Godzilla vs Kong (2021 film)

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Shanny Luft: 0:00

You know what it reminded me of when I was watching the movie with my wife. I started calling out lines from rocky for when Sylvester Stallone fights the Russian Welcome to no cure for curiosity. I am Shanny Luft, Associate Dean of general education at UW SP, and I'm also a professor of religious studies. Today's episode continues the conversation I had with Valerie barska and Carrie Elza. If you don't know who they are, you should check out our previous episode first. Our conversation was so far ranging, it could not be contained in one episode. The part of our conversation you'll hear today focus mostly on Godzilla vs. Kong, which came out in 2021. Godzilla vs. Kong as part of a larger monsterverse series of films. The connected films are Godzilla, which came out in 2014, then kong skull island in 2017, Godzilla King of the Monsters in 2019, and that all led up to Godzilla vs. Kong, which came out in March 2021. We talked about the recent film in the context of the earlier Godzilla and Kong films, as well as the contemporary themes from the new movie. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I had having this Godzilla movie does not feel like the even the last Godzilla movie. It's even in the filming, for example, in the last Godzilla movie, which is part of this same universe, the one the Bryan Cranston one, much of the shots of Godzilla are from the perspective of human beings you spend a lot of time in the movie looking up at a walking skyscraper monster and experiencing it from the ground level of people. And this movie that seems to be gone most of the people are removed so that it's just a battle royale

Cary Elza: 1:43

the I feel that so I you know, I rewatched half of the 2014 Godzilla and you're right scale is played with an a different way here than it was there. But I'm getting the same kind of kind of Avengers MCU flavor here in that different kind of different personalities. different properties in this franchise are going to have different tones to them. So King Kong seems to be a little looser to me. The King Kong movies seem to be, I don't know, a little sillier. A little Indiana Jonesy. Yeah, that tone gets brought into this movie like this movie open. With King Kong, right, like taking a shower and a waterfall. The use of music is interesting. And he scratches his butt. Yeah, it feels it feels different. And I will add that if you haven't seen the the kong skull island that came out that movies awesome. That movie is really fun. I mean, it has like like these other films, they spare absolutely no expense in the act. They they hire everybody that they can possibly get their hands on. So the acting is pretty, pretty solid. Um, they john C. Reilly is in that movie playing like a goofy pilot who has crashed and has been living with the people for 30 years since World War Two, the whole thing is set and like it right at the end of the Vietnam War. And they they every other scene has an incredibly expensive song that they had to license. So it is a it's a kind of a fun and loose movie. And and I see some of that, you know, because these you can take come Godzilla versus Kong, we can kind of like separate into these two zones, right? These two teams that are kind of associated with each monster, and the the Kong the Kong stuff has a different flavor. It's more it's more like adventury and it speaks to the original murine Cooper Erna showed a sack movie. And the Godzilla stuff seems more deadly serious to me, honestly. Yeah, so those two tones mix just like in the Avengers movie like the tone of Thor mixes with tone of, of, you know, Iron Man. And so these different tones all kind of meld together in interesting ways.

Shanny Luft: 4:21

They kind of sense each other. Right? Godzilla and Kong. They don't even have to hear each other see each other. They know when the other ones around. You were saying earlier radar. Yeah, yes. their identity is fight the other title, right. That's their primary goal in life is to just destroy each other. You even get the sense Congos to like the middle of the earth and then picks up that Yeah, talk about that. What's going on in hollow earth like I yeah, it's like implied that this war between these monsters is like generational. Right there was like an ancient Kong fighting an ancient Godzilla. I don't care. What did you think about that Middle Earth stuff.

