{"id":465727,"date":"2026-05-29T07:42:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T07:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/465727\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T07:42:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T07:42:17","slug":"all-3-movies-called-king-kong-ranked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/465727\/","title":{"rendered":"All 3 Movies Called ‘King Kong,’ Ranked"},"content":{"rendered":"

While legendary cinematic characters like James Bond and Godzilla<\/a> have been in more movies than King Kong<\/a>, that iconic giant ape has 007 and the King of the Monsters beat in terms of how long he\u2019s been around for. The first King Kong movie came out more than 90 years ago, and much of it still holds up better than you’d probably expect a film of its age to do. Since then, there have been two other King Kong movies that have shared its title, and both are remakes of the original film, albeit one was set in then-contemporary times, and the other had a period setting in line with the 1933 original. Of course, there are various other King Kong movies with longer titles, but they’re not really the focus here.<\/p>\n

These three \u201cKing Kong\u201d movies might all have the same basic premise, but they all stand out from each other due to how far apart they were made, and also because each film had a different primary way of bringing the titular character to life (stop-motion in the first, a suit in the second, and computer animation in the third). It\u2019s also easy to rank these, because there is a pretty obvious best film of the bunch, and an even more obvious worst film of the three. So, that sets it apart from The Mummy series<\/a>, with all the movies in said series that share the same name, but puts it in line with the three Godzilla<\/a> movies that are all just called \u201cGodzilla.\u201d<\/a> Actually, with Godzilla, there\u2019s a super obvious worst one, and thankfully, none of the three King Kong movies are quite as bad as that one, for as faint praise as \u201cOh, you’re not as bad as 1998\u2019s Godzilla\u201d might be.<\/p>\n

3 <\/p>\n

‘King Kong’ (1976)<\/p>\n

\"King
\n Image via\u00a0Dino De Laurentiis Corporation<\/p>\n

The King Kong movie with that exact title you’re probably least likely to be familiar with is the 1976 film, which is the previously alluded to movie that used the \u201cman in the suit\u201d technique for the most part. That puts it in line with the Godzilla movies all made before 2014, since suitmation was the primary technique there (albeit the later ones had some CGI used). If you like King Kong as a dude in an ape suit, stomping around a bunch of miniatures, then you\u2019ve also got the likes of King Kong vs. Godzilla<\/a>, King Kong Escapes, and King Kong Lives<\/a> to enjoy\u2026 well, King Kong Lives is a bit hard to enjoy. That\u2019s probably the worst King Kong film of all. But to stick with King Kong (1976), it is the worst of them that has the most familiar Kong-related premise: people discover a giant ape on a dangerous island, the ape becomes infatuated with a young woman, and then the people who discover the ape bring him back to New York City, where he causes general havoc before the inevitable tragic ending. That can\u2019t be considered a spoiler for, like, anyone, right?<\/p>\n

The finale makes use of the then-contemporary setting by having things conclude with Kong climbing the World Trade Center (the Twin Towers having only been completely built in 1973), rather than the Empire State Building.<\/p>\n

If you want to find slightly notable things about King Kong (1976), there is the cast, since it\u2019s a fairly early role for Jeff Bridges, and it was also the big screen debut of Jessica Lange. Neither gives anything close to a career-best performance, but neither is bad, considering the somewhat underwhelming material they have to work with. It\u2019s a broad monster movie and the characters are all quite broad\/simple, too, and not in a charming or surprisingly effective way, like Godzilla Minus One<\/a>. Also, the finale makes use of the then-contemporary setting by having things conclude with Kong climbing the World Trade Center (the Twin Towers having only been completely built in 1973), rather than the Empire State Building, and so that stretch of the movie is kind of unintentionally eerie, when watched post-2001, for hopefully obvious reasons. Overall, though, with this King Kong film, other than those fairly slim already-mentioned aspects, it\u2019s really just the big ape that\u2019s offered, but if you’re really just after some kind of goofy monster-related mayhem<\/a>, you could do worse.<\/p>\n

