King Kong is one of the most iconic characters in all of cinema, but how do his films rank from worst to best? Nicknamed The Eighth Wonder of the World, the gigantic ape has appeared in films for almost a hundred years. He's been endlessly imitated but never matched; there can only be one dinosaur-fighting behemoth with a soul.
The character made his first appearance in the immortal 1933 classic King Kong, a groundbreaking piece of work that was a massive success at the time and remains widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. Since then, he's been remade and reinvented several times, making the journey from stop-motion animation to "man in a gorilla suit" to modern-day motion capture and CGI. He's battled dinos and mechanized gorillas – and even fought Godzilla twice.
With the resounding success of the duo's second matchup, Godzilla vs. Kong, it seems more than likely Kong will still be around in some form or another long past his 100th birthday. Here are the films featuring him, ranked from worst to best.
King Kong Lives
One of those rare films with a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes, King Kong Lives is the 1986 follow-up to the already unnecessary Dino De Laurentiis' 1976 Kong remake. The plot picks up where its predecessor left off, with Kong laying at the base of the World Trade Center (transplanted from the 1933 original's Empire State Building, of course). As it turns out, the Eighth Wonder of the World has been retconned back to life, with one catch: he's in dire need of an artificial heart and a blood transfusion. His only matching blood type is, of course, a Lady Kong, who he shacks up with when he's not duking it out with the military or sharing the screen with Terminator's Linda Hamilton. The visual effects repeat the 1976 version's use of a man in a gorilla suit instead of stop-motion animation, and to even lesser effect. The whole thing is an absolutely catastrophic mess, one that was such a box office bomb it stopped the production of Kong films for a full 20 years.
Son of Kong
RKO Pictures were so overjoyed at the success of King Kong that they rushed a sequel into production to have it in theaters a mere nine months after the original premiere. Unlike the 1986 sequel, Son of Kong keeps the giant ape dead after his fall, but sees filmmaker and adventurer Carl Denham returning to Skull Island to settle new debts. Once there, he meets the titular son, a 25-foot tall albino version of Kong. The island action is fun enough, but nowhere near as thrilling or charming as the original. Overall, the rushed nature of the project made for some predictably underwhelming results, and if one is wondering why King Kong never spawned a multi-picture franchise a la Universal's Frankenstein or Dracula, look no further.
King Kong (1976)
Dino De Laurentiis' 1976 remake of Kong has long been derided as unnecessary, and it's easy to see why. Filmed in a pre-CGI world, there's not much new to be done with the King himself, and somehow the director's "man in a gorilla suit" approach feels like a step backwards from the charming and groundbreaking stop-motion animation of the original. The visual effects were still rewarded with a Special Achievement Oscar, but the very next year's Star Wars would show just how primitive and far from the cutting-edge this film really was. Elsewhere, de Laurentiis wastes a cast including Charles Grodin, Jeff Bridges, and (in her film debut) Jessica Lange, all the while infusing the film with a crass, campy jokiness that couldn't be further from the earnest charm of the original.
King Kong Escapes
After the success of Toho Studio's 1962 King Kong vs. Godzilla, RKO allowed another Kong film to be made by the Godzilla creators, and it turned out to be absolutely joyous insanity. The plot concerns a mad scientist named Dr. Who (no relation), who creates his own mechanized version of Kong in order to dig for the radioactive Element X. Unfortunately for him, the robot malfunctions, and his only recourse is to hypnotize the real King Kong into finishing the deed. This all leads inevitably to the pièce de resistance and the main reason to watch the film: a knock-down-drag-out brawl between Kong and Mechani-Kong that is as goofy as it is glorious.