Cary Elza: 4:59

There's You know, there's this trend and in cinema that we must constantly tie our monsters back to something ancient, we must feel rooted. We must discover the roots that we did not know that we had no time that we all feel unmoored. Right. That's new. This scepter and the or whatever it is, um, and and and this this idea that there's a throne and there's they're they've been fighting from for millennia or something. So that's all I got, right? Like, we all want to feel rooted. We all want to feel like our problems are connected to problems that have been happening and, and we we are, we are connected to our ancestors. I don't know. I don't know. But I do have. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

Shanny Luft: 5:47

I was gonna say all these monsters are apex predators, right, Carrie the point of King Kong even from 1933 is he is the biggest badass monster on Skull Island. Right? That's why you kind of want him on your side. Godzilla from the 1960s is literally called King of the Monsters right their status as the biggest badass monster is it for each of them is part of their identity. And that's true on Skull Island. That's true in you know, that little Middle Earth section. right that is like Kong's Kingdom even has like a throne that he sits on to communicate that he his ancestry was the apex predator of this hollow Earth world. I did enjoy those effects though. The

Cary Elza: 6:31

Inception little Inception bit where they like jump from one side to the other. Yeah, I thought that was great. I didn't I didn't see that uncommon the strangeness of gravity and I thought that was a nice touch. That was

Valerie Barske: 6:44

cool. And I like the there's something picking up on what Kerry saying about wanting to have links our ancestors, Shani, you and I kept using the word home, you know, he's home. Right? He's like swinging through stuff. And he feels like he's well at the end too. There's like a going home and they sing. All I need is the air that I breathe air to love you right? Like there's been something about and maybe that's, that's giving to where we are right now in this current current global pandemic situation that this longing for those roots, but I I actually really enjoyed of all the scenes I think I really enjoyed the Hollow Earth scenes quite quite a lot. Just on the representations there. This kind of scepter of Maybe it comes from one of the biking dinosaur parts of Godzilla. I don't know I was really taken in by that

Shanny Luft: 7:33

they you know what struck me watching them this new movie is King Kong is always about home. Right? Skull Island is His home is and the what drives the plot is removing him from the land in which he's comfortable. Right? When he goes to New York, the reason he freaks out in the 1933 film is he is he's terrified by modern culture, right? He climbs that building to escape from the noise and of New York.

Cary Elza: 8:03

I mean, if you re watch this movie, it's so blindingly obvious that Carl Denham, the filmmaker and all of his all of his colonialist invaders, right. All of all of the the the quote unquote explorers who come to Skull Island shouldn't be there. And I mean, that was one thing that was just blindingly obvious to me as I was rewatching this and trying to explain to small children to I'm like, Okay, guys, these people are sticking their noses where they don't belong, there's going to be consequences. They should leave this island alone. They have no business here and so I you know, I was kind of trying to get that narrative across to the kids because the movie doesn't make that clear, right that there shouldn't be there. instead be brings back calm to New York and Kong is like chained up horrifically at this, you know, a big gala, theater opening. And the thing that sets him off is flashbulbs. It's modern technology that drives him crazy. All right, and he just tries to escape. Yep,

Shanny Luft: 9:05

the the thing that connects the original King Kong and this recent movie is capitalism, right? capitalism drives the desire to to bring King Kong to New York because he's going to be a an attraction. And the new movie is about this international corporation.

Valerie Barske: 9:21

There's a kind of megalomaniac thing to the to the Damian Bashir character himself, because he's like, there's a moment where he's like, I'm in control of all it's not about right, you know? Yes, there's a component of saying that corporations are trying to do good, there's some right but there's something individualistic, there's something true neoliberal about him. All that capitalism, we are these homo economicus, right? We are defined by our capitalist culture and we cannot disconnect from them. And we're not linked in community because of that. Right is the ultimate kind of neoliberal evil because it somehow ties back to his own individual, his own family, his own right, his daughters involved in this as a scientist, there's something megalomaniac about him. And just as we were thinking about Hong Kong, maybe that's the thing that they don't have this fight in New York, both of these animals have characters, these kaiju have been in New York before the 1998 Matthew Broderick Godzilla is ridiculous. They don't meet there this time, though. They meet in the ocean, and then they meet in Hong Kong, which is being raised up as the ultimate kind of linchpin in not just questions of democracy. But what is the role of capitalism moving forward? Right. And it has always been this odd space, where, you know, the the Communist Party in China can can benefit financially from a full capitalistic example, but wants to limit democratic rights.

