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I’ve been a Godzilla fan for as long as I can remember, with my childhood fascination with the radioactive reptile likely stemming from the 1998 animated series which served as a sequel to the first American remake. From there, I soon begged my parents to feed me with whatever Godzilla-related media they could find. As a teenager, I became a little more selective in my enjoyment of movies featuring the King of the Monsters, gravitating towards the horror aspects of the original and a handful of its successors. As a grown man, however, I have no shame in admitting that I frequently rewatch the cheesiest of these flicks while rooting for the monsters as if they were professional wrestlers in rubber suits.
That’s why I don’t say it lightly when I claim that I’m not aware of any other movie monster (or franchise, for that matter) as versatile as this one. I mean, a brutal throwback to the original film (in Godzilla Minus One) is currently co-existing with a physical incarnation of the planet’s immune system (in Legendary’s Monarch: A Legacy of Monsters), and that’s why I think this is the perfect time to look back on the many faces of Godzilla and dive into how a fire-breathing dinosaur can mean so many things to so many different people.
Everyone and their mother is aware that Ishirō Honda’s 1954 Godzilla was more than a simple creature, with the film exploring the aftermath of the atomic bomb and the social climate of post-war Japan. After all, details like the titular monster’s keloid-scar-inspired skin texture and the inclusion of imagery meant to harken back to the fire-bombing of Tokyo remind the viewer that this movie was produced less than a decade after the end of World War II. But how could such a horrific monster movie spawn worldwide toy-lines and one of the most prolific franchises of all time?
Well, the runaway success of the original Godzilla (and its infamous American re-edit) quickly led to a sequel. And while Godzilla Raids Again didn’t necessarily turn the giant dinosaur into a hero, it did create another kaiju for him to fight, giving audiences a chance to root for their favorite monster in a decidedly less controversial adventure. That was all it took for Godzilla to become an institution, with future sequels expanding his rogue’s gallery and turning him into a more marketable King of the Monsters by becoming the lesser evil among his foes.
Here comes a new challenger!
As time went on and the character became more popular overseas, we saw a gradual shift in the depiction of Godzilla as popular culture turned him into something akin to a Japanese national hero. It was only in the Heisei era that we’d begin to see more nuanced takes on the monster, like in 1984’s reboot The Return of Godzilla. Marketed as a return to form for the franchise, Return is a direct sequel to Honda’s original film, making the radioactive dinosaur a proper villain as he wreaks nuclear havoc in the midst of the Cold War.
This reinvention would be more popular than many of the kid-friendly sequels of the latter-day Shōwa era, but Toho would soon make Godzilla a protagonist again in a series of sequels that combined the joy of multiple monstrous antagonists with the reboot’s darker edge. This new continuity culminated in 1995’s Godzilla vs Destoroyah, which saw our radioactive anti-hero undergo a nuclear meltdown which endangered the entire planet – all the while fighting against his deadliest foe yet.
Funnily enough, when it came time to finally produce the long-gestating American reboot of the character, Hollywood decided to go back to basics and tell a surprisingly simple kaiju story where Godzilla would be the only threat. However, instead of engaging with the monster’s controversial atomic history, Roland Emmerich’s 1997 remake depicts the creature as more of a confused animal (literally a radiated iguana) than a vengeful force of nature – with the final moments even making us sympathize with a being that had no fault in its creation.
Meanwhile, Toho would once again experiment with multiple conflicting takes their biggest IP, with the ensuing Millennium Era featuring the character as everything from a monster-fighting hero to a stand-in for natural disasters in the span of five short years. I’d argue that the most notable (and spooky) of these incarnations was Godzilla: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, where Mothra and a new, friendly version of Ghidorah team up to face a villainous Godzilla possessed by the spirits of those killed by the Japanese during the Pacific theater of World War II.
After the middling reception of 2004’s Final Wars (a throwback to the costumed wrestling days of 1970s Godzilla flicks), Toho would retire Godzilla for over a decade, with the character only really making a resurgence in 2014 with his second American Reboot. In Gareth Edwards’ re-imagining, which is now the definitive version of the monster in Legendary’s Monsterverse, Godzilla is described as a radiation-consuming embodiment of earth’s natural balance, a neutral guardian of sorts that doesn’t necessarily involve himself in human affairs (despite apparently having been worshipped by the people of Atlantis, as we saw in the 2019 sequel).
A worthy addition to the franchise.
The success of this reboot led Toho to reconsider Godzilla’s retirement, with the studio recruiting Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno and his co-writer Shinji Higuchi to re-imagine the character for modern-day audiences. The result of this bizarre experiment was my personal favorite incarnation of the monster in 2016’s Shin Godzilla, where the constantly-evolving antagonist became an allegory for the dangers of Nuclear power in the wake of 2011’s Fukushima disaster. And while I’ve already written about the merits of this Lovecraftian reboot, I also think that the film’s final lines about the monster being something that we must learn to live with rather than destroy also apply to franchise moviemaking as a whole.
Since then, Toho has also partnered with animation studios in two separate anime projects – one of them a trilogy of feature-length specials re-characterizing the monster as god-like threat that reshapes the earth itself into its image and the other a 13-episode series that incorporates hard sci-fi into the monster’s origins. While neither of these were massive hits, it’s nice to know that creators can still come up with novel spins on Godzilla nearly 70 years down the line.
However, it’s important for Toho not to lose sight of the monster’s gloomy origins, and that’s why Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One appears to be a retro treat for fans of serious monster movies. And while I haven’t yet had the pleasure of checking it out, I think there’s something special about a Godzilla flick going back in time to the context that originally inspired the character. Plus, it looks like it would make for one hell of a double-feature with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer!
At the end of the day, the best part about getting into Godzilla movies is that there’s something in this franchise for everyone. From serious ruminations on the consequences of nuclear war to family-friendly creature features, the series has no problem with re-inventing itself for new audiences. And when your favorite movie monster can effortlessly glide between genres and themes in order to keep itself relevant, I think it’s safe to say that the future looks bright for Godzilla fans.
‘Shin Godzilla’