(Note: I originally wrote this essay for my Seminar in Cinema Studies class.)
In
film history, very few characters are as paradoxically simple and complex as
the giant radioactive reptile Godzilla (known in his native Japan as Gojira)
and King Kong, America’s immense gorilla. They are titans of amusement,
colossal draws, and gigantic personifications of entertainment. Their names and
likenesses are known internationally by children and adults alike; the giants
adorn everything from posters and T-shirts to cups and comic books. Yet behind
that fun layer of bubblegum, Godzilla and Kong are also enormously allegorical
in a variety of ways. In Gojira (Toho
Studios, 1954), Godzilla is a destructive dinosaur that has been mutated by the
use of nuclear weapons; when looking at the proximity of Gojira’s release to the 1945 atomic bombings of the Japanese cities
Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S., it is clear that Godzilla represents the
terrible destructive qualities of nuclear weaponry. He would return in a
similar destructive role in Gojira’s
1955 sequel Gojira no gyakushu, known
in the U.S. as Godzilla Raids Again.
On the other hand, King Kong (RKO
Pictures, 1933) revolves around the theme of humanity tampering with – and
attempting to control – nature for the sake of consumerism, and dealing with
the tragic results. After all, Kong is kidnapped from his island home by a band
of profit-hungry animal poachers led by Carl Denham – an entrepreneur with aspirations
of glory and avarice – all in the name of spectacle and income. Interestingly,
the themes of these two films are cut from the same cloth, as both of them are
essentially cautionary tales that question humanity’s feelings of superiority
and entitlement where the exploitation of nature is concerned. Alternatively,
while the themes may be similar, they are also distinct to their respective
cultures: for nuke-wary Japan, Godzilla is basically a walking atomic bomb, his
own mutated state the result of prolonged exposure to radiation; in capitalist
America, Kong is a wild animal seized from his home for the sake of personal
profit and acclaim.
This cultural
dichotomy becomes especially interesting when the film King Kong vs. Godzilla is taken into account. First released in
Japan in August 1962 as Kingu Kongu tai
Gojira (it was released in the U.S. almost a year later) with Gojira director Ishiro Honda at the helm,
King Kong vs. Godzilla was the first
and last time the two iconic monsters would meet on the big screen. The film
was initially conceived by King Kong stop-motion
animator Willis O’Brien in the form of a second Kong sequel – the first sequel, Son
of Kong, was released nine months after the original (Morton 120). The
film’s concept was altered several times before becoming King Kong vs. Godzilla, with the initial idea involving Kong
battling an overgrown Frankenstein’s Monster. Over time, the battle concept
remained the same, but Kong’s opponent did not: Frankenstein’s Monster gave way
to a beast composed of animal parts, which then was changed into a being called
Prometheus. Finally, the idea fell into the hands of Toho Studios in the early
1960s, and King Kong vs. Godzilla was
born.
