Movie monsters are a timeless staple of the medium. Whether it be the Predator and its nerve-wracking clicks or the Xenomorph with its slobbering jaws, they are icons of cinema and represent the moments when a character designer can dig into their most grotesque imagination.
However, there is only one movie monster famous enough to have his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: Godzilla. And oddly enough, he was not even a product of Hollywood. The reptilian titan stands hundreds of meters tall, breathes nuclear fire and crushes any and everything in his path.
November 3 is Godzilla Day, and this month is big for the King of the Monsters. In the U.S., the latest installment in Legendary’s Monsterverse franchise will be released on November 17 with “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.” Meanwhile, the reptilian icon finally made his return to Japanese theaters this weekend with “Godzilla Minus One,” the first live-action film since 2016′s “Shin Godzilla.”
The classic monster (or kaiju as they are known in Japanese) has a long, eventful history, and after watching all 36 feature-length movies starring the character, I decided to take a deep dive into its beginnings, legacy, and future. While these movies are most known for their disaster elements, sci-fi stories, and iconic monsters, many of them are used to mirror the issues of our human reality.
I became a Godzilla fan in 2014 with the release of Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla.” While it got mixed reviews, it was successful enough for me that my pet goldfish is named “Godzilla,” and some of the only physical disks left in my house are one’s featuring the titular character.
I fell down a rabbit hole, traveling back to 1954 with the release of Ishirō Honda’s “Godzilla,” a film that packed an entire generation of trauma into a single, powerful creature feature.
Cinematic Fission
Made nine years following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Honda created “Godzilla” as an allegory for post-war nuclear anxiety. Godzilla started as the ultimate enemy: the personification of a disaster that wiped out thousands of civilians in 1945. Here, Godzilla wreaks havoc across Japan following being woken up by hydrogen bomb tests.
The film wrestles with the debate on whether to study or kill the beast, eventually settling on the latter, as an eyepatch-wearing scientist named Serizawa creates an oxygen-based weapon to put an end to Godzilla’s rampage.
Thematically, the original film remains perhaps the richest study of post-war terror even to this day. It speaks on the collective scars left on a nation, and tells of how they are able to overcome even the greatest of disasters. However, the cautionary tale also paints a bleak picture in the modern point of view, as thousands of nuclear weapons remain in stock across the globe, not to mention the growing reliance on nuclear power.
Past that initial film, however, Godzilla would morph into something different.
The Showa Era: Rubber suits and smog
The first 15 films in the Godzilla franchise are those released during Japan’s Showa Era, or in the time of the reigning Emperor Hirohito. They would provide a single timeline documenting Godzilla’s various run-ins with recognizable creatures including Mothra, King Ghidorah, Rodan, and various aliens hell-bent on taking over Earth (there are at least three of these).
A good majority of these movies are the definition of camp. They are a far cry from the dark, thematic powerhouse of the original, and opt to tell simpler stories of Godzilla. Sometimes, he fights a mechanized doppelganger and other times, his freakish son helps a young boy overcome a bullying problem.
Watching the Showa Era films in succession plays out almost like serialized television, most closely resembling the genre of tokusatsu, the classic superhero genre characterized by spandex, practical effects, and big explosions. At one point, Godzilla himself seems to become a superhero, making a heroic turn in “Ebirah, Horror of the Deep” to defend against a large lobster.
From that moment on, a large part of Godzilla films portray the creature less as a threat to humanity, but as a force of nature, whose trail of disaster is balanced out by a desire to protect his world. This would even be translated into Legendary’s Monsterverse, portraying Godzilla as this restorer of balance who awakens every so often to take out enemy monsters.
It is this change in characterization that would shift Godzilla’s role in the media for the future. While most of the Showa Era consist of cheesy films that portray a pair of men in rubber suits slapping each other around, there are some exceptions: films that seem most in-line with the original film’s thematic weight coupled with an additional artistic voice.
Perhaps the best example of this is “Godzilla vs. Hedorah.” From its opening minutes, audiences can already tell that something is unique. It begins with vibrant reds over black splatters as a horrifying, but catchy song about pollution plays over the credits.
The film is about pollution, featuring a creature that feeds on the world’s filth and only grows bigger in its form. The imagery is gruesome, showing people turning to bone after breathing in Hedorah’s poisonous smog. The only solution is Godzilla.
The environmentalist stance the film took was radical, and fits within Godzilla’s original purpose as a vessel for tackling real-world issues. Although, within the fun of the previous movies there are hints of existential questioning, none of them put the problem front and center like “Godzilla vs. Hedorah” does.
It serves as a reminder of Godzilla’s symbolic power, even as a man in a suit.
The Heisei Era: More human than we think
The Showa Era would come to an end with 1975′s “Terror of Mechagodzilla.” It would be nine years before Godzilla’s first reboot, “The Return of Godzilla.”
Like many other franchises, the studio went the route of ignoring the past 14 movies and making a “true” sequel to the original. With it, directors aimed to return audiences to the mystery of Godzilla, and sought to reintroduce the creature for a new audience.
With it would come a whole new wave of bizarre lore that fits uniquely within this timeline of Godzilla. There is even a recurring cast member in Miki Saegusa, a woman with the power to telepathically link to kaiju like Godzilla.
While we saw a bit more of a comical personality in Showa Era Godzilla, Saegusa serves as a character who can connect to these creatures. Through her, the films add a new sense of depth to these monsters. The people in suits became less obvious to viewers, yet ironically, feel far more human.
The best example of this is in “Godzilla vs. Biollante,” where a scientist quite literally turns his dead daughter into a massive plant creature as a means of preserving her soul.
Other films would be familiar. Once again, aliens and time traveling invaders are featured throughout this era. We would also see the return of Godzilla’s son, but the movies remove the Showa Era’s doting father to make room for something more animalistic.
