No offence to Godzilla, but the versus movie peaked with ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’
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(Credits: Far Out / Columbia Pictures)
Cinema’s equivalent of shattering the emergency glass in the hopes pitting two recognisable characters against each other will be able to kill two flailing birds with one stone and rehabilitate them both; the versus movie has instead gained a reputation for being a desperate throw of the dice that more often than not leads to nothing but disappointment.
A gigantic, atomic fire-breathing kaiju has been the most egregious offender by far, and that’s a million miles away from being limited to the recent duo Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Over the years, the iconic lizard of gargantuan proportions not only faced off against King Kong as early as 1963, but he’s also scrapped with Mechagodzilla twice, SpaceGodzilla, Destroyah, Megalon, King Ghidorah, Megaguirus, Biollante, and Mothra as Toho kept throwing things at the wall to see what would stick, with every single one of those films carrying ‘vs.’ in the title.
A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th were fast running out of gas, so what was the interminable solution? Freddy vs. Jason. The Xenomorphs and Yautja were struggling to remain relevant individually, giving rise to collective effort Alien vs. Predator. It was nowhere close to being good, but it was a masterpiece compared to the abominable sequel Requiem. DC wanted to catch up to Marvel as fast as possible, so Zack Snyder was given the keys to the kingdom and unleashed the turgid Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice upon the world.
Nobody even knows why Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu were fighting, and nobody cared either after Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever went down in the history books as both one of the worst movies ever made and a colossal box office catastrophe. 1971’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein missed a wide-open goal pitting two icons against each other; even the mighty Tom Hanks struggled to overcome the mundanity of molten magma in Joe Versus the Volcano, and Monsters vs. Aliens is hardly held up as one of animation’s top-tier offerings, if anyone even remembers it existed.
That being said, Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World deserved the flowers it didn’t end up getting when it sank without a trace and lost a fortune; pitting two legendary brands against each other did work a treat for James Mangold’s ‘Best Picture’ nominee Ford V Ferrari, and Woody Harrelson had a rare old time sleazing it up in The People vs. Larry Flynt. Still, none of them can hold a candle to the greatest versus movie ever made, which features no special effects, no heavyweight IPs, and wasn’t designed to be the cinematic equivalent of smashing action figures together.
Unless, of course, anyone proudly has lifelike recreations of Dustin Hoffman’s Ted Kramer and Meryl Streep’s Joanna Stern on display to celebrate their love of Kramer vs. Kramer, which is a concerning and very different discussion for a very different time. One of the most powerful dramas of the 1970s, the firebrand chemistry between two titans operating at the top of their game puts Godzilla, Kong, Freddy, Jason, aliens, and predators to shame, making a mockery of every film to follow in its wake carrying the regular harbinger of doom that is the word ‘versus’.
There have been good examples since, sure, and even a couple of great ones, but thanks to Kramer vs. Kramer, the entire subgenre peaked in 1979 with writer and director Robert Benton’s ‘Best Picture’ winner and has still yet to be bettered by any movie of any genre from any point of origin that’s a card-carrying member of the versus club.
Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Godzilla vs. Kong might be worth looking into for Legendary and Warner Bros. when the time comes for the next monster mash, but even then, there’s a distinct possibility the skyscraper-levelling enemies would end up looking at the lights when Hoffman and Streep knock them out cold.
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