Written by Dr. Mike ~ Guest Writer
Photo of Godzilla and King Kong retrieved from https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legendarycomics/godzilla-x-kong-the-new-empire-graphic-novel.
The promotional hype for “Godzilla x Kong: New Empire” has me worried. It’s not the bad stuff with the humans. Every kaiju movie has to have bad acting from the humans. That’s the painful glue that holds the fight scenes together.
And it’s not the simian antagonists, who appear to be oversized versions of the modern “Planet of the Apes” franchise characters.
And it’s not the existence of a Baby Kong. Although maybe it should be.
I just don’t want Godzilla and King Kong to be friends.
The thought of their friendship makes me kind of queasy. Pictures of the greatest monsters running side by side like some modern Batman and Robin do nothing positive for me. Seeing Kong hitch a ride on Godzilla’s scales, with Kong using his super arm brace no less, is almost offensive.
Please, let this just be bad marketing decisions by someone trying to pitch the movie to younger viewers.
Godzilla has never been just one thing. That’s one secret to his longevity. Over the last 70 years, the Big G has functioned in a variety of ways in his film franchise. He began as a brutal antagonist, shifted over to an almost kindly protagonist, and has not settled into some of a necessary-danger style anti-hero once more.
As an aside, another secret to his longevity is that Godzilla just destroys things. It’s a simple pleasure that anyone who knocked down a block tower as a kid can enjoy.
My Godzilla childhood fandom began with Godzilla Versus Megalon (1973), which featured a goofily positive Godzilla who just wandered into the story in order to help a cool robot named Jet Jaguar beat up the monstrous duo of Megalon and Gigan. It’s almost like Godzilla was stopping some bullies. The film was actually patterned after pro wrestling, which was enjoying a surge of popularity in Japan at the time. The fights were great and afterwards, with all the enthusiasm childhood fandom can provide, I sketched out a series of hastily drawn images and taped them all over my door.
Godzilla and Jet Jaguar part as friends in the movie (they have this kind of kaiju sign language that I don’t think we ever saw again). In fact, Godzilla seems to have genuinely enjoyed the excuse to beat up some bad guys.
So, I’m not against Godzilla having a friend. I just do not want Kong to be his friend.
This is a rivalry we have to preserve.
Making the Big G and Kong into buddies is like making Tom and Jerry into friends (which did happen in 1975’s The New Tom & Jerry Show when, ugh, the cat and mouse also wore bow ties to symbolize their friendliness). It’s like making Peter Parker and Norman Osborn into friends (which is somehow still happening in the Spider-Man comics right now – reformed or not, he killed Gwen Stacy Pete!). It’s like Ronald McDonald and Burger King hanging out.
It just does not work if everyone gets along. Here’s hoping this ends like the brief team-up at the end of “Godzilla Versus Kong” (2021) where a battle against Mechagodzilla leaves the two titans parting ways with begrudging respect but clear hostility.
