The move that Kong used to beat Godzilla over 50 years ago was used by Ghidorah in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, ahead of Godzilla vs. Kong. Their upcoming showdown in the 2021 movie will be their second face-off on the big screen, but it may have to be different now considering what's already happened in the MonsterVerse.
The first time the two pop culture icons fought happened over half a century ago when Toho collaborated with RKO (Kong’s owner at the time) to make the crossover movie King Kong vs. Godzilla. Released in 1962, the film gave Kong a massive size increase in order for him to be evenly matched with the much larger Godzilla. The two titular monsters, who crossed paths three times in the movie, engaged each other in what Toho called the “battle of the century.” Though Godzilla hammered Kong with a barrage of attacks and greatly wounded him with his atomic breath, Kong proved victorious in the end. Though Godzilla fans have long disputed the movie’s ambiguous ending, Toho has declared Kong to be the winner.
How Kong beat Godzilla isn’t unlike how the King of the Monsters’ final battle with Ghidorah played out. In the 1962 classic, Kong was handed a brutal beatdown by Godzilla, who was clearly physically superior to him. Godzilla had the fight won until Kong received a burst of energy from a bolt of lightning. Charged up with electricity, Kong had his second wind and managed to overpower Godzilla. It was only through Kong’s electrical upgrade that he was able to turn the tide against his opponent. Godzilla faced this same problem in King of the Monsters, except it was Ghidorah (and not Kong) who used this tactic against him.
At one point during the fight, Ghidorah can be seen biting into an electrical grid and drawing power from it. It’s only after this moment that the odds shift in Ghidorah’s favor. Thanks to Ghidorah’s power-up, he put Godzilla on the defensive and hit him with everything he had. After wrapping him up and dropping him from the sky, Godzilla was defeated, and would have stayed that way if a dying Mothra hadn’t intervened and sacrificed herself.
Essentially, what happened in Godzilla: King of the Monsters is that Ghidorah stole Kong’s winning move against Godzilla from King Kong vs. Godzilla. Since Kong’s trump card from the original fight has now been used in the MonsterVerse, it’s unlikely to be repeated in Godzilla vs. Kong. However, the film adapting Kong’s electrical powers from Toho’s movie was already considered to be a longshot, since there’s been no indication thus far that the MonsterVerse’s Kong has this ability. Without that power, Kong won’t be able to beat Godzilla in the same way that he did in their first fight. This time around, Kong will need to lean on a different strategy if he has any hope of surviving Godzilla’s onslaught of physical attacks and devastating blasts of atomic breath.
