April 2, 2024 1:48pm

Modified on April 8, 2024,Published on April 2, 2024

The Eighth Wonder of the World!

King Kong has been a global pop-culture icon for more than 90 years, and the great ape shows no signs of slowing down. While most audiences are familiar with just a few Kong entries, you might be surprised to know there are 13 Kong films, including the most recent entry to the Monsterverse: Godzilla x Kong: New Empire, which, despite the second billing, is very much a Kong-centric film. Across television, film, comics and novels, Kong has yet to be aped, though other primates have certainly tried.

Below, I make the climb down from where the original Kong met his tragic fate and rank his films, from near-death experiences to satisfying safety. Here they are, worst to best.

• 13. Kong: Return to the Jungle (2006)

  The third animated Kong film, and the second to follow Kong: The Animated Series, is just about as bottom of the barrel as you can get in the Kong saga. Made with “state-of-the-art CGI Animation!” as the DVD proclaims, Return to the Jungle has headache-inducing visuals that look like test animation from the early days of the PlayStation 2. In the film, Kong is captured by an evil hunter who plans to put Kong, and the dinosaurs of Kong Island in a special zoo, and it’s up to Kong’s friends, Jason (Kirby Morrow), Tann (Scott McNeil), and Lua (Saffron Henderson) to rescue him. Even as a franchise completionist, this was dire. But you’re in luck, so are the next two!

• 12. The Mighty Kong (1998)

  The missing element of King Kong (1933) was that it wasn’t a musical, you say? Well, 1998’s The Mighty Kong solves that. The direct-to-video animated film is essentially a rapidly paced, poorly edited remake of the original movie, starring Dudley Moore in his final role as Carl Denham. You might suppose it was made for kids, and I guess that was the intention, only it’s so boring, so focused on the weirdly mature romance between Ann and Jack, while also being overly silly, that it’s not clear who this was made for. There is clearly an aim to draw in the Disney crowd, with Jodie voicing Ann and The Sherman Brothers (The Jungle Book, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Mary Poppins) writing the songs. But, there’s not an earworm in the bunch. Oh, and Kong falls from the Empire State Building and lives, forever trapped in this musical misery.

• 11. Kong: King of Atlantis (2005)

  The first follow-up to Kong: The Animated Series is blissfully not made with “state-of-the-art CGI Animation!” and instead just traditional hand-drawn animation. Kong, who is not the original Kong, but a clone whose DNA was stabilized with the DNA of his human brother, Jason, struggles to protect Kong Island from the threat of a rising Atlantis. The concept of Kong being manipulated by a snake-woman sorceress to replace the world above with the fabled sunken one is the kind of Edgar Rice Burroughs/Robert E. Howard-esque storytelling Kong could thrive in. But alas, the pulpiness is overridden by shallow storytelling and, if you can believe it, musical numbers. Again. The songs here largely rely on nonsensical rhyming and repeated refrains that pad the film’s runtime to a hour and 9 minutes, when 25 minutes would’ve sufficed.

• 10. King Kong Lives (1986)

  We’ve made it out of the animated era of Kong to arrive at, well, a live-action film that frankly isn’t much better. The sequel to King Kong (1976), King Kong Lives brings back director John Guillermin for a dull affair that finds Kong alive after his fall from the World Trade Center, and in need of a heart transplant. How does a giant ape get a heart transplant? Well scientists, led by Dr. Amy Franklin (Linda Hamilton) engineer an artificial one. But there’s not enough blood to keep it pumping, so adventurer Hank Mitchell (Brian Kerwin) returns to the mysterious island from the previous film and finds a female Kong and captures her, just like that. Dubbed Lady Kong, the female ape takes part in a successful blood transfusion, before she and Kong escape from the lab where they are pursued by the army led by the mustache-twirling Lt. Col. Archie Nevitt (John Ashton). While it finally seems like there might be some excitement in store, it’s largely a bore, undercut by frequent attempts at comedy. How does one make giant apes facing the military boring, despite explosions and primate bloodshed? For a film that was intended to be an emotional romance, the only thing moving about King Kong Lives is the restlessness your body goes through while watching it.

• 9. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

  The latest entry in Legendary’s Monsterverse once again brings Kong and Godzilla together, but this time as allies instead of enemies. Much like Adam Wingard’s previous film, GvK, the movie is far more interested in monster fights than human characters. Some of the fights are cool, while others are a bit wild with the camera movements, making it difficult to track where the creatures are spatially. There are large swaths of the film that take place in the Hollow Earth, where the human characters, Dr. Andrews (Rebecca Hall), Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry), Trapper (Dan Stevens) and Jia (Kaylee Hottle) are absent, and Kong and his compatriots might as well have been gorilla-sized, robbing the film of the human perspective needed to give the titans scale. And when humans do become the focus, they largely exist to either provide exposition or relief. While there are elements of what could’ve been a strong Kong movie, including his finding a surrogate son in Suko, GxK shoves Godzilla into the mix where he doesn’t do much other than undercut the drama in Kong’s fight against the villainous giant primate, Skar King who, even with his captive kaiju, the ice breathing Shimo, is not a threat big enough to require the team-up between the two in the first place.

