Godzilla
A giant sea creature, that walks on its back legs, shoot radioactive breath/laser from its mouth, and vaguely looks like a dinosaur, and no I’m not talking about mom. We begin our talk on Godzilla, and learning about the nearly 50 year old King of the Monsters. Another series mom may have a greater affinity for than even me.
Kaiju – Literally meaning “Strange Beast”, the term originated for just about any mythological creature or monster from Japanese legends, but...
Godzilla
A giant sea creature, that walks on its back legs, shoot radioactive breath/laser from its mouth, and vaguely looks like a dinosaur, and no I’m not talking about mom. We begin our talk on Godzilla, and learning about the nearly 50 year old King of the Monsters. Another series mom may have a greater affinity for than even me.
Kaiju – Literally meaning “Strange Beast”, the term originated for just about any mythological creature or monster from Japanese legends, but after opening up its boarders to the west, the term has also meant any legendary creatures that exist outside of Japan as well.
In Modern terms, we use the term Kaiju to reflect creatures of science fiction or fantasy that are relatively the size of Godzilla, multiple stories tall creatures. Western example can include King Kong, Monsters from Power Ranges, namely and inspirationally, from Pacific Rim. Even Steven Spielberg got inspiration for Jurassic Park from Godzilla and other Kaiju movies.
Godzilla is considered the first Kaiju movie.
History
Debuting in 1954, and created by Toho, in his own self title film, Godzilla has been a fixture of Japanese and American media for nearly 70s years. Though no official individual is the one that birthed the creation of the creature, he was initially intended to be an allegory for Nuclear Weapons as seen by the Japanese. Others have likened Godzilla to the United States, as a terrible beast awakes from its slumber to take vengeance on Japan.
Despite his first film of being the villain, later films would actually see him being an Anti-hero and possibly a protector of humanity, along with being a less serious and more campy. As time has gone on, Godzilla has faces other kaiju and had a rotation collection of villains and enemies in which were trying to destroy humanity.
Toho Co, the company that created Godzilla, is previously well known for Kaiju and Tokusatsu(Japanese special effect films) films, but also release many directed by Akira Kurosawa, along with the anime films of Studio Ghibli. They also work with other anime companies to get their movies released in to theaters.
Eiji Tsuburaya, the individual in charge of special effects for the first Godzilla film, developed the technique that would be called ‘Suitmation’. This was the act of creating latex/rubber suits for actors to wear and become the monsters. This was further developed by shrinking the sets down to miniatures, to give the scale to the actors in the suits. The camera was then placed low to the ground and filmed at double speed, to get the aspect of the Monsters as being huge, but also create smooth movement as the actors moved slowly in their costumes. Special Effects were then substituted with Puppetry or other models to give the effect of swinging tails or mouth movements. Even as CGI has become more prevalent in the Japan, Suitmation is continuing to be used on certain levels, with the suit actors doing motion capture to film the actions and translate them to CGI.
Characteristics
Original Japanese name was Gojira, from combining the two words Gorira (Gorilla) and Kujira (Whale) in Japanese. It later Romanized into Godzilla upon appearing in the west.
Inspired by Ray Harryhausen’s film ‘The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms’, Godzilla was conceived as a reptilian, sea creature, loosely based on the concept of dinosaur. He has various spiked plates along his back, which is the source of his power in some films. His body’s texture is said to be based off Keloid scars that were often seen on survivors form Hiroshima. While initial seen as green in comics, cartoons, and on movie posters, Godzilla is actually charcoal grey.
Godzilla’s signature weapon is his Atomic Breath, a beam of nuclear energy shot out like a laser from Godzilla’s mouth. Godzilla is also known for his physical strength and muscularity, along with being amphibious. He is shown to shrug off conventional weaponry thanks to his rugged hide and his regenerative abilities that allow him to heal from injuries quickly. As a result of his strength, the only things that can otherwise hurt Godzilla are creatures of similar stats/quality to Godzilla.
Originally, Godzilla was portrayed as being 165ft tall in the original Japanese version, which would have made it so it could peer over the tallest building in Japan. It was later rescaled higher in American dub of the film, up to 400ft tall, to give it proper size according to the American Producers. It was later scaled up to 330ft in Japan, which was to continue the intention of making it so he wouldn’t be dwarfed by Japanese high rise buildings of the time. His size would continue to grow as later movies in the 2010 started to come out, with the creature eventually becoming 985ft tall in ‘Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters’(2017).
