In the Monsterverse the creatures just keep getting bigger, stronger, and overall meaner as things go along. King Ghidorah is one of those creatures that has proven that for every big, bad monster that comes along there’s going to be another bigger, badder monster that will eventually be able to topple them. For a while everyone thought that Godzilla was the undisputed king of the monsters, and for the most part this claim was hard to dispute. But when the other kaiju started rolling out and Godzilla started to have troubles with some of them people got the idea that while the great and fearsome lizard was still tough, he wasn’t always at the top of the heap. The thing about King Ghidorah is that while he’s big tough, and can put up one awesome fight, he was still given his share of weaknesses to deal with. His battles with Godzilla and the other monsters were epic, but in the end he was more the bad guy than any of them, and had to be teamed up on to be taken down.
The creator took his cue from Greek mythology.
Tomoyuki Tanaka, who is also the creator of Godzilla, took the idea of the hydra from Greek mythology and turned it into a movie monster that seemed to have no equal. The idea of Godzilla fighitng a multi-headed serpent was so impressive that he went ahead with the idea and gave Godzilla another opponent that he would have to take on. But the idea of 7 to 8 heads was simply too much for the time and so the number was dropped to three, which was much more manageable. It stands to reason then that if King Ghidorah ever makes a comeback that the number of heads won’t change as his classic form is something that fans will be expecting. The armless creature was initially painted green, but was later painted gold to denote the fact that it had come from the planet Venus.
King Ghidorah has been beaten by Godzilla in the past.
There’s no doubt that Ghidorah is tough and always has been. He was sent to earth as a weapon after all and as Godzilla was in some ways the earth’s protector, as well as humanity’s tormentor, the two were bound to meet at some point. Despite his gravity beams and flyby attacks, as well as the hurricane-force winds that could be produced by his wings, Ghidorah was ultimately beat by Godzilla. The matchup between these two however is simply amazing as Godzilla is far less mobile and Ghidorah is powerful, but not on the same level that Godzilla is.
King Ghidorah has proven to be a profitable character over the years and it would seem that this is one of the main reasons why he’s been kept around. The evolution of the character has seen him go back and forth from protagonist to antagonist repeatedly and has also showed him being quite powerful in every incarnation. Eventually as it was seen his origins revealed that he was created rather than born the way he was, so it became more of a draw to use him as an antagonist. In many ways Ghidorah is better as a villain, largely because he’s huge, he’s got a type of mobility that other monsters don’t have, and two added weapons to his arsenal that give him a huge advantage, or so it would seem.
The craze with King Ghidorah didn’t end for a while however as in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah in 1991 the three-headed creature got a new back story which included three small creatures known as dorats being fused together by a nuclear exposure. Ghidorah was then to be unleashed upon the populace after the removal of the creature that would become Godzilla, thereby giving him free reign. But of course someone recreated Godzilla and the big lizard rallied and defeated Ghidorah. Eventually though someone would refit Ghidorah with robotic parts after he’d been laying dormant beneath the sea for two centuries, and so Mecha-King Ghidorah was born. After a brutal fight that left Ghidorah down for the count his robotic middle head was salvaged and was then used to make a Mecha-Godzilla. .
His origins and his back story were changed a few times throughout the next several years and to be honest it’s going to be interesting to see just how he shapes up in the coming films, assuming he’s going to be there. To be honest though there’s no reason to doubt this since if you look at this image from Kong: Skull Island, it shows that he and several others will be making an appearance. The only question now is whether Kong is going to be the odd monster out or if he’s going to able to hold his own.
This shows that beyond a shadow of a doubt that more monsters are coming and when it happens they’re going to have a showdown, and the initial loser are going to be those that are nowhere near equipped to deal with them. Since Legendary Pictures has acquired the rights to King Ghidorah and several other monsters you can almost bet on the fact that they’ll be itching to use him in the greatest way possible. Whether he’ll be flying solo or teaming up against the other monsters however is yet to be seen, but it should be epic when it happens.
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