A roaring legacy: Wknd pokes at Godzilla, in his 70th year
The monster’s original name, Gojira, was a mash-up of the Japanese terms for gorilla and whale. He has roots in a real-life incident in 1954. Take a look
1954 was a strange year for cinema.
In the US, White Christmas (a feel-good film set in an inn, starring Bing Crosby) ruled the box office. There was a remake of A Star Is Born, with Judy Garland and James Mason. And Alfred Hitchcock’s thrilling Rear Window, starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly, was released.
In India, Nagin, the story of a vengeful she-snake, was the top-grosser. And in Russia, Raj Kapoor’s Awaara (1951) was the year’s biggest hit.
Japan produced a range of classics in 1954. There was Akira Kurosawa’s magnificent Seven Samurai (a tale of brave men, and a village threatened by bandits), and Sansho the Bailiff (about a feudal lord who suffers for his honesty; directed by Kenji Mizoguchi).
Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto, set during a 17th-century civil war, cost millions to make, and won an honorary award at the 1955 Oscars.
Most of these movies are now known only to film buffs. A single Japanese release from this year looms over the rest. 1954, to most of the movie-loving world, is the year of Gojira.
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The story has its roots in a strange real-life incident, also from 1954.
In March that year, a Japanese fishing boat named Lucky Dragon No 5 dropped its nets near the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. It was outside the danger zone demarcated by the US government, which was conducting thermonuclear bomb tests at Bikini Atoll.
Yet, suddenly, the sky lit up. Clouds of white, radioactive ash fell like snow. The men in the boat continued with their fishing trip, covered in the stuff.
By the time they returned to port, two weeks later, their hair was falling out in clumps. They had burns on their skin, splitting headaches and bleeding gums. They were hospitalised; one would die.
The story of Lucky Dragon No 5 terrified an already traumatised post-Hiroshima Japan.
A few weeks later, the Japanese film producer Tomoyuki Tanaka was flying back from Indonesia after a failed attempt to negotiate visas for a film crew. Looking at the ocean below, he found himself wondering what kinds of monsters dwelt within.
He imagined a monster awakened by the testing of thermonuclear devices. He jotted down an idea for a movie with the working title of The Giant Monster from 20,000 Miles Beneath the Sea.
The title was inspired by a Hollywood release from the previous year, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, about a giant dinosaur unfrozen as a result of nuclear tests in the Arctic. That too is a film lost to time.
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Tanaka, then 43, pitched his idea to Toho Studios, where he had worked for nearly 15 years at this point. It was considered interesting, but possibly unfeasible. How much would it cost, after all, to make a convincing monster movie?
The numbers were quickly worked out (click here to see how), and the studio commissioned the film in April.
Gojira premiered just six months later, in October. It was a success, striking a chord with Japanese moviegoers. In fact, the film’s messages, against nuclear testing and on the horrors of weaponised science, resonated around the world. The name, a mash-up of the Japanese terms for gorilla and whale (and therefore, something that denoted monstrosity) was translated as Godzilla for overseas distribution.
The success of the movie saw Toho begin work on a sequel, Godzilla Raids Again, and the world’s longest-running movie franchise was born, with 38 films so far, made in Japan and the US. (Click here for a quick overview.)
Aside from the overt symbolism of the bomb, Gojira stood for the power of the US as viewed by the Japanese, most of whom still remembered not just the atomic bombs but the bombardment of Tokyo in the final days of World War 2.
Perhaps coincidentally, as Japanese-US relations improved, Godzilla became less of a raging monster and developed more heroic aspects.
By 1964, the Japanese economic miracle was underway, fuelled by American aid. The fifth movie in the franchise would be released in this year, and Godzilla turned from threat to protector, in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster.
Over the years, other villains Godzilla fought in Japan would reflect newer concerns. There was Hedorah, the smog monster; Mechagodzilla, a representation of tech-bro hubris; and Biollante, a monster born of genetic engineering.
More recently, 2016’s Shin Godzilla served as a searing indictment of government inefficiency and a failure of crisis management, in the wake of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and the resultant meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear-power plant.
And 2023’s Godzilla Minus One took viewers back to the franchise’s roots, for another look at Japan’s post-war years, this time softened by the lens of time, and telling a story not just of resilience but redemption.
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Clever marketing, savvy distribution and syndication helped make the character a worldwide phenomenon. The first Godzilla film was re-edited and re-released in the US in 1956 as Godzilla, King of the Monsters!. This version included new footage featuring American actor Raymond Burr, to appeal to Western audiences.
This approach would serve as a model for future releases. The relatively low production costs of kaiju (giant monster) films made them profitable for international distributors, who could dub or re-edit them for local audiences. Syndication with TV channels ensured the films were often shown on late-night TV in the West, where they became a staple for younger audiences.
Since that first appearance, Godzilla has been antagonist and protagonist, destroyer and defender, has faced off against other iconic monsters, starred in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, met Bambi in a brilliant animated short (Bambi Meets Godzilla; 1969), appeared on The Simpsons and Family Guy, starred in his own series of Marvel Comics.
In a Dallas hotel room in 1977, Buck Dharma, guitarist with the rock band Blue Oyster Cult, was experimenting with a searing guitar riff. All he could think of, he would later say, was Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo. The song he went on to create, Godzilla, would become a mainstay of classic rock radio.
A young Steven Spielberg watched the US cut of the 1954 original over and over, and was so inspired that he bought the rights to the movie adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Spielberg has called Godzilla “the most masterful of all the dinosaur movies”.
The term itself has mutated to become a suffix in the industrial and tech worlds: think Mozilla and Podzilla Music. Bands love the suffix too: Bridezilla, IllZilla, Bongzilla and so on.
And, there have been over 65 videogames since the release of the first, Godzilla, in 1983.
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While the monster may have been appropriated by the world, he is an integral part of modern-day Japan — and possibly its biggest cultural export.
In 2015, Godzilla was granted official residency in Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward (where Toho Studios is based). He was named a Special Resident and Tourism Ambassador, as part of efforts to promote the area.
A monster-sized Godzilla head was installed atop the Toho Studios building in Shinjuku, and is visible for miles. In nearby Hibiya Godzilla Square, a bronze statue of the kaiju, erected in 1958, has been updated several times over the years. Inscribed on its base are lines from the original screenplay.
The country regularly hosts Godzilla exhibitions, showcasing original props, costumes and behind-the-scenes material from the films. Godzilla-themed postage stamps were released in 2019, featuring various versions of the monster and iconic moments from the franchise.
With the next movie, a Hollywood production, scheduled for release in 2027, it doesn’t look like the king of the monsters will be leaving us anytime soon.
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