For those who have not seen Godzilla Vs. King Kong yet, I advise you to click the “X” on the upper right hand corner of your browser. For the rest of you, I will not bother doing a forensic deep-dive into the “meaning” of the monster vs. the world humans have made (and screwed up) genre, nor the moral lessons and warnings we may take away from such films. Other than there is an element of escalation in these films that does tend to mirror the diabolical ascendency of mankind…to wit, the more knowledge we amass, the more susceptible to engineering the machines of our own destruction we become. As we have gone from the longbow to the hydrogen bomb, so in the monster world have we gone from displaying a giant gorilla circus attraction to creating Mechagodzilla, the ultimate monster who inevitably turns on all mankind. I think Blue Oyster Cult summed it up best in their song “Godzilla”: “History shows us time and again how nature points out the folly of man.” Pretty deep, right?
My issue with this film isn’t the storyline or anything like that. It is the classic “check-your-brain-at-the-door” flick. I am a bit more forgiving in this vein than some. For example, I choose not to question how King Kong has grown to such gargantuan size. In Merian C. Cooper’s classic 1933 debut of the “Eighth Wonder Of The World,” Kong is billed as standing 50 feet (although the models indicate more like 25 feet or so). But now, Kong has literally grown to around ten times that height, standing eye-to-eye with Godzilla who is almost 400 feet tall. But, as Al Franken might remind us, “that’s…okay.” So, I let the more technical aspects slide. After all, to accept the premises of a fire-breathing amphibious Allosaurus of sorts and a giant silverback gorilla the size of the Wrigley Building, and then to hurl raspberry’s while mumbling “yeah, right, like that would happen!” seems a bit dissonant.
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