2 <\/p>\n

‘King Kong’ (2005)<\/p>\n

After completing The Lord of the Rings<\/a>, Peter Jackson set his sights on remaking King Kong, having things return to the setting seen in the first movie, rather than doing another updated version like King Kong (1976) did, with its 1970s setting. Call it a return to the series roots, if you want, but don\u2019t call it a direct remake, since King Kong (2005)<\/a> is somewhat infamously almost twice as long as the original, with its 187-minute runtime absolutely dwarfing the 100-minute runtime of that first film. The length is the biggest obstacle<\/a> to enjoying the movie, or at least enjoying all of the movie. It\u2019s still a fairly simple story, what with a movie shooting in\/around Skull Island, and the discovery of Kong leading to a plan that involves taking him back to New York City and charging people to see the so-called \u201ceighth wonder of the world.\u201d You get quite a lot by way of scenes that take place before Skull Island is arrived at, then a lot more sequences on the island itself, all before getting to the final act, which is \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 also more drawn-out than the final act of the 1933 original.<\/p>\n

Much of the spectacle does impress, and there\u2019s probably a really good 2 to 2.5-hour-long movie buried somewhere in King Kong (2005)<\/a>. It\u2019s also not as bloated as The Hobbit<\/a> trilogy would ultimately be, yet, in hindsight, it does kind of foreshadow that Peter Jackson project in all its bombast and gratuitous runtime (or runtimes). After The Lord of the Rings<\/a>, though, who was going to be able to tell Peter Jackson \u201cno\u201d? He\u2019d arguably earned the right to do whatever he wanted, and what he wanted was to direct a three-hour monster movie that was also a remake of one of the best monster movies ever made. Again, it\u2019s not as good as one of his trilogies based on a J.R.R. Tolkien novel, but it was a good deal better than his other trilogy based on a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. And after yapping about all that, there\u2019s only one other movie to address, and \u2013 quite obviously \u2013 it is\u2026<\/p>\n

1 <\/p>\n

‘King Kong’ (1933)<\/p>\n

\"King
\n King Kong in the original 1933 classicImage via\u00a0RKO Radio Pictures<\/p>\n

\u20261933\u2019s King Kong. It was always the obvious pick, given 1976\u2019s King Kong is a little forgettable, and 2005\u2019s King Kong suffers from some pretty serious bloat, being one of those \u201cyou have to take the good with the bad\u201d kind of movies. With the original King Kong, it is pretty much all good all the way through. This is potentially the most important giant monster movie<\/a> of all time, or is right there alongside Godzilla (1954)<\/a> if you want to consider that the most significant. King Kong did come out first, and so it\u2019s inevitably the longer series of the two, but Godzilla (1954) did spawn a series that didn\u2019t take long to overtake King Kong in terms of the number of movies. Funnily enough, 1962\u2019s King Kong vs. Godzilla can count itself as both the third King Kong movie and the third Godzilla movie overall, making it kind of wild that they first \u201cmet\u201d on screen rather early on, all things considered.<\/p>\n

Sorry to dodge, dip, duck, dive, and dodge<\/a> around talking about 1933\u2019s King Kong, but there\u2019s not much more that can be said. It\u2019s got the same basic story as the previously discussed 2005 film, just with better pacing (and it\u2019s odd that a movie so much older has better pacing, but it all comes down to that runtime being so long). Kong himself is brought to life with stop-motion animation, and it was one of only two times that such a technique was used in a King Kong movie. The other was Son of Kong, which is notable for coming out the exact same year as the first King Kong, suggesting no one wanted to waste time capitalizing on that first movie\u2019s success. But what success that first film had. Sure, if you say it earned $10 million, that doesn\u2019t sound all that impressive, but $10 million was worth a ton in 1933, and that box office haul was almost 15 times the movie\u2019s budget ($672,000)<\/a>. It\u2019s one of the most technically impressive movies of all time<\/a>, absolutely essential as far as the giant monster sub-genre\u2019s concerned, and ultimately influential in paving the way for plenty of ambitious adventure films<\/a> to follow (in other words, its importance\/influence goes much further than just the series it ultimately kicked off).<\/p>\n

\"king-kong-1933-film-poster.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tKing Kong
\n\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Release Date<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMarch 15, 1933<\/p>\n

Runtime<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t100 Minutes<\/p>\n

\"Cast<\/p>\n

\"Cast<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While legendary cinematic characters like James Bond and Godzilla have been in more movies than King Kong, that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,46,397],"class_list":["post-465727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}