Godzilla Minus One: What is Godzilla Part Two

So hopefully you read part one and now have as good an understanding of where Godzilla came from as I can give you, but the gist of it is as follows. In 1945, after fighting a vicious war with the United States for four years, Japan finally surrenders after Atomic Bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nine years later in 1954, the Castle Bravo Nuclear test in the Marshall Islands irradiates the Lucky Dragon No.5, a Japanese fishing boat, resulting in a moral panic and backlash within Japan. That same year, Japanese film company Toho were looking to make a monster movie, and what director Ishiro Honda and producer Tomoyuki Tanaka gave them was a grizzly, allegorical tale of Japan being terrorised by a radioactive monster. The film was a huge success in Japan, and after being recut and retitled, was a success again in the United States in 1956. That film was Godzilla and was the first in a franchise that's still going after nearly seventy years and thirty-seven films, the subject of today is said franchise, what happened to Godzilla after 1955's Godzilla Raids Again, and how did we get to where we are now.

After dominating the box office and terrifying the audiences of the world in 1954 and 1955, Godzilla went back to sleep after Godzilla Raids Again, though in the meantime, Toho were pumping out other kaiju movies and expanding their catalogue of famous and beloved monsters like Mothra and Rodan. Both of their films were also directed by Godzilla director Ishiro Honda, and both were shot in colour, whereas Godzilla and its sequel were shot in black and white. But in 1962, as Toho turned thirty years old, the company would bring Godzilla out of retirement and pit him against a foe as timeless and beloved as himself. Toho had recently acquired permission to use King Kong, the giant ape from the 1933 movie of the same name. King Kong featured in two Toho productions in 1962 and 1967, the second film was King Kong Escapes, where he fought a robot doppelganger called Mechani-Kong, the first was King Kong vs. Godzilla. The film was distributed by Universal Pictures in the United States, making it one of the easiest Godzilla films to get a hold of, though like the original, it was heavily edited for a western release. In a bizarre twist, the original cut of the film is a lot goofier than the American edit. In the film, King Kong is brought to Japan by a greedy pharmaceutical Company as a publicity stunt, while at the same time, Godzilla wakes up from his frozen slumber and returns to Japan, causing the two monsters to cross paths. 

Gone was the original film's depressing tone and frightening monster; King Kong vs. Godzilla was a colourful, action packed, satirical crowd pleaser, one that set the trend for Godzilla throughout the Showa series. It would also be the first time Godzilla and King Kong met each other, something that wouldn't happen again until Godzilla Vs Kong over fifty years later. Throughout a lot of that time, a rumour followed discussion of this film that it actually had two endings; a Japanese ending where Godzilla wins and an American ending where King Kong wins, though this was disappointingly never true. King Kong vs. Godzilla, unlike the original Godzilla, is not perfect, in fact despite being shot in colour and having a decade's worth of advancement in special effects, it's aged a lot worse, though don't worry, things get better from here. In 1964, Godzilla would return to battle Mothra in Mothra vs. Godzilla, then team up with her and Rodan to battle Ghidorah in Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster that same year. Two more films I reviewed a few years ago, and I like one of them considerably more than the other. Ghidorah, The Three Headed monster isn't just the best of the two, it's one of the best films in the Godzilla series, and it's the film that introduced Godzilla's archenemy; Ghidorah, who he would go on to fight more than any other monster. After sending Ghidorah back to space and making some unlikely friends along the way, Godzilla, who had already dropped his darker, more allegorical origins, had now shifted from a villainous figure to a heroic one.

This was accompanied by a clear shift in the target audience of the Godzilla films, though Godzilla was nothing if not versatile. In 1969's All Monsters Attack, a little boy who struggles with bullies imagines spending time with Godzilla's son, Minilla on Monster Island, where he helps Minilla stand up to his own bully. An empowering story of learning to stick up for yourself, it's also the film where a little boy pals around with Minilla who, in the English dub, talks like a Looney Toons character. On the opposite end of the spectrum is a film like 1971's Godzilla vs. Hedorah, a film with a very heavy-handed environmentalist message. It's a film where Godzilla is depicted as a literal superhero who fights to keep Earth safe and clean from all the nasty human pollution, it's also the film where people drown in toxic sludge and get reduced to skeletons by acidic death clouds. Sadly, while the entertainment value of these films didn't necessarily drop, their quality certainly did, as Godzilla essentially became a children's franchise, but on the plus side, these films created a generation of life-long Godzilla freaks like me and continue to do so to this very day. The reason for this isn't as deep or complicated as the reasons that the original film is so loved, it's just that these later Showa films, for all their faults, are fun. They're films that wow little boys and make the want to buy toys, they're dumb and unchallenging but for better or worse, they are entertaining, and the simple fact that these monsters are actors in suits affords them a paradoxical realism and sense of humanity. 

