Star Wars: Episode III: The North Warren Edition

With the new King Kong movie now luring many moviegoers back to the multiplex, it's time to compare this remake to two recent films of the same kind: Disney's remake of the classic ape movie Mighty Joe Young and Sony's remake of Godzilla, both of which were released the same year as two asteroid movies duked it out (in case you were wondering, Deep Impact and Armageddon, the latter won) as well as two bug movies (Antz and A Bug's Life, the latter won). The year? 1998, when greed was good and DVD was in its infancy and the age of stadium seating and digital surround sound and megaplexing became commonplace.

After the success of the big-budget Titanic, many events films were made in 1998 to try to cash in on that blockbuster about a sinking ship; most of them didn't match the long lasting success of the Oscar-winning epic. Most of the cash was spent on potential blockbusters made by people who knew blockbusters; one of them was the team of Dean Develin and Roland Emmerich, who started out with a surprise hit film called Stargate (which spawned a long-running sci-fi spinoff called Stargate SG-1 and another spinoff, Atlantis) and then hit it big with the 1996 blockbuster Independence Day. With all that money from the film's success, the team decided to remake the classic Japanese monster movie Godzilla; this time, they set it in modern New York and added a plot concerning that Godzilla is a she and that she has kids. Weird. With an all star cast (Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno) and big budget special effects, Godzilla was heavily hyped when previews for the films started in the summer of 1997 before the film Men In Black. Made on a budget of $150+ million, the film had a gala premiere at Madison Square Garden before going nationwide on Memorial Day weekend of 1998. The film, which made a decent $55 million opening weekend (I saw it during that time), went on to gross just short of the budget with $130+ million (it might have done better overseas but not in Japan) and went on to be a disappointment for Sony, who would later hit it big with Spider-Man.

Mighty Joe Young, on the other hand, came from Disney, who marketed the film as a family flick, with one rising star: Charlize Theron, who was in The Devil's Advocate with Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino. The actress who would go on to star in the critically acclaimed film Monster was the damsel in distress and the ape was performed by Rick Baker of Star Wars and King Kong fame, with a little computer animation thrown in. The $70 million movie, released sometime after Godzilla, didn't fare as well as Disney's other films, and, like Godzilla, was a bust.

Compared with these two bad remakes, the 2005 version of King Kong improves on the original and the cheesy 70's remake that followed it. More thrills, chills, and spills than the original (not for kids!), this film has enough drama and comedy to make it a potential nominee for an Oscar. Can Peter Jackson repeat history again? We'll see come March.