Cary Elza: 10:49

Yeah. And there's also more than a little of john Hammond to Jurassic Park, right? That, like, we're gonna create this thing. And that I mean, that's classic, classic, right, is we're gonna create this thing that we have control over to it and and no, no, you don't have control over it. As soon as you create it, it's gonna have its own control over itself. Stop. hubris, hubris, always.

Shanny Luft: 11:19

hubris is a constant theme in the kangkong films. And it's a theme in this film as well.

Valerie Barske: 11:23

The 1950s Japanese one also had some interesting human things going on that I'm not sure I see in this film, like, Where's the development of human relationships, it's kind of flat. In the original, there's this whole thing that that actually American filmmakers weren't sure would translate or transliterate well into an American cultural context, the idea of an arranged marriage versus like an AI based a love based, you know, she didn't want to be with this person that she was botros to and was expected to marry because of an arranged marriage. So I'm missing a little bit of these contemporary movies that I wanted a little of that romance. And maybe because it's Honda was was actually a romantic film director. He has that piece but I do feel this movies a bit flat on the human development, like what is going on with any of these people in their lives? The character Madison and her father, you don't get too much development of, I don't know, I wanted some humans. To do more.

Shanny Luft: 12:22

Let's talk about this human beings that get stuck in the story because there's like two or three different kind of human plots that are happening at the same time. Right there's the Millie Bobby Brown relationship with her father. And she knows the truth because she's listening to this podcast where a guy is spreading conspiracy theories. All right, it is so uncovered I feel like the movie is really missing the this current moment by presenting the crazy conspiracy theory guy as like the only one who knows the truth, the only one who can communicate the truth that doesn't seem to fit with the moment right now.

Cary Elza: 13:01

Yeah, but it it jives with the earlier Godzilla movies because Bryan Cranston played that same role. You know, nobody believed Bryan Cranston, there is the existence of these giant beasts. No one believed john Goodman and the King Kong movie. No one ever believes you that they're giant beasts. And that's a trope of all the monsters genres, like even the the American films of the 1950s. You know, nobody believes that they're giant monsters until they see it with their own eyes. And so conspiracies and proving that conspiracies are true is a thing that we see in all these movies. But yes, absolutely. It feels incredibly uncomfortable that he, you know, that he has infiltrated Apex that he has, you know, that he's, he's, he's putting out this podcast, he's got this website, he, you know, he has the, the house with the clippings that are connected by yarn. He's Fox Mulder, right. He's he, this is the same sort of X Files conspiracy theory romanticization. of, of this figure that we've seen for many, many years, the romanticizing of this figure and their dog in tenacious pursuit of the truth is arguably the thing that has led us to this moment to cue to the whole concept that somebody has the truth somebody is embedded somebody knows. And if we can only piece together the clues, we will have that same information and be able to act upon it. This has been going on for a long time conspiracy theory, but I would have liked I would like to see less of the romanticizing and that

Shanny Luft: 14:51

was what makes me most uncomfortable. This movie is not the conspiracy theory itself. The thing that makes me more uncomfortable than that in this movie is the solution. to that problem, because it's always find the guy who runs the corporation and kill them, and then type in the password that, you know, turns off mechagodzilla. It's the solutions are always very simple. Whereas in reality, our real solutions are really complicated. I feel like part of the fantasy of these movies is they suggest really simple solutions to intractable problems. The solutions are the individual the personal rather than stomach. Right? Which lots harder, right? But yeah,

Valerie Barske: 15:31

the Life magazine, one that I I bought, the special issue that came out is the Life magazine for Godzilla. And the ending is this, it talks a little bit about the issue of climate change and global warming. And it says, alas, there are no civilization saving secret weapons in real life. Right, exactly that feeling that you're that you're saying, right? It's not so easy that you could just build something or find it, you know, get rid of mechagodzilla. And then you're fine, right? Like, I think but maybe, maybe that's also a point, right? Maybe the point is to say, yeah, we can do this in these fictional worlds. But we can't really imagine that in our real world.

