All 10 King Kong Movies, Ranked from Worst to Best

Godzilla may be considered the King of the Monsters, but King Kong did the whole giant monster thing on-screen before it was cool. While the former has a total of 36 feature films, the first of those was in 1954, and King Kong’s cinematic legacy dates back to 1933. This makes 2023 the 90th anniversary of the character, and while there isn’t a King Kong film scheduled to commemorate this milestone, a 10th film – also featuring Godzilla – has been released in 2024.

Nine live-action theatrical releases for the monster (so not including any animated films or non-theatrical releases) may not sound like a ton, but it’s still a sizable legacy, especially when considering the character has endured since the 1930s. With King Kong not going anywhere anytime soon, now’s as good a time as any to look back on all the films featuring the titular giant ape, and rank them below from worst to best.

10 ‘King Kong Lives’ (1986)

Director: John Guillermin

1976’s King Kong had a sequel of sorts 10 years later, with King Kong Lives, a somewhat lazy film that marks a series low point for the iconic movie monster. After a dramatic death at the end of the 1976 movie (spoilers, but the various versions of Kong do tend to die), King Kong Lives reveals that King Kong… well, lived, and has actually been in a coma for approximately 10 years.

Another giant ape – a female – is used as a source of blood transfusion for Kong, but the two ultimately wake up and escape the facility they’ve been held in, leading to glorious mayhem. The story is nonsense and the tone’s all over the place, but not everything in King Kong Lives falters. Some of the action is fun, and the dynamic between Kong and his female partner gives the film some heart… but overall, it’s not great. If there’s one King Kong movie that can be called an example of a bad giant monster movie, it’s probably this.

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9 ‘The Son of Kong’ (1933)

Director: Ernest B. Schoedsack

The Son of Kong is just novel – and bizarre – enough to keep it from being considered the worst of the King Kong movies. Remarkably, it was filmed and released the same year the original movie came out, and serves as a direct sequel, with its plot seeing Carl Denham (from the first movie) returning once more to the island where he discovered Kong, and finding – as the title suggests – Kong’s son.

In the pantheon of bad sequels, it can’t quite be considered one of the very worst. Some of the charms of the first movie are present, there are still numerous special effects sequences to be entertained by, and it coming out the same year as the first does certainly make it a historical curiosity. However, it does represent a huge step down from the movie that preceded it, and the proximity between the two does it no favors, considering the overall differences in quality and originality.

8 ‘King Kong’ (1976)

Director: John Guillermin

Speaking of movies that lack originality: 1976’s King Kong. This was essentially a remake of the original, which had come out 43 years earlier and so, for decades, had been well-regarded as a monster movie classic. The film itself even inspired knock-offs around the same time, with those movies centering around other similar giant apes. The characters and plot beats are all familiar, though the special effects and the setting have been updated, given it takes place in the 1970s, and now featured Kong scaling the newly constructed World Trade Center in the finale, instead of the Empire State Building.

Even for 1970s audiences, this film didn’t give them much that they hadn’t seen already. Watching it after 1976, other updated takes on Kong hold up better, too. But for fans of King Kong, there’s still enough here to make the 1976 version decent entertainment, and it’s overall a little better made than its strange 1986 sequel.

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7 ‘King Kong Escapes’ (1967)

Director: Ishirō Honda

King Kong Escapes probably isn’t for everyone, and it’s possible to argue that it represents King Kong at its strangest. It served as a sequel of sorts to the first movie where Godzilla and King Kong squared off (more on that one later), and was directed by Japanese filmmaker Ishirō Honda, who directed numerous Godzilla movies (including the 1954 original), and also directed the first movie where Japan’s most famous giant monster squared off with the U.S.’s most famed giant monster.

It’s a movie that goes to some very strange places, and viewers who are down to see King Kong at his goofiest will be pleased by large chunks of this movie (the main antagonist here is a robot version of Kong called Mechani-Kong, for crying out loud). Gone are the somber reflections on “beauty killing the beast,” or any sort of insight into humanity’s exploitation of wild animals. Here, King Kong Escapes mostly just wants to have goofy fun, and much of it’s a blast.

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6 ‘King Kong vs. Godzilla’ (1962)

Director: Ishirō Honda

King Kong vs. Godzilla was the third movie to feature King Kong, and also the third movie to feature Godzilla, fittingly enough. It was probably a fairly big deal back in 1962, but now feels like an even more significant match-up, given the two monsters have only become more legendary in the decades since the first time they went head-to-head.

