King Kong

One of the most well-known monsters in all of cinema, Kong made his debut in the 1933 film bearing his name. Though he has been re imagined many times in many different films, Kong is always depicted as a gigantic gorilla-like ape residing on a remote island hidden from civilization and inhabited by other bizarre creatures. Typically, Kong is worshiped as a god by the natives living on the island, who often sacrifice women to him, whom he accepts as his "brides." In the original film and its two remakes, Kong is taken away from his island by an expedition team from the United States and brought back to New York, where he escapes and goes on a violent rampage before climbing a skyscraper and being gunned down by military aircraft and falling to his death. Toho acquired the rights to use Kong for their 1962 film King Kong vs. Godzilla, where he was drastically scaled up and pitted against Toho's flagship monster Godzilla. Toho made another film featuring Kong, King Kong Escapes, in 1967, where Kong battled against an evil robotic duplicate dubbed Mechani-Kong. The original King Kong was remade in 1976 by Dino De Laurentiis and Paramount Pictures, and a sequel to this remake titled King Kong Lives was released in 1986. Universal Pictures released their own remake in 2005, directed by Peter Jackson. In 2017, Kong became part of Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros.' MonsterVerse after appearing in the film Kong: Skull Island, which set up another confrontation with Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Kong in 2021.