Everyone knows Godzilla and his myth/story etc, but there are many of those people who haven’t seen the original one or even the first King Kong. As someone who lost interest in the newer Godzilla x Kong films as soon as I saw both of them running together like a bunch of wanna-be-avengers kids, I really really adore these older films. They’re classics for a reason and they still hold up pretty well.

While I can’t confidently say which one I like better, that is because both of these films are important in different ways. While the older King Kong (1933) is a more brutal film with a lot of action and creatures and death and heroism, Godzilla is a somber yet nuanced monster film that doesn’t pride itself at the chaos it’s eponymous monster causes but rather showcases it brilliantly and beautifully so you can’t look away from it. It has a lot of symbolism about nature, Godzilla is completely without a personality here to the point that it could’ve been a raging wave coming from the ocean, brought by our mistakes. Most of my favorite moments in the film are from people behaving in certain ways because of the hardships and cause and destruction that they face. There are moments in this film where it doesn’t tell you what’s happening right away but merely drops hints and those moments, particularly one involving a child reduced me to tears.

This is of course a very important film as well, it’s much more closer to Jurassic Park than it is to King Kong with the way it’s narrative is structured. You know how in so many monster films there’s a scientist who explains what the monster is and gives a history lesson but nobody pays him any attention? Yup, that. That is Godzilla. It also for me atleast showcases the point where filmmakers went from puppets to costumes in monster films, also not to mention making most of japanese costume superheroes appear on tv-screens.

Takashi Shimura plays a miserable old man once again and is brilliant as the main conveyor of this film’s message and everyone else does a great job as well especially Momoko Kōchi as Emiko. The soundtrack and the main theme is one of the best musical scores I have ever heard in a monster film. It effectively highlights the film’s themes while driving the tension and melancholy in different parts of the film, honestly I feel like it would have been a very different film without it’s soundtrack.