Films
Godzilla has appeared in 32 Japanese films, dating back to 1954.
Showa Era (1954 – 1975)
His initial 1954 appearance portrayed Godzilla as an invading force of nature. However, later films in the era would portray him in a more comical and slapstick light, as the films were largely aimed at families and children. Still, this period ended up spawning additional movies for some of Godzilla’s featured rivals and allies, leading to more movies that weren’t necessarily staring Godzilla. This is where we see Godzilla fight:
- Rodan
- Varan
- Mothra
- King Ghidorah
- Mecha-Godzilla
Heisei Era (1984 – 1995)
The series took a break from 1975 until 1984, but returned with ‘The Return of Godzilla’. The reboot tended away from the Showa Era, and instead made Godzilla a force of destructive nature once again. The new series kept a singular timeline of events between its movies, acting as a direct sequel to each other. Many of the earlier villains were brought back once again. In 1995, the character was killed, seemingly ending the Godzilla Franchise.
American Godzilla (1998)
In 1992, TriStar Pictures acquired the rights to Godzilla, with the intent on creating a trilogy of films based off the Japanese creature. The original script would have stayed true to the Japanese origin of the creature, as a monster mutated by atomic bombs. However, disagreements over the budget of the film caused the original director to leave, with Roland Emmerich coming in to direct. Fresh off of Independence Day (1994), Emmerich wanted total creative freedom, as he wanted to ditch a lot of the origins of the Japanese Godzilla. Oddly, the budget for the film would be about the same as the original pitch’s budget. Emmerich moved away from a Dinosaur being bombard with nuclear energy and instead turned it into an iguana instead. The film was widely panned by critics and fans, who has come to see the original version and not the Emmerich version of the character. The following two planed films were canceled, and instead developed in to an animated series, which held up much better with fans than the film.
Millennium Era (1999 – 2004)
Largely seen as the backlash against the American Godzilla(1998), the Millennium Era of Godzilla sought to bring back the character to glory and show the Americans how it’s done. Unlike the Heisei series, each film is considered stand alone film, with no direct relation to one another, outside of the original 1954 film. Sadly, outside of the first film in the Era, most of the films were not well received, as the Godzilla formula was becoming stale and old to Japanese and American markets. After the 2004 film, Godzilla: Final Wars, which saw the return of various monsters from the Showa Era, which capped off 50 years of Godzilla, the character was quietly put on hibernation.
Godzilla (2014)
Initially set to be a short 40 minute film, Legendary Pictures decided to create a full film instead, barrowing much more of original Godzilla canon, and differentiating it from the 1998 film. Much of the original 2014 American film deals with two other Kaiju, and purposefully leaves Godzilla out of much of film until the very end, in order to build up hype. The film was very well received, which prompted a sequel ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ (2019) and Godzilla vs. Kong set to come out in March 2021.
Reiwa Era (2016 to present)
After an early screening of Godzilla(2014) to its Japanese creators, Toho praised the American Godzilla, and sited it as the reason to bring Godzilla back to Japanese media. To bring back Godzilla, they brought in Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuichi, the creators and mastermind of Neon Genesis Evangelion(1995) anime, to create the film. With Anno creating the screen play and script, and Higuichi coming on as special effects director.
The new series entitled Shin Godzilla, would focus more on the recent natural disasters of Japan, rather than the atomic bombing of its earlier films, and also focused on the failure of the Japanese government, which was a concern amongst Japanese after the 2011 Tsunami. The film was a success and later films are slated for release, but due to the shared nature of the series with Legendary Pictures, plans have been put on hold for any new film. Three additional CGI films were later produced between 2017 and 2018 feature Godzilla, and were exclusive to Netflix.
Major Antagonists
King Ghidorah – Considered Godzilla’s archrival.
Rodan – not too dissimilar from a pterodactyls, he serves as one of Godzilla enemies, and in comes cases, ally.
Mothra – Basically a giant Butterfly
King Kong – the third movie was based off their fight.
Mecha-Godzilla – A mechanical version of Godzilla, in one case, made from the Skeleton of Godzilla.
