahem, we invented the giant radioactive lizard from the ocean genre, a year before Godzilla was introduced.

Of course, I'm pretty sure nobody would pay to see that match up. Godzilla and Kong just have more history and personality, and their origin movies have a bit more gravitas.

[Spence]

9 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I just want to point out that Kong has a fuller history in popular media than some in this discussion may assume, as well as a larger past connection to Toho Studios. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_(franchise)

 

Well Sony has produced several superhero movies and yet all Sony pictures are not superheroic.

 

Not every movie out of Toho Studios was a Kaiju movie. 

 

I have an old memory of a superhero comic where the heroes went back in time to London and met Sherlock Holmes who helped them track down the villain. But helping superheros and appearing in a comic did not suddenly transform Sherlock Holmes into a superhero.

 

Nor does inflating King King to many times his height and pasting him into a movie with a Kaiju suddenly transform a standard animal monster into a Kaiju.

 

 

 

[Dr. MID-Nite]

16 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Ahem, we invented the giant radioactive lizard from the ocean genre, a year before Godzilla was introduced.

Of course, I'm pretty sure nobody would pay to see that match up. Godzilla and Kong just have more history and personality, and their origin movies have a bit more gravitas.

 

This is true, but in this film...the bomb is merely a plot device to awaken then monster. In fact...the monster itself isn't radioactive and radiation in fact is implicitly used to kill it. So it's not a "giant radioactive lizard" in the sense that Godzilla is. In Gojira, it's part and parcel of his very nature. It IS the bomb...given life. I'll also note that Godzilla is more popular than all of Harryhausen's monsters put together. (I love Harryhausen's films as well).

 

I will also note that Eiji Tsuburaya had written a treatment for what would eventually become Godzilla in 1951 (two years before the release of Beast). The monster in it was a giant octopus. The success of Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and an opening in Toho's 1954 schedule prompted a new screenplay to be written in 1954 by Shigeru Kayama and that became the "giant radioactive lizard" we all know and love.

[Starlord]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_from_20,000_Fathoms

 

The film was announced in the trades as The Monster from Beneath the Sea. During preproduction in 1951, Ray Harryhausen brought to Dietz and Chester's attention that Ray Bradbury had just published a short story in The Saturday Evening Post titled "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (it later was anthologized under the title "The Fog Horn").[11] This story was about a marine-based prehistoric dinosaur that destroys a lighthouse. A similar sequence appeared in the draft script of The Monster from Beneath the Sea. The producers, wishing to share in Bradbury's reputation and popularity, promptly bought the rights to his story and changed the film's title to match the story's title. Bradbury's name was used extensively in the promotional campaign. It also had an on-screen credit that read "Suggested by the Saturday Evening Post Story by Ray Bradbury".[12]

 

 

Interesting fact:  This discussion got me researching 'giant monsters from the sea' and I just learned that the Kraken is not part of Greek myth, it's actually part of Scandinavian folklore.  So there.

[zslane]

Had Hollywood seen fit to make a film adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu immediately after the success of King Kong, then Cthulhu might very well have been the first "American kaiju" on film. Oh what could have been...

[Lord Liaden]

46 minutes ago, Spence said:

 

Well Sony has produced several superhero movies and yet all Sony pictures are not superheroic.

 

Not every movie out of Toho Studios was a Kaiju movie. 

 

I have an old memory of a superhero comic where the heroes went back in time to London and met Sherlock Holmes who helped them track down the villain. But helping superheros and appearing in a comic did not suddenly transform Sherlock Holmes into a superhero.

 

Nor does inflating King King to many times his height and pasting him into a movie with a Kaiju suddenly transform a standard animal monster into a Kaiju.

 

 

Well, you're kinda splitting hairs here. Kumonga is an inflated spider. Kamacuras is an inflated mantis. Gamera is an inflated turtle. It's also rather misleading to characterize King Kong as "a standard animal monster." Kong was "the Eighth Wonder of the World," a unique, breathtakingly giant ape who awed all who saw him. All Toho and Legendary did was make him more giant, and put him in a movie with other giants. And that's not unprecedented either. Don't forget the original movie Kong's battle with the T-Rex, which Peter Jackson tripled for his remake. Kong vs Godzilla can be viewed as an extension of that fight.

[Lord Liaden]

BTW you can see inspirations from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (a well-made and financially successful giant monster flick) in the 1998 American Godzilla film, like the amphibious giant attacking a ship at sea, and rampaging across Manhattan. But the latter was an inferior movie in almost every way except film making technology.

[Lord Liaden]

15 hours ago, zslane said:

 

That leaves Kong as inheritor of the "American kaiju" mantle, especially when you consider that being a primate very distinctly sets him apart from the Japanese tradition of lizard/dinosaur-based kaiju. To Legendary Pictures it must surely have seemed like a perfect choice.

 

 

In addition to the arthropods from the Toho stable like Mothra, her sibling Battra, and the ones I mentioned above, don't overlook King Caesar, and Toho's take on Frankenstein, and the humanoid Gargantuas spawned from him. Toho's kaiju are much broader than lizards and dinosaurs.

[slikmar]

26 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

BTW you can see inspirations from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (a well-made and financially successful giant monster flick) in the 1998 American Godzilla film, like the amphibious giant attacking a ship at sea, and rampaging across Manhattan. But the latter was an inferior movie in almost every way except film making technology.

I am sorry, there was a 1998 Godzilla film? I thought that only existed in the same universe someone thought Highlander 2 was a good idea, ie a dark universe.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

41 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

In addition to the arthropods from the Toho stable like Mothra, her sibling Battra, and the ones I mentioned above, don't overlook King Caesar, and Toho's take on Frankenstein, and the humanoid Gargantuas spawned from him. Toho's kaiju are much broader than lizards and dinosaurs.

 

That's an understatement. LOL