The suits themselves are clumsy and limiting in a way that a computer-generated image never can be, and through the actors, these monsters are given life and personality. The same is true for the sets and pyrotechnics, real miniatures that had to be built, real explosions that had to be done in camera, often in the faces of the actors. And when things must be done in camera, that runs the risk of things not going to plan; when Godzilla's spines catch fire in Terror of Mechagodzilla, it's because the suit caught fire on set. That's what's so wonderful about practical effects, sometimes they can go wrong, and sometimes you can randomly and spontaneously get something spectacular. But while Godzilla started his new career as the defender of Earth, a new, more corporate threat was beginning to emerge. In the mid 1960's, Daiei, a rival film company to Toho were looking to capitalise on Toho's string of successes with Godzilla and wanted a Godzilla of their own. Their answer to the King of the Monsters was Gamera; a flying, fire breathing giant turtle who debuted in 1965's Gamera: The Giant Monster, in which the Turtle is awoken from his slumber by an Atomic Bomb and destroys Tokyo. Despite being a cheaper, safer and lazier derivative of Godzilla, Gamera: The Giant Monster was successful enough to spawn its own franchise in which the titular Turtle befriended children and protected them from other monsters. Gamera however would ultimately never reach the heights of his inspiration during his first run, as like Godzilla, the quality eroded over time, as did their success, until 1980's abysmal Gamera: Super Monster killed the franchise. 

Five years earlier, Ishiro Honda was brought out of retirement to direct the last film of Godzilla's Showa series, Terror of Mechagodzilla. Far from a fitting end or epic climax, Terror of Mechagodzilla is more of a whimper than a bang, a fact laid bare by its dismal box office performance. The classic monster movies just weren't pulling in audiences like they used to, the cinema landscape had changed and even the King himself, after years of annualised releases and increasingly dumber and more kid focused outings, had been forced into retirement. It wasn't until 1984, thirty years after Godzilla first emerged from Tokyo Bay, that he would return in the simply titled The Return of Godzilla. For his triumphant return, Godzilla would ditch all of the goofy heroism that had come to define him, this new Godzilla would be darker, scarier, a clean slate that would take Godzilla back to his allegorical, antinuclear roots. The Return of Godzilla was a direct sequel to the original in which Godzilla reappears and terrorises Japan once more, only this time at the height of the Cold War. No Godzilla film before or after this one captured the feeling of dread so well; nor portrayed the looming threat of mass destruction so literally. The Return of Godzilla depicts a world on a knife edge, and into this world crashes a Giant Monster who, by its own nature and bad luck, is put in a position to start a Nuclear War. It's a film that addresses the Cold War in a beautifully simple and eloquent manner by simply asking, would you do it? is anything worth that cost? Though like its equally sombre older brother, what followed never lived up to that first go around. 

The Heisei series ran for seven films from 1984 to 1995 and while many of these films are among the most visually impressive in the series, they ultimately fell into the same trap as the Showa films, scrambling to hold onto a disinterested audience and straying away from its mature, melancholic beginnings. In the years following the end of the Heisei series, director Shusuke Kaneko would direct the Heisei Gamera Trilogy, Daiei's attempt to capitalise on the success of the revived Godzilla franchise. But whereas the Gamera films of the 60's and 70's were ridiculed for being cheap and lazy Godzilla knockoffs, the Heisei Trilogy exploded onto the scene and instantly shot the Turtle to massive popularity and success. Today they are considered by many, including myself, to be three of the best kaiju movies ever made, indeed, three of the best movies ever made, and effortlessly pushed the genre forward in both storytelling and effects, whereas Godzilla had ultimately fallen into safe, comfortable stagnation. The Heisei Godzilla series ended dramatically in 1995's Godzilla vs Destoroyah, where a massively overcharged Godzilla begins to melt down, the human heroes cool him down enough that he doesn't explode and destroy the planet, but they are unable to stop the meltdown and he dies. And this was to be the end of Godzilla for the foreseeable future, until a creative misfire from the west would call the real Godzilla out of retirement once again, making his second triumphant return in 1999's Godzilla 2000. 

The Millennium series however ended up being the shortest of the franchise, stretching over just five years and six films. Among them was the ludicrously titled Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, directed by Heisei Gamera legend Shusuke Kaneko, though it's almost always referred to as simply GMK. What makes this film stand out from the bunch is not just its heavily spiritual story or its insane title, but its depiction of Godzilla. GMK's Godzilla is quite literally death incarnate; he is the vengeful souls of those killed by the Imperial Japanese manifesting as Godzilla to punish Japan for its apathy and ignorance of its past crimes. This Godzilla is the meanest, most hateful, and most dangerous of the franchise; he kills people on-screen and not only that, he goes out of his way to kill people and if he misses people, he goes back to kill them, he's not driven by any goal or instinct, but by a desire to hurt as many people as he can. He is as far removed from the child-friendly guardian of Earth as you can possibly imagine, while that role in the film is taken by Mothra, Baragon and a completely reimagined Ghidorah. GMK was the first film in the Millenium series to become a hit, sadly it would also be the last as after two more outings with his old enemy, Mechagodzilla, and a balls-to-the-wall insane 50th anniversary celebration in 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars, Godzilla once again went back to sleep, this time for an entire decade. It wouldn't be until Legendary Pictures put Godzilla back on the map in the west that Toho would revive Godzilla in Japan, with decidedly mixed results.

Sayonara Till We Meet Again

Over the first fifty years of Godzilla's history, he has proven himself to be as popular as he is flexible. From Death Incarnate to Childrens' Superhero and everything in between, Godzilla has been and will continue to be whatever he needs to be or is shaped into by the minds that interpret him. This is ultimately how Godzilla has carried on for as long as he has, because whether it's an epic tale of man vs nature, or a child-friendly tale of whimsy and heroism, or a terrifying tale of death and destruction, Godzilla can and has fit all these moulds. And through this endless adaptability, Godzilla has persisted for seventy years on both sides of the pacific, giving us some of the most entertaining, spectacular and terrifying films you'll ever watch. In Part Three, we'll be talking about the infamous 1998 film, as well as Godzilla's most recent successes and failures.