All the talk recently about how Gareth Edwards' Godzilla looked toward Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) reminds me of a conversation I had over at AlternateHistory.com last summer about Jaws as a Giant Monster movie and of the genre itself. Since then, I've been wanting to write up a post that broke down the Giant Monster genre and worked out the basic most common plots - sort of like what Christopher Booker did in The Seven Basic Plots.
It would probably be best to study this chronologically, that way we have some idea of how and why certain plots emerged.
1. THE LOST WORLD PLOT
The protagonist travels to a primitive locale where he or she discovers a monster. The monster is captured and transported to a contemporary city, where it escapes and comes into conflict with society. Either the monster escapes and returns to its primordial home, or it is ultimately destroyed by the society it cannot adapt to.
The prototype for the Giant Monster movie is The Lost World (1925), a black-and-white silent adventure film where a group of British explorers discover a remote plateau in Venezuela filled with dinosaurs. In the movie's finale, the explorers return to London with a captured Brontosaurus, which (of course) escapes and runs wild through the streets of the city: the first time in film where a giant creature rampaged in a modern metropolis. The movie is a classic of Science Fiction and a landmark achievement in visual effects, with Willis O'Brien's work setting the standard for years to come (and so startlingly effective that, according to legend, even Harry Houdini and a room full of magicians couldn't figure out how he achieved it).
The movie was based on the novel of the same name, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1912. Doyle's novel was just the latest in a line of books that had been written in the Lost World genre of adventure novels since H. Rider Haggard's novel King Solomon's Mines (1891) had created and popularized it. Doyle's inclusion of dinosaurs in his novel spurred imitators of his own, including Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land that Time Forgot (1916). In Doyle's novel, though, the heroes return to London with a live Pterodactyl to prove their story - the Brontosaurus' exciting romp through the city is entirely a cinematic invention created for the film adaptation. That one notable change from the novel, however, provided the seed for what would eventually result in one of the most well-known Giant Monster stories and the best example of the Lost World plot: 1933's King Kong.
On the surface, King Kong and The Lost World share very similar plots: in both films, an expedition to a remote land discovers a lost world filled with ferocious dinosaurs and other monsters. The heroes survive their exploits and return to civilization with one of the beasts as proof of their story, only for the creature to escape and run amok. King Kong deviates from The Lost World by making a basic, but fundamental, change: the beast that is captured and returned to civilization is the focus of the adventure. In The Lost World, the Brontosaurus is something of an afterthought. While we see Brontosauruses throughout the film, there is nothing to suggest any one is more important than any other until shortly before the heroes escape - only then does one Brontosaurus do battle with an Allosaurus to a standstill, and that is the creature that is brought to London. In King Kong, Kong is the first creature we are introduced to and dominates the film as the main antagonist/tragic hero for the remainder.
It is this change which transformed King Kong from just another adventure movie with dinosaurs into the first true Giant Monster movie.
The Lost World plot is one of the genre's most well-known and popular stories, with many films using it explicitly following in King Kong's footsteps with only some variation. Examples of other films using this plot or variations on it are:
Son of Kong (1933)
Mighty Joe Young (1949)
The Black Scorpion (1957)
20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
Giant Monster Varan (1958)
Mothra (1961)
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)
Gamera vs. Barugon (1966)
King Kong Escapes (1967)
Gappa: The Triphibian Monster (1967)
The X From Outer Space (1967)
The Valley of Gwangi (1969)
Space Amoeba (1970)
King Kong (1976)
A*P*E (1976)
Queen Kong (1976)
The Mighty Peking Man (1977)
King Kong Lives (1986)
Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992)
Anaconda (1997)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Mighty Joe Young (1998)
King Kong (2005)
Some common variations on this plot include:
It would probably be best to study this chronologically, that way we have some idea of how and why certain plots emerged.
1. THE LOST WORLD PLOT
The protagonist travels to a primitive locale where he or she discovers a monster. The monster is captured and transported to a contemporary city, where it escapes and comes into conflict with society. Either the monster escapes and returns to its primordial home, or it is ultimately destroyed by the society it cannot adapt to.
The prototype for the Giant Monster movie is The Lost World (1925), a black-and-white silent adventure film where a group of British explorers discover a remote plateau in Venezuela filled with dinosaurs. In the movie's finale, the explorers return to London with a captured Brontosaurus, which (of course) escapes and runs wild through the streets of the city: the first time in film where a giant creature rampaged in a modern metropolis. The movie is a classic of Science Fiction and a landmark achievement in visual effects, with Willis O'Brien's work setting the standard for years to come (and so startlingly effective that, according to legend, even Harry Houdini and a room full of magicians couldn't figure out how he achieved it).
The movie was based on the novel of the same name, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1912. Doyle's novel was just the latest in a line of books that had been written in the Lost World genre of adventure novels since H. Rider Haggard's novel King Solomon's Mines (1891) had created and popularized it. Doyle's inclusion of dinosaurs in his novel spurred imitators of his own, including Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land that Time Forgot (1916). In Doyle's novel, though, the heroes return to London with a live Pterodactyl to prove their story - the Brontosaurus' exciting romp through the city is entirely a cinematic invention created for the film adaptation. That one notable change from the novel, however, provided the seed for what would eventually result in one of the most well-known Giant Monster stories and the best example of the Lost World plot: 1933's King Kong.
On the surface, King Kong and The Lost World share very similar plots: in both films, an expedition to a remote land discovers a lost world filled with ferocious dinosaurs and other monsters. The heroes survive their exploits and return to civilization with one of the beasts as proof of their story, only for the creature to escape and run amok. King Kong deviates from The Lost World by making a basic, but fundamental, change: the beast that is captured and returned to civilization is the focus of the adventure. In The Lost World, the Brontosaurus is something of an afterthought. While we see Brontosauruses throughout the film, there is nothing to suggest any one is more important than any other until shortly before the heroes escape - only then does one Brontosaurus do battle with an Allosaurus to a standstill, and that is the creature that is brought to London. In King Kong, Kong is the first creature we are introduced to and dominates the film as the main antagonist/tragic hero for the remainder.
It is this change which transformed King Kong from just another adventure movie with dinosaurs into the first true Giant Monster movie.
The Lost World plot is one of the genre's most well-known and popular stories, with many films using it explicitly following in King Kong's footsteps with only some variation. Examples of other films using this plot or variations on it are:
Son of Kong (1933)
Mighty Joe Young (1949)
The Black Scorpion (1957)
20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
Giant Monster Varan (1958)
Mothra (1961)
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)
Gamera vs. Barugon (1966)
King Kong Escapes (1967)
Gappa: The Triphibian Monster (1967)
The X From Outer Space (1967)
The Valley of Gwangi (1969)
Space Amoeba (1970)
King Kong (1976)
A*P*E (1976)
Queen Kong (1976)
The Mighty Peking Man (1977)
King Kong Lives (1986)
Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992)
Anaconda (1997)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Mighty Joe Young (1998)
King Kong (2005)
Some common variations on this plot include:
- Minimizing or removing the journey to a primordial land (20 Million Miles to Earth, A*P*E, King Kong Lives);
- Minimizing or removing the return to civilization (Son of Kong, Space Amoeba, Anaconda);
- The Monster following the expedition back rather than being captured, sometimes in pursuit of something the heroes did return with (Mothra, Gappa: The Triphibian Monster, Godzilla vs. Mothra).
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