• 8. King Kong Escapes (1967)

  Following Toho’s hit, King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), Toho partnered with the then-current owners of Kong, Rankin/Bass, and director Ishirō Honda to develop a film loosely based on Rankin/Bass’ cartoon series, The King Kong Show. The result is a weird, albeit fun, mishmash of genres that sees the evil, Bond villain-inspired Dr. Who (Hideyo Amamoto) build Mechani-Kong for the sole purpose of excavating a site in the North Pole where the radioactive Element X is hidden. Mechani-Kong fails, and Dr. Who decides no imitators will suffice, he needs the real Kong. Hypnotized, Kong does Dr. Who’s bidding until Kong’s latest human love interest Lt. Susan Watson (Linda Jo Miller) breaks him out of his trance, just in time for a showdown with Mechani-Kong. The plot is simple, but there’s still fun to be had with this entry. Originally Toho had planned for Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966) to be a Kong installment as well but after disagreements over the choice of director, Rankin/Bass dropped out and Horror of the Deep became a Godzilla film, though it still feels very much like a Kong film.

• 7. Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

  The fourth entry in Legendary’s Monsterverse series brings the two titans together again for the first time in nearly 60 years. Wingard’s film focuses heavily on the monster fights, but loses the humanity and thematic reckoning with the continued effects of nuclear power on the environment of the modern world that defined the previous three entries. Yes, the fights between Godzilla and Kong are fun to watch, but there’s a lack of awe as a result of the majority of the human cast being sidelined or cut out of the film entirely. Where is Jessica Henwick? Madison Russell (Millie Bobby Brown) doesn’t get any character development, and the new characters introduced like Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård) and Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) are ciphers. Some subplots go nowhere and characters, like Ren Serizawa (Shun Oguri) aren’t even connected to very obvious threads from previous films that would’ve added some layers. It’s a film cut to pieces in post-production, and none of it amounts to anything more than “big monsters, crash, bang, crash,” which can be entertaining for a while, but it doesn’t feel in tune with the Monsterverse as it previously existed.

• 6. King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)

  The third Kong installment and third Godzilla installment saw the icons come to blows. The result was the most-attended Godzilla film in Japan, until Godzilla: Minus One (2023), when a pharmaceutical company captures Kong to use as their spokes-ape until Godzilla awakens and frees himself from an iceberg. At that point, the Japanese military decides to use Kong as a weapon against Godzilla. Despite Godzilla being on his home turf, the giant reptile was still a villain at this point in the franchise, so despite Kong being an American creation, he triumphs over Godzilla. The battle includes the famous scene-turned-meme, in which Kong shoves a tree, trunk-first, down Godzilla’s throat. But battle aside, there is some greater significance to the film in how it explores pharmaceutical consumerism through exploitation and dehumanization. The film also launched the popular “Godzilla vs.” formula, which carried the Toho productions well into the 21st century.

• 5. The Son of Kong (1933)

  Released just nine months after the sensation of King Kong, Son of Kong is a much slighter film (running at just 69 minutes) and was made as a cash-grab. Despite that, director Ernest B. Schoedsack manages to deliver a very entertaining B-movie that follows Kong’s offspring along with the publicly despised Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong). With the threat of prison looming over them, Denham and Captain Englehorn (Frank Reicher) make for the seas and pick up a stowaway, Hilda (Helen Mack), and the rumor of buried treasure on Skull Island along the way. Upon his return to Skull Island, Denham befriends a giant albino ape whom he dubs Little Kong. The film is pulpier than the original, showcasing Little Kong’s fight against the island’s dinosaurs and a massive cave bear. But there’s something charming about Denham’s relationship with him and the film serves as a bit of a redemption for the infamous promotor. Despite its hasty production, Son of Kong doesn’t miss a step in its stop-motion effects, and much like the original King Kong, Son of Kong was also an influence on Peter Jackson, who owns one of the two existing Little Kong models.

• 4. Kong: Skull Island (2017)

  The second installment in the Monsterverse, directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, takes Kong back to a time before he was King and was just a little fella. Ok, so not little exactly, but smaller and younger than the Kong we’ve come to know in the current entries. Vogt-Roberts populates Skull Island with strange creatures, including the Skullcrawlers, and an entire ecosystem of giant monsters, tackling the film with a monster-lover’s glee. But alongside those impressive creations, the film doesn’t refrain from a semi-serious consideration of Vietnam vets sent to explore the island, while still carrying the war with them. Though it contains plenty of visual references to Apocalypse Now, it never goes that deep or dark. Not that it necessarily needed to, but the only major flaw of the film is that the tone isn’t entirely consistent. But it does enough to provide an emotional connection to some of the characters, namely soldier James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), anti-war photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), Army Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) and Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly) who survived on the island after crashing during WWII. The film also makes great strides in its portrayal of the Island’s indigenous people, who are protected by Kong. Also, Larry Fong’s cinematography makes for some of the most striking images in Kong’s cinematic history.

