Godzilla (fictional monster)

Godzilla is a fictional Japanese movie monster who made his film debut in 1954, and over the following decades has become a worldwide pop-culture icon. The towering dinosaur-like creature known for his deadly rampages through Tokyo and atomic fire breath has starred in more than thirty theatrical releases in both Japan and the United States. Originally known as Gojira, a combination of the Japanese words for “whale” and “gorilla,” Godzilla was conceived as a terrifying force of nature altered by nuclear testing in the Pacific. However, over the course of several film reboots, he has gone through numerous transformations, ranging from a friendly protector of humanity to a vengeful manifestation of Japan’s war dead.

Background

In the early 1950s, Japan was still dealing with the aftermath of World War II (1939–1945). The nation’s psyche had been deeply impacted by its bitter defeat and the devastation brought upon many of its major cities by US air attacks. In March 1945, the nation’s capital, Tokyo, was engulfed by a series of fire bombings that killed more than 100,000 people. That August, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 175,000 people and leaving thousands more scarred and burned.

As Japan began a massive postwar rebuilding effort, the United States continued to develop its nuclear weapons program as part of its Cold War battle with the Soviet Union. In March 1954, the United States conducted a test of a powerful hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. A few miles away, a Japanese fishing boat named the Daigo Fukuryu Maru was inadvertently caught in the radioactive fallout. The men aboard suffered burns and were diagnosed with radiation sickness upon reaching port. The fish they were carrying were so badly contaminated that they had to be buried.

Overview

About the same time, Tomoyuki Tanaka, a producer at Japan’s Toho Studios, was looking to capitalize on the popularity of American monster films such as 1933’s King Kong and 1953’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. While trying to come up with an idea, he is said to have been inspired by the test at Bikini Atoll and decided on a film about a giant creature awakened and transformed by a nuclear bomb. Tanaka mulled over several concepts, including a giant octopus, before finally settling on a dinosaur, specifically a cross between a Tyrannosaurus and Iguanodon with the back fins of a Stegosaurus.

With production time for the film limited, Tanaka did not want to use the long, meticulous process of stop-motion animation to bring the monster to life. Instead, he decided to use an actor in a rubber suit who would stomp through a miniature scale model of Tokyo. Gojira, as the creature was named, was conceived as being 164-feet (50-meters) tall, charcoal colored, and covered in scars caused by nuclear radiation.

When the film, also named Gojira, opened in late 1954, it was a hit with audiences, finishing among the nation’s top-ten films in terms of ticket sales. Filmed in black and white, Gojira had a somber tone, with the creature serving as an obvious metaphor for the atomic bomb attacks in World War II and the growing threat of nuclear testing. In the film’s opening scene, a Japanese fishing boat is consumed by a bubbling sea and an atomic flash caused by the creature, a thinly veiled reference to the Daigo Fukuryu Maru incident. When Gojira later comes ashore in Tokyo, he becomes an unstoppable force of destruction, crushing buildings and burning people alive with his atomic breath. In the end, the monster can only be stopped by another terrible weapon, an oxygen destroyer that consumes the oxygen in Tokyo Bay, killing Gojira and all life in the surrounding waters.

The film’s popularity led to a sequel in 1955 and began a series of giant monster movies known as kaiju films, from the Japanese word for “strange creature.” In 1956, Gojira was released in the United States, although it was heavily edited to include scenes with American actor Raymond Burr as a news reporter. Because of the language differences, Gojira was mistakenly spelled as Godzilla, and the film was called Godzilla, King of the Monsters!

Over the course of the 1960s and early 1970s, Toho produced thirteen more Godzilla films, with each one deviating farther from the serious tone of the original. The films introduced a series of other monsters that acted as Godzilla’s foes and allies. These included the bird-like Rodan, the giant moth, Mothra, and the three-headed dragon, Ghidorah, who would become Godzilla’s chief antagonist. Godzilla was transformed to appeal more to children and took on the role of defender of Japan and protector of Earth. The films also became more lighthearted and sillier, including instances where Godzilla talked, performed a victory dance, and even used his atomic breath to fly.

Toho took a decade-long break from the series in 1975, only to reboot it in 1984 by revisiting the original’s dark tone. This new Godzilla was once again an unstoppable force of nature bent on destroying Japan. After seven films, Godzilla was supposedly killed off in 1995’s Godzilla vs. Destoroyah. This was partly due to a planned American franchise of films to be kicked off with 1998’s Godzilla. However, that film was widely hated by critics and fans who complained that its monster resembled a giant iguana and looked nothing like Godzilla.

Angry at the Americanized version of Godzilla, Toho decided to again reboot the series in 2000. This six-film series ignored all other movies in the franchise except for the 1954 original. Only two of the films were related, with the others each putting its own spin on Godzilla. The 2001 film Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack was unique among the series as its Godzilla was seen as a representation of the angry souls who had died in the Pacific during World War II.

In 2014, the US-based studio Legendary Pictures made another attempt to start an American Godzilla franchise with the release of Godzilla. The film received a far better reception with critics and fans than the 1998 version and spawned a 2019 sequel, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. At 354 feet (108 meters), this Godzilla was the largest up to that time and portrayed the character as a primal force that protected Earth’s natural balance. In 2016, Toho released another Japanese-made reboot with Shin Godzilla. This version of Godzilla was seen as a metaphor for the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands of people across Japan.

The Legendary Pictures Godzilla series continued with the crossover film Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), which pitted the monster against the iconic giant ape King Kong, who had also been licensed by Legendary. The blockbuster was part of the studio's effort to build a cinematic universe around classic properties, dubbed the MonsterVerse. While the film received mixed to positive reviews, its major success at the box office was widely attributed to demand for escapist action as cinemas began to reopen following the COVID-19 pandemic. Critics noted that unlike many previous takes on the titular characters, there was no clear metaphor behind the monsters.

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