King Kong vs. Godzilla
Almost 60 years before Kong and Godzilla became unlikely heralds for the long-awaited return to theatergoing normalcy post-COVID, the two iconic beasts bashed skulls in this 1962 gem. Legend has it Willis O'Brien, the man behind the original film's stop-motion animation, wanted to pit his creation against Frankenstein's monster, but the idea was axed by Universal. Through a convoluted series of producer machinations, the pitch made its way to Toho Studios, the Japanese company that created Godzilla, who replaced Frankenstein's monster with the legendary kaiju and made the movie without O'Brien's consent. Even despite the backstabbing and betrayal, this kitschy Criterion Collection-approved classic is pure entertainment, a celebration of the brainless joys of seeing two puppets absolutely demolish each other, and a testament to the artists that went through the painstaking work of making it happen.
Kong: Skull Island
Gareth Edwards' 2014 Godzilla was such a box office success that Legendary Pictures went full-speed-ahead on their answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the MonsterVerse. Next on the docket was the return of the Eighth Wonder of the World himself, King Kong. Blown up to 100 feet and reset in an era more Apocalypse Now than Old Hollywood, the titular ape is surrounded here by an ensemble of A-listers including Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, John Goodman, Samuel L. Jackson, and John C. Reilly. Of course, none of them have all that much to do, relegated to the shadows of their large-and-in-charge CGI headliner. Still, there's plenty of Saturday matinee fun to be had, even if the whole film does feel rather a bit unmemorable and impersonal.
Godzilla vs. Kong
Somehow, someway, Godzilla vs. Kong has become the movie of the moment. Releasing on the biggest theater count of the pandemic era (per Variety) this big, broad, and welcomely-dumb blockbuster appears to be a bellwether for the return to moviegoing normalcy cinephiles have been craving. Maybe it's just that 2020 has left audiences desperate for large-scale, low-brow popcorn flicks such as this, but there's something refreshingly brainless and fun about Adam Wingard's film that feels hard to resist. Sure, the human characters are all fairly disposable, despite the best efforts of Rebecca Hall and Kaylee Hottle, the breakout Deaf actress who plays her daughter. Still, all that pales in comparison in a film that has the giant monster brawl to end all giant monster brawls and, most importantly, Kong swinging around a giant axe.
King Kong (2005)
Peter Jackson has long been vocal about how influential the 1933 original was on his love of filmmaking, and he wanted to helm his own remake in the mid-1990s. Universal executives, however, weren't so keen to play third fiddle to down-the-pipe releases Mighty Joe Young and the disastrous 1998 Godzilla. After the success of The Lord of the Rings, however, Jackson was granted a blank check to do basically whatever he wanted, and what he wanted was a $207 million dollar, three-hour-long King Kong. The result, of course, feels a bit padded; Jackson's usual penchant for taking a moment that could be over in a second and blowing it out into a full-scale action setpiece is on display from beginning to end. However, the gleeful spirit that thinks it's simultaneously cool to see Kong fighting dinosaurs and incredibly touching to see Naomi Watts fall in love with a gorilla is exactly what makes Jackson the perfect director for a remake of Kong. It may have taken him a decade (plus three giant hits and a rack of Oscars), but Jackson finally delivered a big-hearted cinematic love letter to his favorite childhood movie, and in the process made a bit of an underrated gem.
King Kong (1933)
There would be no Marvel Cinematic Universe without King Kong, no Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, or any blockbuster of the sort. Kong threw out the traditional mold of what made a respectable drama and proved that anything was possible at the movies, even a giant ape climbing the Empire State Building. There's imagination on display in every frame of this film, from the direction by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper, to the tight-as-a-drum and perfectly-paced script by James Creelman and Ruth Rose, to the groundbreaking visual effects by Willis O'Brien. Those effects see a Kong that can go toe-to-toe with a whole bevy of prehistoric creatures on Skull Island, but perhaps what's most impressive is that in the midst of this thrilling feast of imagination, the filmmakers were sure to give their leading man a heart. The film will remain a classic for generations to come, and King Kong himself a reminder that as impressive as cinematic effects-created creatures can be, they're nothing without a soul at their center.