Savaging the West; The necessity of Giant-monster flicks

Can Kong: Skull Island revitalise a much needed genre?

I have a strange fascination with giant-monster flicks. Usually one to shy away from the likes of most big-budget CGI-laden blockbusters, I find that there's something inherently interesting in the mythos of big-monster cinema. Not that I would be in a hurry to see them, though, I'm interested more in their cultural value than in their cinematic merits. When Peter Jackson's 2005 remake of King Kong came out, it remained a favourite of mine for a surprisingly long time growing up. And then, when the Godzilla remake came out in 2014, I felt obscurely compelled to go and see it. It wasn't that great. But, it didn't spoil my interest in the genre. And with the recently released Kong: Skull Island (2017), I once again feel the urge to invest time and attention into a film which might not even be that great. Incidentally, I have yet to see the two biggest breakout hits of the genre; Monsters (2010) and Cloverfield (2008). None of these films might ever linger in my memory (Aside from Pacific Rim (2013), which got it completely right), but I think that the giant-monster genre has an important role to play in the current political climate.

The giant-monster usually works as a metaphor for human destruction; the original Godzilla was the atomic bomb, the 2014 edition drew parallels to 9/11 and, more recently, the setting of the latest King Kong is a take on the Vietnam war. But, really, the metaphors run a lot deeper than that. They aren't just about direct human destruction, but folly and ambition, causing indirect harm. And, a lot more significantly, they aren't just about the ways in which man can hurt man, but the relationship between man and the natural world. In the same way that Superhero films explore otherness by amplifying and caricaturing it to Hollywood levels of fun, the giant-monster film examines the spectacle of human destruction via ecological exploitation. As we see in the original King Kong (1933), the beast is integrated into the tribe's way of life, they know of its power and offer Ann sacrificially in order to please it. But when Kong is captured, exported to the States and exhibited for money, he breaks free and causes havoc across New York. Nevermind that he is eventually shot down and killed, he has still wrought a massive amount of destruction upon Western society.

Humankind's immoral exploitation of nature, driven by capitalism and colonial tendencies, will ultimately result in its own destruction. This swatting down of humankind, though, is not to discredit it. It is wrong to nihilistically think of humans as a cancer on Earth, as some environmentalists do. Rather, the giant-monster film today dissects the ethics of neoliberalism and foreign intervention (or lack thereof). Undoubtedly we live in a globalised, market-driven world, but this does not have to be incompatible with ecological protection. In giant-monster films, man is only attacked when he has done something to provoke nature. It is for this reason that these films should matter today, to highlight the wrongdoings of the Western world. Kong is a great uncivilising force, reminding us that we are not omnipotent on this planet. In an age of Google Earth and Wikipedia where every inch of the globe is available for public scrutiny, the mysterious giant-monster lurks undetected. And with a U.S president not just apathetic to but actively opposed to environmental protection, the genre now has a more profound urgency. It's a shame to see monster films dominated by the genteel b-movie industry, endlessly churning out harmless titles like Sharknado (2013) and Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014), softening the genre. Kong: Skull Island seems to have its b-movie sensibilities and flourishes, but hopefully it can transcend those aesthetic boundaries to deliver something a lot more complex, and a lot more timely.