I'm surprised you don't discuss the fact that King Kong 2005 actually references Heart of Darkness quite overtly with the Jimmy and Mr. Hayes characters.
Regarding visibility - I do believe there are different transfers of the first two Godzilla movies with different levels of legibility. I've seen arguments made on YouTube that the brightness of the first film seemed to have been diminished on home video. Meanwhile, KOTM def-ly looked brighter and the action was far more legible than my homevid copy when I re-watched it recently on Netflix (sadly no longer available there.)
I'm surprised you don't discuss the fact that King Kong 2005 actually references Heart of Darkness quite overtly with the Jimmy and Mr. Hayes characters.
Regarding visibility - I do believe there are different transfers of the first two Godzilla movies with different levels of legibility. I've seen arguments made on YouTube that the brightness of the first film seemed to have been diminished on home video. Meanwhile, KOTM def-ly looked brighter and the action was far more legible than my homevid copy when I re-watched it recently on Netflix (sadly no longer available there.)