Whether judged as a King Kong movie or a Godzilla movie, one thing’s certain: this movie gets pretty wild and often very silly. Getting the two monsters to fight feels a little forced and ridiculous, and the movie isn’t consistently fun. However, when it comes to depicting the battle promised by the title, King Kong vs. Godzilla satisfies, and it rightly stands today as something of an odd yet endearing cult classic.

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5 ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ (2024)

Director: Adam Wingard​​​​

Compared to King Kong, Godzilla has had a busier 21st century so far, appearing in more MonsterVerse movies than Kong and various other movies made both before and after 2014’s Godzilla not related to the MonsterVerse. The pair came together in 2021, and were reunited – in effect – in 2024 for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. They’re not exactly best friends here (that would be very charming if they were), but they do set aside any old differences and team up in this film against a more serious antagonist who has plans for world domination.

Despite originating as a Japanese series, Godzilla has appeared in a comparable number of American movies to Kong now, which is kind of interesting to note. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is far from the worst when judged as one part of either overall series, though it is one of the goofier giant monster movies in recent memory. Those who liked the rather sobering Godzilla Minus One or the darkly satirical disaster movie that was Shin Godzilla may find The New Empire to be a tad too silly, but others will likely be more than fine with the ridiculousness on offer here.

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4 ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ (2021)

Director: Adam Wingard

After King Kong vs. Godzilla, fans had to wait nearly 60 years to see them fight again, with the sad reality being that many people who would’ve seen the 1962 version in cinemas wouldn’t have been alive to see the rematch. It’s a shame for them, because while Godzilla vs. Kong is flawed, it does improve upon the first showdown between the titular monsters and certainly looks more spectacular, popping more visually.

Set in an alternate version of the 2020s, Godzilla vs. Kong doesn’t mess around, and delivers the action you’d want from a movie with such a title. The writing isn’t great, the human characters aren’t always compelling, and the plot is absolutely ludicrous. But as far as dumb, occasionally breathtaking, and always bombastic action movies go, Godzilla vs. Kong soars.

3 ‘Kong: Skull Island’ (2017)

Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts

While it suffers from some of the same problems as Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong: Skull Island ultimately has the edge over that 2021 movie when judged as a King Kong film. The reason for this is pretty simple: Kong doesn’t have to share the spotlight here with Godzilla, and the movie isn’t shy about giving viewers tons of Kong-centric action, making it a particularly easy film in the long-running King Kong series to rewatch and continually revisit.

It has an interesting early 1970s setting, and more or less retells the first half of the most well-worn King Kong narrative. Here, the plot is contained to the titular island, meaning no city destruction but plenty of scenes with Kong battling other wild-looking giant animals as well as human soldiers. It’s relentless, goofy, and fun in all the right ways, standing as a solid modern update of a familiar Kong-related narrative.

2 ‘King Kong’ (2005)

Director: Peter Jackson

After revolutionizing the fantasy genre by directing the epic The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson set his sights on beefing up the original King Kong. The 2005 version is a mammoth film, and given the 1933 film is about 100 minutes long, and Jackson’s version runs over three hours, it comes close to doubling the original’s runtime. As such, it’s fair to call it the most epic film of all those in the King Kong series so far, and it’s a larger-than-life approach that mostly works.

It can be self-indulgent, and it can feel a little long. But King Kong has never been presented in such detail and with such ambition, and you can tell Jackson is passionate about the character and the legacy of the series. It’s not a perfect epic movie, but it is a frequently impressive one, and is a blast to watch (though squeezing in an intermission is probably a good idea).

1 ‘King Kong’ (1933)

Directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

You can’t beat the original King Kong. The special effects aren’t technically the best, and some may well be put off by things typically found in older movies, like black-and-white visuals and a 4:3 aspect ratio. But it’s worth giving this film a chance regardless of one’s own genre preferences, because King Kong holds up better than most.

It’s mind-blowing what the filmmakers were able to accomplish here, in 1933, and watching the film makes it easy to understand why the title character’s now legendary. 1933’s King Kong is one of the best movies of the 1930s, and remains the best of its series. Even those who don’t particularly like decades-old movies or monster movies in general would find the original King Kong revisiting, simply on account of it being one of the most technically groundbreaking films of its era.

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NEXT: The Best So-Bad-They’re-Good Monster Movies, Ranked