Godzilla 70th Anniversary: A Decade Of Godzilla

Godzilla is the longest running franchise in film history; it's been seventy years since the Big Guy first came ashore in Tokyo Bay, and not only has he made it this far, but he's currently at the absolute height of his international popularity. Godzilla is now Oscar winning cinema, as well as being a dominant force in the international box office. Godzilla wasn't always on this hot streak though, in fact, there was once a time where this amazing franchise looked down for the count, so to see the miraculous resurgence it has been enjoying for a decade now is absolutely wonderful. It really has been a great decade for Godzilla, so let's take a look at these last ten years and how they brought Godzilla back from the brink and cemented him as the one true King of the Monsters.

While Godzilla has seen periods of financial success over its history, it has also seen periods of financial failure. At the turn of the millennium, Tristar's failed attempt to adapt Godzilla had forced Toho to unretire their own Godzilla series after dramatically killing the King of the Monsters off in 1995's Godzilla vs. Destoroyah. The revived series didn't last long, however, chugging along until 2004, when Godzilla: Final Wars bombed at the Japanese box office, forcing Toho to admit defeat and retire Godzilla again, for good this time. The decade between 2004 and 2014 was a dark age, unfortunately for me, it was also when I first found Godzilla and fell in love with him. No films were being made so international demand for Godzilla was at an all-time low, making being a fan of the franchise a lonely, frustrating slog, one I pushed through just long enough for Legendary's 2014 reboot to swoop in and save the day. The build up to the release of the 2014 film was when my fading love for the franchise was reenergised, and after the film finally released, there was no going back for me. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that seeing the 2014 film in IMAX changed my life, and while the film wasn't exactly what I expected, I have always adored and respected it for what it was. While the film's reception from audiences was mixed, it did prove to be a huge financial success and Warner Bros., the distributers and co-producers of the film, were more than happy to greenlight sequels.

In the meantime, however, Legendary pictures were working with Universal on a reboot of King Kong, that film would end up switching distributers to Warner Bros., when it was then announced that the film was being reworked to tie into the 2014 Godzilla, laying the groundwork for a new cinematic universe and setting up a long overdue rematch between Godzilla and King Kong. That film ended up being Kong: Skull Island, a film I wasn't so keen on when it first released in 2017, but that I've come to like a lot more in recent years. Kong: Skull Island was a lot less concerned about the more thoughtful side that the retroactive first instalment of this new Monsterverse was built around, instead, it was a spectacular monster romp across Skull Island, a lost kingdom crawling with bizarre and terrifying monsters. The film broke away from the formula that past remakes of the original 1933 King Kong always followed; Kong was no longer a doomed figure that fell in love, only to be taken away from his home in chains. This Kong had a very different destiny, and so was reworked into a god of the island that fought to protect his home from threats both internal and external. Having no pretences about being high minded, Kong: Skull Island was content to just be a fun action movie with plenty of monster fights, which is probably why I wasn't originally as in love with it as I was Godzilla 2014 or its sequel, King of the Monsters. 

After the film 2014 film turned out to be a success, Warner and Legendary moved ahead with a sequel, announcing early on that the sequel would also star three of Godzilla's classic Toho foes; Mothra, Rodan and Ghidorah. The sequel, lovingly titled Godzilla: King of the Monsters released in 2019, but whereas its predecessor was a huge hit, King of the Monsters was not. After the initially divisive reception to the first film, a five year gap and stiff competition, King of the Monsters underperformed at the box office, and was even more divisively received than its predecessor. Many of the complaints made about King of the Monsters were also made about the first film, it's certainly not as tight or well paced, but does little to detract from what is otherwise a fantastic Godzilla film. Building on the foundation laid by the 2014 film, King of the Monsters injects some welcome fantasy into its kaiju world, depicting its monsters not as simply heroes and villains, but as gods and demons in a vast, ancient conflict between the forces of order and chaos. The film reframes the relationship between Godzilla and the humans in a wonderful way, as well as establishing a host of new monsters and expanding the world of the Monsterverse. The film's depictions of Rodan, Mothra and Ghidorah are all flawless too, keeping them recognisable and true to their classic characters, while reimagining them as the gods of this world just as the 2014 film did to Godzilla, as a result, these interpretations of these classic monsters are among the best in the entire Godzilla franchise. 