Cary Elza: 16:10

There's also this fantasy to that there is this fast underground conspiracy, Corporation, government collab, whatever, that has enough money resources, know how an organization to be able to defeat something. So I'm thinking about, like the beginning of the movie, when we see that like, comes on Skull Island, taking a shower and everything, and he throws like the tree sphere up and you're like, wow, it's a giant dome. And then media thing that I thought it's like, how expensive is that dome? For that dome, and so we do have these fantasies that our tax dollars are going towards something that perhaps if this planet explodes, maybe there's arcs, I don't know, like, maybe there's underground ground bunkers that the government is building, we just don't know about it. That's a fantasy that somebody somewhere can afford the dome for King Kong, somebody somewhere can afford that underground high speed training thing. Like,

Shanny Luft: 17:10

I want to talk about the ending of the movie, there's a big twist that mechagodzilla appears he was hidden from the promotion. And then Godzilla and King Kong have to team up to defeat of even bigger evil. So the movie is called Godzilla vs. Kong. But the story is really Godzilla and Kong coming together, putting their differences aside, it's a very kind of satisfying notion of of our intractable problem. By the end of this movie, Godzilla and Kong are able to put their differences aside for the greater good.

Valerie Barske: 17:40

Because this is not a cold war movie. It's kind of a question of like, what I mean, we're still in that is at the end of history, have we really gotten rid of the nation has globalization replaced all these other kinds of loyalties. But it's not a clear dichotomy, or binary, as like a Cold War setup was because in the original American version of Godzilla, it wasn't the Americans using the H bomb. It was also like the Soviet right there was like a push against like Soviet h bomb testing. So I think in this there's what we're seeing is that simplicity is more complex, right? It's not just this nice buy an area of it's not really a versus

Shanny Luft: 18:23

the last half an hour of the movie, you're very satisfying. Right? First of all, you get to see the fantasy Godzilla Kong, there been a couple of times when Godzilla and King Kong have fought each other. This one is the most technologically advanced, the you got to see just building after building getting wiped out, all I could think about was a child playing with toys, a nine year old who has a toy Godzilla and a toy Kong, and just smashes them against each other. And the consequences are irrelevant. It's just fun to watch giant things, punch each other and destroy and you know, an entire city scape. And then on top of that, you get them putting their differences aside to fight an even more dangerous threat. Right, they can see in each other, that their lifelong struggle is something they could put aside. You know what it reminded me of when I was watching the movie with my wife, I started calling out lines from rocky for when Sylvester Stallone fights the Russian rocky gives this speech about how he recognizes the humanity of the Russian people. This movie reminded me of that,

Valerie Barske: 19:28

but it's raising that issue of like, what kind of world system really has replaced the Cold War dichotomy situate? Yeah, so in this interjecting Hong Kong in this and asking like, okay, you know, China's very soon going to have most likely the largest economy in the world. And what are we going to do with that? If this is a critique of capitalism, or the particular neoliberal version of it? Who is the enemy like? Well, I don't know. There's some interesting parallels to that if I was playing in those kind of imagine onra of critique,

Cary Elza: 20:01

I think that that's a good point that this is playing, right. So this, that's what animation does, right? And we can, we can like talk about this movie until we're blue in the face as if it's a live action movie. But this is mostly an animated movie. And animation has this ability to create these, these kind of unlimited play worlds that we can mess around with all of these social issues. And the only image the only limit right is our imagination. But it's also fun, we can mess around with all of these all of these incredibly important political, economic, social issues. But at the end of the day, it's also just fun to see these big beasts crashing into each other and crashing into a city that we all know doesn't exist, right? Like we, like, we all know that this is an entirely animated film, right? At least those sequences are. So yeah, there's this kind of disconnect, while we're watching where, you know, we just kind of let go. And we're just like, let's just, I just want to see the world burn, just let me have this for this moment. You know,

