August 6, 1945. The United States drops the first of only two nuclear weapons ever used in combat onto Hiroshima, Japan. At least 70,000 people disappeared in the blink of an eye, with more to die over the coming days, weeks and years from their injuries, radiation sickness, cancer and birth defects. Three days later, the same thing happened to Nagasaki. Japan, already on the verge of surrender as the Soviets turned their attentions to Japanese holdings in mainland Asia, ultimately capitulated to America a month later. The bombings, a war crime by any reasonable measure, had a profound effect on Japan and its culture that has persisted to this day. While America was making movies about nuclear war with the Soviets, Japan sublimated the deep trauma of the atomic bombings into Godzilla.
It's late summer. A freighter is mysteriously shipwrecked off the coast of Japan. Another ship sent to investigate meets the same fate. A fishing boat is destroyed. Fishermen report the almost complete vanishing of fish from the sea. An enormous monster is sighted in a storm that results in the destruction of a fishing village. Before long, that same monster begins to terrorize Tokyo, rampaging through its streets and causing destruction on a scale that feels all too familiar. It's Godzilla, a prehistoric, seaborne lizard grown to gargantuan size by underwater hydrogen bomb testing. Nothing seems to stop it or even slow it down.
I mean, the film really needs no introduction, though, does it? It's Godzilla, the classic kaiju flick. Whatever you might think about the film's greater themes: of nuclear terror, the environmental impact of nuclear weapons, the trauma of the atomic bombings, or the responsibility of science in creating weapons of mass destruction, Godzilla is ultimately a classic monster movie, promising lots of great special effects. Director Ishirō Honda's tightly edited disaster drama has everything a popcorn-munching moviegoer could love, even as he repeatedly evokes the destruction of Hiroshima and the death and dismay of the aftermath.
Godzilla wound up kicking off a whole franchise. Production company Toho took the film's smashing success and launched dozens of sequels and spinoffs, introducing new monsters, some of which became popular in their own right (like Mothra.) You can see its influence in America too, with movies like Jurassic Park paying direct homage to it. And of course, the entire kaiju genre, while predating Godzilla, still owes much to the King of the Monsters.
While the original Godzilla isn't my favorite movie in the franchise (as a die-hard Neon Genesis Evangelion fangirl I have to glaze Shin Godzilla) it's still one I've seen at least half a dozen times and I could happily watch it another half a dozen more. It's the perfect 1950s monster movie, equal parts genuine horror, grim sociopolitical commentary, and B-movie romp.
Hail to the king.
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