Adding to the flawlessness of King of the Monsters' depiction of the monsters is Bear McCreary's score, which reworks Akira Ifukube and Yuji Koseki's themes from classic Toho movies and blends them with modern Hollywood's more bombastic musical sensibilities, creating something truly magical. Seriously, hearing Bear McCreary's rendition of Mothra's song as Mothra emerged from under the waterfall in her adult form had me in tears. While we're on the subject of moments that had me in tears, what about Godzilla's arrival in Antarctica, exploding through the ice and standing to face his foe, accompanied by McCreary's thundering, blasting rendition of Ifukube's classic Godzilla theme. Or what about the Rodan sequence, where Rodan chases down Monarch's flying fortress while dismantling it's fighter escort to an electrifying beat of pounding bongos and roaring horns. Or what about the Godzilla rebirth sequence, where Ifukube's Godzilla theme is again used to accentuate the sheer epicness of the moment as Godzilla rises from the dead, stronger and angrier than ever. King of the Monsters is defined by these moments, what can most honestly be called "fuck yeah" moments, where the music and action come together to make the most epic thing imaginable. 

It is these sequences throughout King of the Monsters that make the film so fantastic, in spite of its flaws which we'll get to later. While the following two Monsterverse films are both less messy than King of the Monsters, for me, they never quite reached it's heights, even if they did both prove more popular with general audiences. After King of the Monsters underperformed, there was no guarantee that its follow-up, Godzilla vs Kong, would have turned things around, the odds were even further stacked against it when it released in a massively diminished market thanks to the Covid lockdowns and a day and date release on HBO Max. So it came as a pleasant surprise when the film turned out to be relatively successful at the box office, though after seeing the first two Godzilla films in IMAX, as well as seeing Kong: Skull Island and King of the Monsters multiple times each in cinemas, I missed GVK in cinemas thanks to the aforementioned lockdowns. Following the lead of Kong: Skull Island, GVK abandoned the more thoughtful and spiritual aspects of the Godzilla films in favour of being a big, fun monster movie, albeit one with a very clear understanding of it's assignment. 

It was Godzilla vs Kong, the rematch of the century, America and Japan's favourite classic movie monsters going at it one more time and determining, once and for all, who is the true King of the Monsters. GVK made good on its promise in the end, more than living up to it's potential as a once in a generation clash of Titans, and delivering the fastest, most violent and most entertaining action of the Monsterverse up until that point. With the expected amount of thought and respect, the film gives each of its titular monsters their moment to shine, taking advantage of their respective strengths and weaknesses in dynamic and imaginative battles that are the undisputed highlights of the film. GVK also further expands the Monsterverse with the formal introduction of the Hollow Earth, a realm inside the Earth that the monsters, or Titans, originate from. The film also brings in another classic Toho monster in the form of Mechagodzilla, a robot doppelganger of Godzilla that Godzilla and Kong are eventually forced to team up against in the film's finale. GVK is a lot leaner than the two prior Godzilla films, delivering uncomplicated entertainment that delivers the goods and is a lot of fun, but I always felt that GVK missed something that the two prior Godzilla films had, a spark that makes those films two of my favourite films of all time, whereas GVK and its sequel are just very good. 

After GVK defied expectations at the box office, Warner Bros. and Legendary kept that film's director, Adam Wingard, on for the sequel; 2024's Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, which ended up being the highest grossing film in the Monsterverse. Picking up where GVK left off, GXK sees Godzilla and Kong teaming up once again when a new threat emerges from the Hollow Earth with plans of conquering the surface. After Kong: Skull Island and GVK established Kong as the last of his kind, GXK sees him venture into the Hollow Earth in search of more Apes, discovering a tribe of Apes under the rule of the cruel and tyrannical Scar King. After GVK stripped back many of the deeper elements of the Monsterverse, GXK follows its trajectory to the next level, making Godzilla's spines bright pink, giving Kong a power glove and having the pair do battle with the Scar King and his army in zero gravity, it wears it's absurdity with pride. In that, it's hard to deny that the film is fun, with plenty of bright colours, fast action and a light, whimsical tone, channelling the most absurd energy of the Showa era, only with a nine digit production budget. Like GVK, GXK is really fun, but like GVK, it lacks the spark that made the first two Godzilla films in the Monsterverse so special, with the added issue of Godzilla very much taking a backseat in the film's story. 