• 3. King Kong (1976)

  The first remake of King Kong is the first Kong movie I had the experience of seeing, and thus I have a particular fondness for it, one that holds up upon rewatch. Starring Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange and Charles Grodin, King Kong sails on the talent of its cast, along with the effects by Carlo Rambaldi and Rick Baker. While it doesn’t quite evoke the horror or thrills of the original film, it makes up for it with a sweeping romantic adventure that could’ve only been made in the ’70s. When Petrox Oil Company exec Fred Wilson (Grodin) discovers evidence of an oil deposit on a mysterious island, he plans an expedition to the island, despite the warnings of paleontologist, Jack Prescott (Bridges), who has heard legends of the island’s many dangers. After discovering an actress on a raft, Dwan (Lange), the only survivor of a yacht that exploded, Prescott has all the more reason to stay. The journey to the island doesn’t deliver on the promise of oil, but there is a great power there. Behind the giant wall built by a tribe of indigenous people, lives Kong. Refusing to come back to the States empty-handed, Wilson decides to capture Kong. Interestingly enough, Guillermin’s film borrows a key narrative element of King Kong vs. Godzilla. This time, instead of Kong being used as an advertisement for a pharmaceutical company, he’s the prize of Big Oil who use him as a crown-clad mascot, mockingly named King Kong. With charming chemistry between Bridges and Lange, the theatrics of Grodin, and a show-stopper of a third act that is wildly bloody, King Kong succeeds as both a remake of a timeless story and it’s a time capsule of a period defined by gas shortages, a President invested in big oil and the continued exploitation of the resources of stolen land.

• 2. King Kong (1933)

  King Kong not only changed cinema, it made giant monsters a staple of our media, inspiring the creation of Godzilla, Mothra, Them!, Cloverfield, Pacific Rim and on and on the list goes. Considered to be one of cinema’s greatest achievements and a technical marvel that proved revolutionary for stop-motion, matte paintings rear-screen projection, and miniatures. There’s not a genre film in existence that doesn’t owe something to King Kong.

  Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, King Kong follows documentarian Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) who has his sights set on a new film, shot at a far and exotic location. After hiring struggling actress Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), Denham sets off the ship, The Venture, along with Captain Englehorn (Frank Reicher) and his first mate, Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) to Skull Island where they meet an indigenous tribe who decides to sacrifice Ann to their god, Kong, leading to Fay Wray’s iconic scream. Denham, Jack and several crew members search for Ann on the island, encountering dinosaurs and all manner of extinct life forms. Dated as some of the effects are now, the film still feels thrilling, and the narrative so involving that we invite a suspension of belief so that we might believe in the magic of what’s on screen, just like the audiences of 1933. By the time we arrive at that iconic ending, of Kong atop the Empire State Building, Ann clutched in his hand, as the Biplanes swarm him, it’s nearly impossible not to feel compassion for this monster, to project our humanity onto this model figure and turn him real while we submit to the chills that take over when Denham offers the film’s final, tragic statement, “No, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.”

• 1. King Kong (2005)

  No, it’s not as influential, nor revolutionary, as the 1933 film, but Peter Jackson’s King Kong is a giant beating heart that’s not only a love letter to the original film, but to everything that made Peter Jackson the director Peter Jackson — the horror, the fantasy, the imaginary world and theatric considerations of love.

  The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is his magnum opus, but King Kong feels like his most personal film, his gift to the 9-year-old boy he once was whose life was changed by seeing the 1933 film. Jackson had worked towards this film since 1996, and you could almost call it obsession not unlike Carl Denham’s (Jack Black) to deliver something on a scale the world had never seen, but also something definitive to his journey as an artist. As the most expensive movie ever made at the time, it’s one of those ambitious swings where a director puts the entirety of himself on display and you can feel it in every frame.

  The plot follows the same beats as the 1933 film, but Jackson finds numerous places to expand on the characters, their relationships and the world of Skull Island, all backed by Andrew Lesnie’s rich cinematography, composer James Newton Howard’s enthralling score, and the epic and emotional storytelling of co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. When I saw it, I felt something akin to what audiences felt watching The Wizard of Oz (1939) for the first time. Like stepping out of the real world and into one of pure imagination, a land of endless discoveries where every monster-kid could find something to captivate them. Dinosaurs, giant insects, hidden temples and Kong (Andy Serkis) himself. Kong’s relationship with Ann (Naomi Watts) contains a kind of lyrical beauty, compared to her more practical, though no less engaging, romance with Jack (Adrian Brody). There’s an ice-skating scene between Ann and Kong before the climax of the film, and knowing the tragedy to come, it’s one of the most heartbreaking scenes in 21st-century cinema. As far as remakes go, this is one that not only expands on the original in some exciting ways, but it gives the audience better insight into the filmmaker.

  Head here for a ranking of all the Godzilla monsters.

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