TALKBACK #3: King Kong vs. Godzilla

[lhb412]

Another great Godzilla related article from Kalat at TCM's wonderful blog. He starts with King Kong vs. Godzilla being associated with Thanksgiving via annual TV airings in the '70s, goes into the film's place in the franchise, clears up some misconceptions about the following 'Monster Boom,' and then goes into the Rankin/Bass Kong cartoon and KKE... so, a lot of ground covered!

http://moviemorlocks.com/2015/11/28/giv ... e-welcome/

[ebirahsmeg1]

^^
Interesting read. I posted a link to this same article on TK. Hope to see Kalat keep writing more of these (He wrote some nice articles/blogs on Rodan and GvsMonster Zero as well)

[Gman2887]

I love how the comments for this article miss the point completely. The horse blinders on some of these people are quite impressive--As if they only skimmed portions of the article.

[Legion]

Wow, a lot of idiots commenting on that article, huh?

[king_ghidorah]

Wow, a lot of idiots commenting on that article, huh?

OH man those are some depressing posts...

[Legion]

He wrote this long and well thought out post, and the very first comment is from some asshat slamming the movie.

Twenty years ago you'd rarely see anyone totally rip this movie apart. Now this movie really gets a lot of hate from ignorant fools who don't understand it. But hell, you never saw people trash Mothra vs Godzilla back then either, but I see it all the time now. The hate the original King Ghidorah gets from younger fans is staggering.

[DannyBeane]

He wrote this long and well thought out post, and the very first comment is from some asshat slamming the movie.

Twenty years ago you'd rarely see anyone totally rip this movie apart. Now this movie really gets a lot of hate from ignorant fools who don't understand it. But hell, you never saw people trash Mothra vs Godzilla back then either, but I see it all the time now. The hate the original King Ghidorah gets from younger fans is staggering.

But King Ghidorah doesn't have any motivation unlike the Heisei and Rebirth of Mothra Films. I like my monsters to have characterizations and motivations and the Heisei kaiju had the best monsters of all time for that...

[lhb412]

But King Ghidorah doesn't have any motivation unlike the Heisei and Rebirth of Mothra Films. I like my monsters to have characterizations and motivations and the Heisei kaiju had the best monsters of all time for that...

The idea of that sentiment makes me want to bang my head against... I don't know, something hard... a railroad tie?

[DannyBeane]

But King Ghidorah doesn't have any motivation unlike the Heisei and Rebirth of Mothra Films. I like my monsters to have characterizations and motivations and the Heisei kaiju had the best monsters of all time for that...

The idea of that sentiment makes me want to bang my head against... I don't know, something hard... a railroad tie?

When I read that, I found that a nice hardwood desk works quite well.

[Rody]

One of those comments suggests fans become "apologetic" when trying to explain this film as a comedy.
Methinks that fellow hasn't seen the original cut. No, it's not a laugh-out-loud American comedy, but it's a pretty sarcastic film if I do say so myself.

[ebirahsmeg1]

He wrote this long and well thought out post, and the very first comment is from some asshat slamming the movie.

Twenty years ago you'd rarely see anyone totally rip this movie apart. Now this movie really gets a lot of hate from ignorant fools who don't understand it. But hell, you never saw people trash Mothra vs Godzilla back then either, but I see it all the time now. The hate the original King Ghidorah gets from younger fans is staggering.

I am so happy that this board has much more stringent guidelines for registering as a member here to keep most of this "new" fandom out of here. Close-minded, inarticulate, and dismissing the majority of the entire genre for a handful of Heisei and Rebirth of Mothra films...Some of the excrement I see posted hourly by the "new" fandom truly never ceases to amaze me. This "new" fandom can go fly a kite...

But King Ghidorah doesn't have any motivation unlike the Heisei and Rebirth of Mothra Films. I like my monsters to have characterizations and motivations and the Heisei kaiju had the best monsters of all time for that...[/i]

I actually had one kid...er, I mean "fan" PM me one time over there asking if the Rebirth of Mothra 2 Shogakukan book "had any interesting info on Dagahra's back story in it"....yeah, Dagahra's back story"...um...yeah....