There is a lot that GXK gets right, such as Kong and Scar King's conflict, the introduction of Shimo and the reintroduction of Mothra, but it's just not a film that gets me as crazily excited as 2014 or King of the Monsters. All that being said, I'm still very far from giving up on the Monsterverse, the next instalment of which is coming in March 2027, which can't come soon enough, because even when a Godzilla film can't give me the fizz, I'm still just happy to see the Big Guy on the big screen. There are also TV series set in the Monsterverse; Skull Island and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, though I haven't watched either of them yet. While I either enjoy or outright adore every film in the Monsterverse, all of these films have their critics, and I'd be lying if I said the critics never made good points. A consistent problem with the Monsterverse is the human sides of their stories. While all the love and imagination is poured into the monsters, the human stories never get the same attention, instead being little more than connective tissue to fill in the gaps between the big moments. While I'd never say any of them are outright bad, there are cracks that leave you feeling these stories could be better. King of the Monsters and GXK are both heavy on exposition, telling the audience relevant information instead of showing it, which leaves you with the feeling that they had this really cool idea for the monsters but didn't know how to get there naturally. With the exception of the 2014 film, the Monsterverse is littered with contrivances and leaps in logic that disrupt the flow of the stories. 

The supposed problem that the critics bang on about the most though is that none of the human characters are good. I mostly disagree with that; none of them are bad, and I feel that many of them could have been great if they just had more time in the oven, so to speak. 2014 and King of the Monsters both have a strong family drama at the core of their stories, Kong: Skull Island has Hank Marlow and Colonel Packard, who both fall just short of being great, Dr Serizawa was a great addition to the first two Godzilla films, while various characters like Burnie, Trapper and Conrad all do their respective jobs well enough. None of them suck, but none of them truly shine either; Ford Brody struggles to carry the 2014 film after Joe Brody's premature death, Hank Marlow gets a satisfying payoff to his story, but said story is not only more interesting than the story of the film itself, but also barely explored, and the broken family dynamic of the Russells does it's best to parallel the underlying conflict of the film, but lacks the weight that it needs to really drive it home. The simple reason that this doesn't bother me is that the Monsterverse is about the monsters; I am invested in the monsters' stories, which are consistently excellent, this is where I think many of the critics of the Monsterverse really miss the mark, because Godzilla and Kong aren't just monsters that are there for the spectacle, they are the main characters that the stories are centred around. 

I'm not even overly annoyed by the tonal shifts of the Monsterverse, instead opting to see each film as a new experience that might not be the same as the previous one, but might still be good, a mindset that I haven't gone wrong with thus far. One issue I do have though is the inconsistency of the Monsterverse's soundtracks. After Alexandre Desplat and Bear McCreary delivered god-tier soundtracks for 2014 and King of the Monsters, respectively, Henry Jackson's soundtrack for Kong: Skull Island and Junkie XL's soundtracks for GVK and GXK leave something to be desired, they're not as memorable, unique or intense, which I've always found disappointing. Overall though, while I concede that missteps have been made with the Monsterverse in places, I am immensely happy that it exists. There was every chance for the 2014 film to fail and if it had, Godzilla would still be dead, it was that film that gave Toho the confidence to go ahead with Shin Godzilla, as well as the confidence to release Godzilla Minus one internationally. The Monsterverse was the jumpstart that Godzilla needed to come back, and now the franchise is bigger than ever, so to put it in no uncertain terms for the tourists, we wouldn't have Godzilla Minus One without the Monsterverse, and so long as the Monsterverse is successful, the international demand for Godzilla will remain alive and well.

Jumping back in time and to the other side of the Pacific, the 2014 Godzilla making a killing at the box office gave Toho the confidence boost they needed to revive Godzilla on their end. They had already approached Hideaki Anno to direct a Godzilla film as early as 2013, but nothing was officially announced until after the release of the 2014 film. Toho and Hideaki Anno's Godzilla revival was Shin Godzilla, a modern reinterpretation of the monster that, like his original 1954 counterpart, came from a very dark place, and for that, we'll need some history. On the eleventh of March, 2011, a magnitude nine earthquake off of Japan's east coast and a resulting tsunami caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage and killed nearly twenty-thousand people. The event has, understandably, left a shadow over japan, not just because of the lives lost, but because of the meltdowns. After being damaged by the earthquake and tsunami and losing power to their cooling systems, three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant melted down, resulting in explosions that released radioactive fission products into the surrounding area. In the months after the earthquake and meltdowns, the Japanese Government came under intense scrutiny for it's response to the crisis, and the Prime Minister of Japan resigned before the year was out. Shin Godzilla took heavy inspiration from 3.11, depicting an extraordinary crisis to which the Japanese Government completely bungles it's response. In the film, an abomination created by the dumping of nuclear waste comes ashore in Japan, causing widespread panic and destruction, but also spreading deadly radiation everywhere it goes. 

