Giant Movie Monsters Origins: EXPLAINED

The History of Giant Monsters in Film

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking back at the history of giant monsters in film!

Giant monster movies are bigger than ever … and so are their monsters [broll: godzilla’s huge foot]! Whether you like watching monsters cause mayhem, battle it out among themselves, OR get their comeuppance, it’s a good time to be a monster movie fan!

The giant monster genre can be traced back to 1925. In February of that year, First National Pictures released a silent monster movie called “The Lost World”, based on Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel. Directed by Harry O. Hoyt, the film follows an expedition to a remote plateau in the Amazon where dinosaurs still roam. The movie was acclaimed for its groundbreaking special effects, which blended live-action actors and stop motion animation. Behind these effects was the now legendary Willis O’Brien; “The Lost World” marked his first major feature.

O’Brien’s reputation would grow with the release of “King Kong” in 1933. The film is widely regarded as one of the most iconic in movie history. The elaborate special effects were undertaken by O’Brien and his assistant animator, Buzz Gibson; filming proved so difficult that the T-rex fight alone took seven weeks to complete. Like “The Lost World”, “King Kong” featured scenes in which live action actors interacted with stop motion animation - a feat accomplished using a myriad of different techniques, including rear projection and a matte creation technique called the Williams process.

Despite now being regarded as one of the finest achievements in visual effects history, O’Brien’s work was not recognized by the Academy, as a category for visual effects was only introduced in 1938. Fortunately, O’Brien would later win an Academy Award in 1950 for his work on “Mighty Joe Young”. He created the effects with his protege Ray Harryhausen, who as a teenager had watched “King Kong” over and over again, looking up to O’Brien as his idol.

Harryhausen went on to create some of the most iconic visual effects in movie history [broll: “Jason and the Argonauts]. Soon after “Mighty Joe Young”, Harryhausen worked on a movie called “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” - about a giant monster that wreaks havoc after being awakened from atomic bomb testing ... Hmm, sound familiar? “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” launched a creature feature craze, with big bugs and mutated sea creatures rampaging across screens throughout the 50s. Japanese producer Tomoyuki Tanaka also wanted a piece of the pie. He conceived the idea for “Godzilla” - and the rest is monster movie history!

“Godzilla” combined the trauma of nuclear holocaust with (at the time) convincing special effects, overseen by Eiji Tsuburaya. Godzilla became one of the most recognizable monsters in movie history, and Tsuburaya’s visual effects work revolutionized Japanese cinema, helping give rise to a popular form of effects-heavy Japanese film called “tokusatsu”.

The success of “Godzilla” spawned a wave of kaiju films, countless sequels, and crossover events - including Toho’s “King Kong vs. Godzilla”, released to great commercial success in 1962. This era also spawned other popular kaiju, including Mothra, Ghidorah, and Gamera. The 60s and 70s could be considered the golden age of monster movies, with Japan pumping out some of the most iconic fictional monsters ever created.

1976 also saw the first remake of “King Kong”. Starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange, this version closely followed the original’s storyline while also changing a few key details. The group travels to the island to tap oil, not to film a movie. Kong never fights a T-Rex. And the climactic battle is set on the South Tower of the World Trade Center, not the Empire State Building. Despite being a commercial success, the movie received - and continues to receive - a mixed reception.

Things slowed somewhat throughout the 80s and 90s, with the era being populated by endless and increasingly silly sequels of beloved franchises. This includes the dreaded 1986 film “King Kong Lives”, which served as a direct sequel to the 1976 remake and received widespread condemnation from critics and fans.

That isn’t to say that the period was without important landmarks as far as monster movies go. In 1993, “Jurassic Park” revolutionized computer-generated imagery and animatronic visual effects, opening the door to new ways of bringing giant monsters to life.

Unfortunately, the pay-off wasn’t immediate, at least as far as other monster movies go. In 1998, TriStar Pictures released an American reboot of the “Godzilla” franchise starring Matthew Broderick, with a drastic redesign of the titular monster. The film was derided by kaiju fans, critics, Toho Studios, and even the movie’s producer and co-writer, Dean Devlin. This was no small part thanks to the drastic redesign of the titular monster. It was a box office disappointment, and planned sequels were quickly cancelled. It seemed like the kaiju genre was dead.

Luckily, Peter Jackson was right around the corner. Fresh off “The Lord of the Rings”, Jackson released a “King Kong” remake in 2005 to wide acclaim and box office success. While dragging on a bit at three hours, “King Kong” was nevertheless widely praised for its old school sense of adventure, spectacular visual effects, and for updating the original in a fresh and satisfactory fashion.

It was followed in 2008 by Matt Reeves’ “Cloverfield”, which incorporated the found footage genre and evolved into its own franchise.

Today, giant monster films seem more popular than ever. Guillermo del Toro’s “Pacific Rim” took in over $400 million worldwide, an impressive amount for an original monster movie based on old school kaiju traditions.

The following year, in 2014, we got another Hollywood “Godzilla” remake, this one much more successful. Legendary Pictures followed this up in 2017 with “Kong: Skull Island”; together, these films laid down the foundation for Legendary’s wider MonsterVerse. This includes “King of the Monsters”, a film that featured the classic Toho kaiju Mothra, Rodan, and Ghidorah, and “Godzilla vs. Kong”. We’ve also gotten a slew of other giant monster movies, including Toho’s own reboot “Shin Godzilla” and 2018’s “Rampage” starring Dwayne Johnson and a sequel to “Pacific Rim”.

It seems as if we’ve entered another golden age!