[jellydonut25]

KKvG isn't a FAVORITE of mine. It sorta was when I was a kid, and I owned like 7 total Godzilla movies, but it's certainly not a top ten Godzilla flick for me.

That said, there's never EVER been an ounce of me that thinks of it as a bottom-feeder in the series.

Also, the absolute WORST thing that I keep seeing pop up is the complaint that "King Kong is only 20 ft tall." Now, it's funny, because when someone will antagonize me by saying "Kong beat Godzilla" I will retort with "That was the Japanese Kong. The American Kong is only 20 ft tall and got stepped on in the middle of the fight." but this movement to have...I dunno, LOGIC? in these movies is staggering and utterly dumbfounding.

"How can Kong fight Godzilla? Godzilla's 400 ft tall! Kong is only 50!"
"How am I supposed to believe in King Ghidorah? It's not realistic at all! I bet he'll only have one head. That's more realistic."

Those are the two biggest comments/complaints in this logic movement that drive me absolutely BONKERS. You're talking about realism in a movie about a 300+ foot tall dinosaur that defies anything ever found in the fossil record, that can live under water for eons, and breathes fire? Really? You can buy that, with an "explanation" that amounts to "He exists. It's pretty crazy, right?" but if they made Kong 300 feet tall, or brought in an alien with three heads you'd be like "F*** YOU MOVIE! THAT'S NOT REALISTIC ENOUGH!"

It's infuriating. People don't mean 'realistic.' What they want is an explanation, which is even worse, imho. This is why movies are all 2+ hours long when most of them should be about an hour and forty minutes. Everyone wants everything spoon fed to them and everything explained. Use your GD imagination. "How did a giant three-headed gold space dragon come into existence and come to Earth?" Use your imagination, that's how. It's a crazy world where kaiju exist and fight each other essentially for our entertainment, roll with it. Would you watch a WWE wrestling match and say, "How can that guy win after being hit with a weapon?" or would you just roll with it and be like "It's wrestling. It's fake. It's fun."?

[O.Supreme]

Would you watch a WWE wrestling match and say, "How can that guy win after being hit with a weapon?"

Yeah, but that's just me being me

But to take a step back for a moment. I totally get your point, although we've had conversations about the whole length of movies thing in the past. I love long movies. The more the better. But to your point... When I watch something like Star Wars, or an MCU movie, I don't need to have all the details because I know there are comics and books to fill in all the gaps and answer all those little nitpicky questions.

With Godzilla, you typically don't get that. Now the whole logic of Kong & Godzilla existing, yeah, I don't need a history going back millions of years. In GTTHM, saying Ghidorah just appeared one day and destroyed the Martian (or Venusian if you are watching the original) civilization, and now is showing up to destroy the earth. OK, that's fine. GTTHM is a 92 minute fun fest, one of my favorites. No need to change a thing. No need to bog it down with another 30 minuets of mind-numbing explanation, but (in the new LP version) how about 5, or even 3 minuets? Its amazing, in a well written script how much you can say in a short period of time, if words are well chosen, that will not slow the plot down.

Now *if* we got movievrse tie-in novels, then all the detail wouldn't matter, and I'd be totally ecstatic. But last time we had Godzilla novels, they did not exactly do well, unfortunately.

I guess what I'm just trying to do is find the middle ground. Would I be content and not complain about a Godzilla movie that had no explanations. Sure. But in a fictitious movie, throwing in some gobbledygook phaux-scientific explanations, just for the sake of suspension of disbelief, can actually help the imagination, if done correctly.

[ebirahsmeg1]

I bet if GTTHM, GvsMonsterZero, or DAM were released today, they would each probably be around 2 1/2-3 hours long explaining all of the "back stories" behind each kaiju and human character and leave no stone unturned with nothing left to the imagination...should suit today's simple-minded "new fandom"...