I've written about Shin Godzilla a few times over the years, most recently last year as part of my What is Godzilla series, but while I've never outright hated Shin Godzilla, I've never really loved it either. Yet when I decided to give it another watch recently, I was a bit shocked by just how engrossed in the film I became. The film shamelessly takes aim at the Japanese Government, depicting them as hapless idiots, all lost in a jungle of red tape and completely incapable of taking responsibility or decisive action, either through incompetence or fear of damaging their political reputations. Shin Godzilla doesn't stop there, however, also taking swings at Japan's place in the world, asserting that the country needs to take control of its own destiny, rather than caving to the whims of the US and UN. As a critique of big government, Shin Godzilla works incredibly well; it is a vicious satire of the bloated, inefficient and overly bureaucratic systems of government, asserting that new ideas and ways of doing things are the only path to meaningful change. Yet while I agree with the film's message, politically, I still can't bring myself to say I love it for a handful of reasons. Chief among them is that the film focuses so much on being a political satire that there's little room for anything else. For a film about the response to a giant monster attack, the film has little desire to explore the human cost of such a crisis, telling about the costs of mass evacuation and the ensuing refugee crisis, but making next to no effort to show it. 

What's really odd about that is that the film also has moments that come across as manipulative, like a scene where Yaguchi and Patterson discuss the possibility of a nuclear bomb being dropped on Tokyo, which abruptly ends with a smash cut to photographs of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Where I really struggle with Shin Godzilla though is in two key areas; it's humans and it's monster. Shin Godzilla's characters aren't so much characters as they are vehicles for the film's political message, they're talking heads and straw men that sit in offices and never get anything done, which I understand is the point, but that doesn't make for a very enjoyable film, even for someone like me that agrees with it's politics. There are dozens of characters in Shin Godzilla, all of which introduced with their full names and positions, yet I can't remember any of their names past Yaguchi and Patterson. As I've talked about before, this makes the film especially hard to watch for non-Japanese speaking audiences who, on top of the sub-titles, also have to keep up with all the characters' names and positions that are presented on the screen in Japanese, along side English translations of that. Shin Godzilla is a constant information overload that can be a nightmare to keep up with, which makes it one of the few exceptions to my rule on foreign-language films, you're better off watching the dub. The other big issue with Shin Godzilla is Godzilla himself. 

In theory, this Godzilla should be terrifying, an abomination capable of forcing it's own evolution, borderline indestructible and extremely genetically unstable, a walking, radioactive cancer that, if not completely destroyed, will metastasise across the entire planet. There is a widely held belief that the lyrics of the song used during Godzilla's incineration of Tokyo, "Who Will Know" is also Godzilla's perspective, the implications of which are terrifying as it suggests that Godzilla is self aware and in a state of constant physical and mental agony. But the film never states that this is Godzilla's perspective and outside of this song, there is nothing to establish or develop a personality for Godzilla, as well as the film doing a poor job of showing that he is intelligent, in spite of the characters' insistence. All Godzilla does in this film is move forward and discharge radiation, barely reacting to his surroundings or showing anything in the way of intent which, compared to the Monsterverse's Titan-breaking brawler and Minus One's wrathful monster, is incredibly underwhelming. Shin Godzilla's interpretation of the Big Guy is one that I really, really want to love, it has so much potential to be a genuinely terrifying monster, but instead, he's just boring, which is the harsh truth of Shin Godzilla for me, the film's a bit boring. But compared to the trilogy that followed it, Shin Godzilla was the best film ever. 