Valerie Barske: 21:10

yeah, I really need that, that when you're talking to Japanese terms came up to me that the notion of our sobey of play, and it hasn't, it has like a deeper sense, in some cultural context, where it ties to like, religious ritual, but also like sexual pleasure, right? Like the play is really quite important. And so when you were saying that, um, like a course, right, we're supposed to enjoy this. And the other thing, the animated parts, right, the CGI, but also just straight up and, you know, animations that are happening, the notion of anime in Japanese is coming from a notion of animism back, older, sort of shamanistic Shinto practices that anything can have a spirit. Right. And so there's something powerful to that, too, that ties that notion, the animism to sob and play. I think it's supposed to be a bit. Not just cathartic, but right. Maybe it is cathartic. It's a relief. It's just come in this space and enjoy it. I've missed the spectacle experience of watching things together with people, right. And so yeah, for me, that was the high end of doing this, but just being with a person and enjoying that kind of spectacle, I first saw

Cary Elza: 22:20

Godzilla King of the Monsters in the theater, you know, a couple of summers ago, and it just loved it. Like I didn't, I didn't think logically that this is a this is a very well made well written movie that I'm watching. But I was like, This is great. And I yeah, that experience is so important when it comes to big movies like this. It's how we all like, get together to have kind of cathartic release. I completely agree.

Shanny Luft: 22:46

And this movie, I one of the things I've noticed about it in some reading some of the articles is how often critics comment on the fact that this movie is doing really well in the theaters, right? I mean, not well, compared to pre COVID. Well, but compared to any movie that came out in 2020, or 2021. People want to go see a movie, where giant things are destroyed, and there is no consequence. There's no, there's no emotional intensity, but there is kind of an emotional release. Right of the play. Valerie's talking about the play of watching things get blown up.

Valerie Barske: 23:21

Great, big monsters you want to see on a big screen? Yeah, exactly. Well, and also, you know, perhaps Apex is involved in getting the vaccines out faster? I don't know, right? From the timing that it comes out, right, like people are actually back in the theaters more and for me, I keep coming back to maybe it's because I'm also an anthropologist who traces kind of life histories. I feel like you can trace certainly Godzilla but perhaps also King Kong throughout like an individual person's life. You can you can graph it onto the life stories we've been telling about nations, right. As a Japan scholar, I'm brought into that it's been really popular in my field to write about this. And so I think that's what it was exciting about coming back to Godzilla again, I've been using Godzilla in my teaching of Japan for a long time, where we watched the original digitally remastered the the 1954. We watched it in 2014. And I paid to show it in the DC theater. And it was just such a cool experience. Students went to the archives and found representations of nuclear anxiety in our archives locally, we had a map of of Wisconsin and where there might be places we were worried about if there was a nuclear fallout. So at every point, I just feel like it's really exciting for me to make these connections even if they're very personal and subjective. That personal subjective way in which you can latch on to a film exit powerful makes it fun. Speak to you I was playing with King Kong a little bit there was a king kong that came out in 76 by do dilaurentis like I was born in 76. Like I just feel like the movie watching experience has to speak to me personally somehow and even if I'm not a sci fi person or a kaiju person I in this moment, this definitely spoke to me. I remembers the the original King Kong ride at Universal Studios and that that was a part of my childhood but my

Cary Elza: 25:14

you know, my dad showed me this film, the original King Kong when I was a kid, too, and I'm sure he probably explained about the risks, too. But it I mean, it was a part of King Kong was probably a little bit more a part of my childhood than Godzilla was but all of the American monster movies were all of those 19 My dad was was a Cold War historian. Book Russian and, and so so the cold, cold war inflected films were very big in my house. So I have this personal connection to these movies too. And I completely agree with what you're saying here.

Shanny Luft: 25:50

Carrie Elsa and Valerie Barsky, I had been looking for this conversation for a month. I'm really grateful. Thank you so much for talking to me.

Valerie Barske: 25:57

I'm just grateful to be here. I listened to some of your other ones. It was really amazing. I think it's really fun. I think this is like what we should be doing to show that sense of kind of Liberal Arts curiosity. I think it's great.

Unknown: 26:09

Yes, absolutely. Complete Laura, do more.

Shanny Luft: 26:12

I will definitely keep doing it. Thank you so much. And I hope you both come back and talk to me about other stuff. Thank you I would love to.

Gretel Stock: 26:21

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