Godzilla vs Kong reawakens the franchise and injects some of the Japanese films’ spirit, without the substance

It’s a rumble for the ages — or at least the last 60 years, ever since Japan’s most famous radioactive reptile first squared off against Hollywood’s ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’, the Empire State Building-scaling simian with a bad temper but a big heart.

Complete with an actor in a wonderfully ropey ape suit, Ishiro Honda’s King Kong vs Godzilla (1962) jumpstarted Toho Studios’ classic Shōwa era of kaiju (or: “monster”) showdowns — films that drew as much on professional wrestling as they did the studio’s original, dark vision of an apex predator born of man’s atomic folly.

Curiously, these two titans would never face off again — until now.