[DannyBeane]

I bet if GTTHM, GvsMonsterZero, or DAM were released today, they would each probably be around 2 1/2-3 hours long explaining all of the "back stories" behind each kaiju and human character and leave no stone unturned with nothing left to the imagination...should suit today's simple-minded "new fandom"...

You gotta have that superfluous 20 minute villain monologue/flashback that explains why they are doing what they are doing.

[king_ghidorah]

I just don't understand the new generation of fans (and that's ok to an extent as that's what our predecessors said about us).

KK vs. G is probably my favorite Godzilla movie of all time. The 62 suit is definitely my favorite suit of all time.

[DannyBeane]

I just don't understand the new generation of fans (and that's ok to an extent as that's what our predecessors said about us).

KK vs. G is probably my favorite Godzilla movie of all time. The 62 suit is definitely my favorite suit of all time.

I think everyone says that about every generation of fan. I'm 30 now but when I was 13/14 years old I was concerned about the power of monsters, fantasy fights etc. I remember when Spacegodzilla was one of my favorite films. Then I grew up and got some perspective by watching more films, reading books and researching history.

[XvGojira]

I think everyone says that about every generation of fan. I'm 30 now but when I was 13/14 years old I was concerned about the power of monsters, fantasy fights etc. I remember when Spacegodzilla was one of my favorite films. Then I grew up and got some perspective by watching more films, reading books and researching history.

Lord, I remember those days. I shudder at them.

[DannyBeane]

I think everyone says that about every generation of fan. I'm 30 now but when I was 13/14 years old I was concerned about the power of monsters, fantasy fights etc. I remember when Spacegodzilla was one of my favorite films. Then I grew up and got some perspective by watching more films, reading books and researching history.

Lord, I remember those days. I shudder at them.

But you don't UNDERSTAND! Spacegodzilla is a good movie because he has telekinesis and can levitate and has a shield and Yuki is a great character!

[lhb412]

... Yuki is actually a great character.

[O.Supreme]

I bet if GTTHM, GvsMonsterZero, or DAM were released today, they would each probably be around 2 1/2-3 hours long explaining all of the "back stories" behind each kaiju and human character and leave no stone unturned with nothing left to the imagination...should suit today's simple-minded "new fandom"...

I was going to try and pull a bazinga and say - Final Wars IS a 2 & 1/2 hour DAM, but that would be just insulting to DAM. While it is true that Final Wars is inflated by an hour, I don't even know what to call that hour. (It's not really back story, or detail...) IN Hollywood it would be inflated, but *I* might at least find that hour somewhat interesting, even though not necessary.

Also, wouldn't the desire to have more detail, to have questions answered- (the seeking of knowledge) be the opposite of simple-minded ? Again, I'm not saying I want a 3 hour over-bloated kaiju film, I'm just trying to look at things from a logical point of view.

[Gman2887]

Final Wars has more in common with Gamera: Super Monster than either Destroy All Monsters, as it's normally compared to.

My issue isn't so much the younger fans who are in to fantasy fights, powerful monsters, etc. That makes sense--We have to remember the things that got us into these films initially and that was, by broad definition, the monsters. What I find so headache inducing are those who have yet to grow out of that in their mid-20s to 30s. Yes we all still watch these movies for the fun monster battles, but... there is more.

[Garasharp K7]

Well, I'm in my 40s now, and while I can enjoy these films more than on a purely superficial level I'll happily admit that I'm still largely drawn to the sheer spectacle of monsters smashing stuff and fighting each other before anything else.
Even now I still watch various films and TV shows in Japanese without any subtitles, I can still get by with action and atmosphere and crazy monsters. I'll never really grow out of that.

Probably sound like I'm contradicting myself there, but I can appreciate this stuff on more than one level. I still tend to approach it the way I did when I was a young 'un as well. (that said, I try not to over-analyse the films too much. Takes some of the fun out of watching 'em for me)

[tbeasley]

Dr. Arnold Johnson's favorite book...
http://chasmosaurs.blogspot.com/2015/08 ... s-and.html

[O.Supreme]

so often I checked that book out in my childhood at the library...good times.