This would all culminate in the final film of this era, 1995′s “Godzilla vs. Destoroyah.” For the first time, Godzilla has found an enemy he cannot defeat: chronic disease. In this unexpected legacy sequel that sees references and returning cast members from the original 1954 film, Godzilla spends his final days overloading on nuclear power and fighting a prehistoric crab.
While he wins the day, he succumbs to his illness and causes a meltdown. In its final moments, the human characters are relieved to have prevented a nuclear disaster, but there’s a sense of sadness. Despite originally being introduced as this terrifying monster to kill, people like Saegusa shed tears for Godzilla.
You realize that through the franchise’s ups and downs, you went on this journey with Godzilla. It is hard to say goodbye, but his legacy lives on. The final shot of the film is one of the series’ most memorable. A blinding light encompasses the screen as a silhouette of Godzilla’s son roars, and you realize that it has come time for a new era to begin.
The Millennium Series: Rebooting the reptile
The Millennium Series is the start of standalone Godzilla films. While many of the movies share similar Godzilla designs with a more spiky, reptilian look, they are all meant to live within their own continuity.
I like to call this period the era of Godzilla “postmodernism.” There are a few “versus” films that feel right at home with the Heisei Era, but most of this series’ short run stands as a reversal of what came before.
“Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack,” for example, ditches everything the audience knows about Godzilla. There is no nuclear power and swaps science fiction for the supernatural. Instead, it opts to create Godzilla to be the product of a different kind of post-war trauma: the spirits of Pacific War victims.
He is portrayed almost like a slasher villain, making vengeful kills against Japanese citizens. On the flip side, all of Godzilla’s classic enemies, including the hydra-like King Ghidorah, are shown to be protectors of the Earth who fight against Godzilla in order to put the ghostly legion to rest.
This would continue with the Mechagodzilla duology, including “Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla” and “Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.” In contrast to the supernatural story told previously, they create a mecha movie, featuring soldiers in high-tech uniforms fighting in a massive robot against Godzilla.
A key feature of the Millennium films is a return to Godzilla’s villainous roots. As opposed to the heroics of Heisei Era or Showa-Era Godzilla, he is always a threat, and his enemies are shown to be human allies.
The Millennium Era would culminate with “Godzilla: Final Wars,” a celebration of the monster’s legacy, and also perhaps the most maximalist the franchise has ever been. Instead of the real-world settings these films have come to embrace, the film drops us into a “Matrix”-inspired dystopia set to hard rock.
The film adapts the series’ love of alien invasions for the early 2000s, retrofitting it with black leather and rectangular sunglasses. Godzilla runs through a gauntlet of iconic enemies while a team of humans fight their own battle against skin-wearing gray men.
The Millennium Series sets a trend for future Godzilla work and establishes a precedent that the creature can be more than just monsters fighting each other, but they can be a space for unique stories and interpretation.
The Reiwa Era: Less is more
This brings us to today. Japan is currently in its Reiwa Era, and there is only one feature-length Godzilla film (excluding a three-part Netflix animated trilogy).
The recent films have seemed to avoid picking up a continual timeline and instead have continued the Millennium Era’s self-contained storytelling. With them comes experimentation and a return to thematic storytelling.
Hideaki Anno’s “Shin Godzilla” is the first of this era. Rather than being in any Godzilla continuity, it is part of a separate series started by Anno titled the “Shin Japan Heroes” that sees unique takes on Japanese icons, including Kamen Rider, Ultraman and Anno’s very own “Neon Genesis Evangelion.”
The film has been seen by some as a celebration of Japanese nationalism, showing the politics behind stopping a rampaging monster and the inaction caused by red tape. It modernizes the nuclear conversation, placing it in the context of a post-Fukushima Japan as the leaders look to avoid another nuclear disaster in their country.
How fitting that the way Godzilla falls is through the power of a city. A train line and cranes are creatively used to freeze the creature, as the urban combat allows the literal country of Japan to defend itself against destruction.
Anno’s themes of human potential are a common thread through his “Shin” movies and this is no different. The film is less about Godzilla but more so how the creature is a vehicle for human survival.
Red, white, blue and Godzilla
But even outside of Japan, Godzilla has an undeniable presence abroad. While 1998′s “Godzilla” ended with mixed reviews and a mutated iguana, the recent Monsterverse has found some success.
The cinematic universe is surprisingly, one of the less controversial and consistent franchises out there, focusing on a heroic Godzilla fighting against CGI renditions of classic characters. The films lack the themes or depth of some of the Toho films, likely because of the missing cultural connection, but they provide a new take of the monster.
Not only do they emphasize the majesty of Godzilla, but these stories represent the monster on a world stage. Beyond being a Japanese product, the films reveal how he can quite literally appear any and everywhere at will.
His next outing will be in “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” followed up by “Godzilla X Kong: A New Empire.”
Plus one and so much more
“Godzilla Minus One” just smashed into Japanese theaters. The film once again takes a new direction for the classic monster. Setting him in post-war Japan opens the opportunity for further exploration of the creature beyond the present day and serves as a direct contrast to Anno’s contemporary take on the monster.
In its almost 70-year history, Godzilla has worn many faces. He is a demon of nuclear power, a superhero in a rubber suit, the ghosts of Japan’s past, a keeper of nature’s balance, and even an anti-bullying PSA.
Every generation can impart their own ideas onto what the creature represents, whether it be post-war anxiety, nationalism, or environmentalism. For fans across the globe, the creature means something different to each individual.
For me? Godzilla is a myth whose lack of consistency in origin and narrative are what make him fascinating. Despite being the King of the Monsters, he is a reflection of our human consciousness with all our anxieties and aspirations told on film.