Video Fridays: KAIJUOLOGY: The History of a Genre

On the eve of the latest edition of the Godzilla/King Kong saga arriving in theaters, this documentary popped up in my feeds. It’s very long and very complete and for all of my own fandom, I had no idea how deep the Kaiju story goes. I also didn’t realize which Godzilla and King Kong movies that I don’t have in my physical media collection (I’m a bit old school that way, buy the physical media then burn it to my PLEX server). Apparently I’m much more of a Godzilla fan than King Kong, in that I only own the 2005 Peter Jackson King Kong and none of the recent ones, versus the four Godzilla movies, which includes both the original Japanese 1954 film and the much maligned American 1998 Emmerich/Devlin attempt. After watching the documentary I’m thinking that I need to add Shin Godzilla (2016) and Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), Kong: Skull Island and maybe the 1976 Delaurentis King Kong. I tried to watch the anime Godzilla series on Netflix mentioned in the documentary, but like a lot of anime it spent way too much time in the unhappy thoughts of the humans exiled from earth that I don’t think I ever got to an episode where Godzilla made an appearance.

Apologies to the monster fans who are more casual in their tastes. Just a heads up that I started watching this documentary not knowing that it was a feature length production (almost 2 hours). But it was so well presented and broken into understandable chapters (or parts) that I was sucked in and watched the whole thing in one sitting. Your experience may be different. I didn’t care too much about Ultraman (except knowing that a friend uses the image as his social media avatar), but the documentary would hardly be complete if that character were left out. Like I said, this documentary is very complete. It’s amazing that the stories about these fictional creatures can tell so many different and entertaining stories over the past 70-years. Enjoy.