Nerd Processor
Why We Love to Watch Monsters Fight
The new movie ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ reminds us of the strange joy of sitting through an epic battle between very, very large creatures
It only takes one giant monster to destroy a city. Get two giant monsters together, and they’ll destroy the city twice as quickly while they battle each other for supremacy — and they likely won’t even notice where their rampage takes place, the devastation they cause, or the lives they take. Which raises the question: Why is a single giant monster in a movie terrifying, but a movie where two of them fight so much fun?
It’s weird when you think about it, because humanity doesn’t end up less annihilated while Godzilla fights one of his gargantuan foes. Cities still fall; countless lives are still lost. But somehow the tragedy fades away when this is a result of Godzilla taking on, say, King Ghidorah, the three-headed dragon and main antagonist of the newest sequel, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. It’s like Tokyo (or wherever, but often Tokyo) stops being a city of living, breathing, helpless people, and gets turned into a giant MMA ring. It’s the reason why Godzilla and his brethren — often referred to by their Japanese name, kaiju — quickly transitioned from being…
