Japanese cinema has a genre of film they refer to as “kaiju.” The most famous example of kaiju to American audiences by far has always been Godzilla, though it wasn’t until Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim that the term itself became mainstream among audiences in the United States. Godzilla made his feature debut in Japan in 1954 and a heavily recut version of the film hit American cinemas in 1956. America’s love for colossal monsters in film does not begin there, however. King Kong captured the imaginations of early filmgoers more than two decades prior in 1933 with his own debut film where the stop-motion beast “starred” alongside his human counterpart, Fay Wray. In the ensuing years, our collective fascination with these gargantuan purveyors of destruction has not subsided.
King Kong and Godzilla have both experienced relatively stable amounts of popularity since they were first seen by audiences. They have each been rebooted several times. As the tectonic shift in cinema that is the marvel of digital filmmaking, the two monsters have grown, as have a great many competitors. Along with the aforementioned del Toro, the talented likes of Peter Jackson, JJ Abrams, Gareth Edwards, Matt Reeves, Jordan Vogt-Roberts and more have gotten in on the fun of crafting a story around these hulking, gigantic—but not always antagonistic—beasts of yore. Here are the best giant monster movies of the decade.
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2010s gigantic monsters
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5. 'Super 8' (2011)
With Super 8, J.J. Abrams pays homage less to kaiju and more so to Steven Spielberg's legacy. In Super 8, a UFO crashes in a sleepy Ohio town in 1979. With federal agents about, a group of kids take it upon themselves to investigate, a la The Goonies or E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
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2010s gigantic monsters #2
Before Gareth Edwards took the reins of Godzilla—and later Rogue One: A Star Wars Story—he imagined a near future in which alien life has crashed along the U.S.—Mexico border and has left the area under quarantine. Scoot McNairy stars as a man tasked with escorting his boss’s daughter through the chaos. Remarkably low budget relative to its scale, Edwards shows plainly the marvel that is digital cinema.
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3. 'Pacific Rim' (2013)
With his biggest film to date, Guillermo del Toro takes a page from the kaiju genre and does so in exciting fashion. Beneath the Pacific Ocean, a hole in spacetime rips open and releases lumbering beasts onto unsuspecting humans. To combat this, an elite force takes up arms piloting gigantic "mecha" they call Jaegers.
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2. 'Godzilla' (2014)
Having apparently suitably proven himself with Monsters, Legendary Pictures saw fit to let him take the reins of their Godzilla reboot. He delivers a bleak but entertaining, surprisingly-claustrophobic film that revels in allusion to Spielberg's movies.
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1. 'Kong: Skull Island' (2017)
In the style of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Jordan Vogt-Roberts’s Kong: Skull Island was made to eventually connect with the preceding (and succeeding) Godzilla movie. Vogt-Roberts crafts an Invasion of Vietnam-era disaster movie in which a platoon of U.S. soldiers is sent to investigate a mysterious nearby island instead of being sent home. It is a fascinating, brightly-colored, satisfying reimagining of King Kong's origin.
