Films #145 & #146 - Godzilla (1998) & King Kong (2005)
I’ve previously covered 2005’s King Kong and wrote a full review here, but I thought this time around I’d do a kind of contrast and compare, tale of the tape kind of thing alongside the 1998 version of Godzilla. So let’s see how they stand up to each other.
Approach
Godzilla took the more common road of starting almost completely from scratch. The story is unlike any previous Godzilla film and owes as much to The Beast from 50,000 Fathoms as it does to any G-film. King Kong, on the other hand, is a true remake of the 1933 original from the plot to the characters to the setting. Now, normally I’d give this one to Kong for sticking to the original, but, honestly, Godzilla has always been about re-imagining with each incarnation, so a remake would have actually gone against tradition. And another problem (as I pointed out in my original review) is that by putting itself directly up against the original, the new Kong’s errors are all the more obvious. And going against the lizard is the fact that the producers took the “re-imagining” so completely to heart that their monster bears little resemblance to the one we know and love.
Cast
Godzilla is heavily lacking in star power. The biggest star on view is the lead, Matthew Broderick (who was already well out of the spotlight by this time). Also on hand is the every present (at least at the time) Hank Azaria, the go-to French actor Jean Reno and a large field of “hey, I know that guys”. King Kong, on the othe hand, could boast respected actors like Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody, as well as the more generally popular Jack Black. Minor characters are mostly of the “Oh, is that who that is?” type. It must be said that the casting for Kong is pretty much spot on, it only fails based on what Peter Jackson does with them. Godzilla is a good bit wonkier, with lots of parts that seem extraneous or poorly developed.
Effects
Given the number of years between the two, it’s almost unfair to make this comparison, but the fact is that Godzilla is actually quite impressive. It spends a lot more time in real-world environments compared to Kong and never feels like a CGI film, as Kong often does. Kong certainly has the bigger and more involved effects, but that’s not always to its benefit. Jackson has a tendency to oversell his stuff, so proud of his visual achievements that he wastes screentime. Godzilla is more economical, as Roland Emmerich remembers that even in an effects-filled movie, it is the people that drive the experience.
Script
Godzilla has a lot of silly things in it. Some of it is fanwank (the “Gojira” reference), some is standard-issue Hollywood self-loathing for America (the many lousy food jokes from the French) and some places where it just seems to make no sense. On the other hand, there are lots of little moments where the quirky monster film Godzilla could have been tries to get out (Nik taking pictures with a single-use camera, for instance). King Kong’s script is ponderous, far too full of its own self-worth. Much of the attitudes are downright unbelievable (mostly where Ann is concerned) or would have seemed corny even in 1933. It simply tries too hard to convince the audience of its moral without really showing why we should sympathize for its giant ape. Given a choice between two imperfect scripts, go with the one that doesn’t bore.
The Monster
This one couldn’t be more different. Of course, both films try to make their respective monsters look realistic, but they take alternate paths to achieve it. Godzilla’s monster is a CGI creation designed intentionally so that it doesn’t look like a guy in a suit or anything ever seen on Earth. Kong’s ape, on the other hand, is designed to look like a real-life gorilla (if huge) and uses motion capture to achive its movements. This approach may work when a character is inherently humanoid, but with an ape like Kong, it makes him lose the very realism Jackson was looking for.
Fidelity to the source material
Neither film is true to its source material, really. Godzilla ignores every major aspect of the classic monster, replacing them with inferior notions. (I don’t need asexual reproduction in my monster movies.) But at least they don’t do anything that directly contradicts the original. In fact, regardless of the question of quality, there’s nothing in the ‘97 Godzilla that puts it outside the world of the classic Godzilla, as shown by his acceptance into the proper Toho canon with an appearance in Godzilla: Final Wars. King Kong’s transgressions are more serious. While it does follow the plot of the original film, it is in the characterization of the inhabitants that it strays. And, to me, that’s worse than not following the story at all. By denigrating the orginal characters, he denigrates the original film itself. As if Jackson didn’t really understand the film he claims to adore.
Conclusion
Really, it comes down to that first criteria. Although neither approach is inherently better, King Kong gets so much more wrong by treading its twisted version of the original story that there is little left to enjoy. While Godzilla may miss the point of the original films and have a lot of wrong-headedness in it, if one recognizes it as the new thing it is, it stands up pretty well. They both wilt in the shadow of their source material, but Godzilla just sees more of the light.