I'll keep this one brief because I could go for days about how bad the Godzilla anime trilogy is. After Shin Godzilla dominated the box office in Japan, Toho naturally wanted to make more Godzilla, but whether because of their deal with Legendary or some other reason, they followed up Shin Godzilla with a trilogy of animated movies that they co-produced with Polygon Pictures. The Godzilla anime trilogy all had limited theatrical releases in Japan before being internationally released on Netflix in 2017 and 2018, and I'm not going to beat around the bush, they suck. Despite the limitless potential of a Godzilla anime, the trilogy takes it's amazing premise and does nothing interesting with it, instead devolving into a painfully dull, joyless, obnoxiously pseudo-philosophical exploration of nihilism. The trilogy does have good ideas that I'd have liked to see in better films, but the anime trilogy was clearly made by half-wits who thought they were geniuses, presenting an infuriatingly self-important, five hour long cure for happiness as high-minded intellectualism. There are plenty of Godzilla films that I have problems with, even ones that I Love, but the anime trilogy remain the only Godzilla films I never want to watch again. Maybe if I did, my tune would change, I'd actually love to come around to liking these films because hating Godzilla hurts my soul, but they're just so boring and dull and pompous, I won't put myself through the chore of watching them again. They are terrific wastes of potential, golden examples on how to misuse and misunderstand Godzilla, and that's where I'll leave that. As we know, Toho turned things around with Godzilla Minus One, though I won't be going into too much detail about that film here. 

In the meantime and to finish up this decade's retrospective, let's talk about the other Godzilla anime. After the anime trilogy set the bar so low, Toho and Studio Bones followed it up with Godzilla: Singular Point in 2021. Wisely abandoning the miserable tone of the anime trilogy, Singular Point was a bright, colourful and visually appealing anime that delivered on the kaiju action, featuring plenty of classic Toho monsters and visual homages. At least at the start, Singular Point also managed to tell a somewhat compelling story as Japan is besieged by increasingly dangerous kaiju, inevitably culminating in the arrival of Godzilla, though the show unfortunately did descend into nonsense towards the end, losing what made it so interesting to begin with in a soup of pseudo-scientific jargon of time travel, physics-defying archetypes, reality manipulation and the impending end of the universe, before reaching a conclusion that makes no sense whatsoever and will possibly never be followed up on.  Singular Point does right many of the anime trilogy's wrongs, but it also repeats many of it's and Shin Godzilla's mistakes, failing to live up to it's potential as a result, but it is, at least, an entertaining anime series, plus it was nice to finally see Anguirus again. This is another case where if I gave it another chance, my tune could change completely, but unlike the anime trilogy, there is enough to like about Singular Point that I most likely will return to it in the future. 

Then, finally, there is the big one. Godzilla Minus One changed the game when it released just last year. Clearly very confident with the film, Toho didn't stop with a Japanese theatrical release, taking the film international in December 2023, to universal acclaim. Minus One's release was the culmination of a decade of Godzilla movies. After the Monsterverse had put Godzilla back into the public consciousness and steadily regrown the brand along with Shin Godzilla, the time had come for Toho's Godzilla to fully assert itself as the dominant movie monster. The brain-child of acclaimed writer and director, Takashi Yamazaki, Godzilla Minus One immediately made waves when it released in North America, with near universally positive word of mouth and a stellar critical response. The success didn't stop with critical praise either, as Minus One climbed its way to the top spot in the US box office, finally finishing it's international run with a total of over one-hundred million dollars, ten times it's production budget. Minus One's success was more than financial and critical, however, it was the first Godzilla film to finally break through to general audiences, a film that flawlessly demonstrated the potential of the Godzilla franchise, put its competition to shame, won an Oscar, and (mostly) changed the way general audiences look at the Godzilla franchise for the better, though I will be going into much greater detail than this another time. For me, personally, Minus One is not just a masterpiece, it was the first Japanese Godzilla film I got to see in cinemas. It completes a chapter in my life just as the 2014 film did, and like that film, it will always have a special place in my heart.

The Arrogance of Man

Over the past decade, the Godzilla franchise completely turned it's fate around. From the failure of Final Wars, Godzilla looked doomed to fade into obscurity as the film industry moved on without him, but just twenty years on, this amazing franchise has never been more popular. For me, personally, after nearly a decade of loving this franchise in spite of its obscurity, seeing it slowly grow into a worldwide phenomenon again is one of the most exciting things I've ever had the pleasure of watching. While I don't feel that every step has been in the right direction, it doesn't change the fact that the Big Guy is finally getting the love and attention that he deserves. With the Monsterverse still going strong and Minus One winning an Oscar, the King of the Monsters looks to still have plenty of steam left in him, and while I have no idea what's coming next, I cannot wait to see it. What a decade it's been.