There are three types of people;
TYPE 1 - People who love Godzilla
TYPE 2 - People who don`t like Godzilla
TYPE 3 - People who don`t know anything about Godzilla
My goal here is to educate - to change the TYPE 3`s into TYPE 1`s, and maybe even convert some TYPE 2`s. I preach the Word of Godzilla.
I consider myself to be a pretty discriminating movie viewer. I don`t watch a lot of movies anymore, because I just keep seeing the same things regurgitated over and over, year after year by the Mighty Gargantuan Hollywood Empire Money Machine. There are tons of remakes, oceans of sequels, adaptations from comics or TV shows or books, and a ton of other crap that is just so repetitive in terms of writing or direction or presentation that it makes me want to puke. So, one might consider it to be pretty ironic that I like Godzilla, since his movies pretty much meet all of those criteria, but there is a subtle difference. Godzilla is ridiculous. I know it`s ridiculous. Ridiculous and awesome.
You know....Godzilla....giant monster that attacks Tokyo on a yearly basis and kicks other, weirder monsters asses. Ring a bell? No, I am NOT talking about the 1998 American movie starring Matthew Broderick. I liked that movie, but that is NOT Godzilla. The real Godzilla (or Gojira) is a 200 ft radioactive mutant reptilian monster from the depths of the ocean. He kind of looks like a really pudgy tyrannosaur, but with longer arms and huge plates on his back like a stegosaur. He walks upright and makes the most god awful noise - more of a creepy high-pitched shrieking sound than a roar. In case you hadn`t figured it out, he`s really a guy dressed in a rubber monster suit.
Here`s a picture:
and another:
and another:
and one more, just because Godzilla is so awesome:
OK, so you may have noticed a few changes, but that`s because Godzilla has been around for a looooong time. More than 50 years, in fact. It seems as though every time they make a Godzilla movie (each and every one a treasure, in my opinion), the monster looks slightly different. He`s starred in a staggering 29 movies in Japan so far. Here`s a complete list of his films, all produced by Toho Studios:
Godzilla (1954)
Godzilla Raids Again (1955)
King Kong versus Godzilla (1962)
Godzilla vs. Mothra (1964)
Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)
Godzilla vs. Monster Zero (1965)
Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (1966)
Son of Godzilla (1967)
Destroy All Monsters (1968)
Godzilla's Revenge (1969)
Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)
Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972)
Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973)
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)
Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)
Godzilla 1985 (1985)
Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991)
Godzilla & Mothra: The Battle for Earth (1992)
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993)
Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla (1994)
Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995)
Godzilla (1998)
Godzilla 2000: Millennium (2000)
Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000)
Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)
Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002)
Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003)
Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)
Okay, so there are a lot of movies. Yes, I’ve seen them all. If there’s one thing I’m a sucker for, it’s giant monster movies. I know it always comes off super hokey, and even big-budget special effects can’t really save the genre from being slightly outrageous. But that’s the fun part – you know it’s fake, and usually looks fake, so you can enjoy it for what it is.
I really like the newer Godzilla movies (post – 2000). Yes, the Toho company still uses actors in rubber suits and miniature sets, but they seem to have perfected it. Looks better to me than the CGI-produced American Godzilla.
In Godzilla’s early years, in the 50’s and early 60’s, he was pretty much a brainless evil monster bent on worldwide destruction. Even if there were other monsters in the movie, he was the bad guy in all cases, whether he was just acting on his own or controlled by Aliens or whatever. Somewhere along the line he became a good guy, and seemed to get a little smarter as well. His 70’s movies were more than a little ridiculous, with Godzilla staging tag-team battles with former enemies against crazy-looking giant space monsters. Things began to get truly silly, and the movies were pretty much made just for children. (Luckily, I was a child at the time, and I thought these movies were awesome.)
He took a break for about 6 or 7 years and came back as a bad guy again. Then stuff got really weird. Having been menaced by Godzilla countless times, the Japanese tried every trick in the book to defeat him. They tried cloning him a couple of times, tried using psychic powers to control his brain, lured him into a volcano with the sound of birds, stole a Godzilla egg, built a couple of Anti-Godzilla giant robots (Mechagodzilla II and Moguera) to use against him and even traveled through time to destroy him when he was but a wee dinosaur pup (the bastards!). Nothing worked of course, because he had to be back for the sequels somehow.
Speaking of sequels, Godzilla movies aren’t really sequels in the truest sense. There are only a couple of movies in the series that actually continue from where the previous one left off. More often, the writers will completely ignore most of the events that occurred in the past, unless it is relevant to the story being told. Sometimes the same actors would return, but there are only a few who actually played the same characters more than once. But come on, this is Godzilla we’re talking about! Nobody cares about the humans!
Obviously, I could spend all day talking about Godzilla. His movies are just that good. I think it’d be better at this point to check them out for yourself. Try the following films on for size:
Godzilla vs Mothra (1964, aka – Godzilla vs the Thing) – My favorite of the 60’s. Godzilla and a giant monster egg (Mothra’s) are washed ashore in a typhoon. Godzilla tries to eat the egg and Mothra and her babies stop him from destroying Tokyo. A bunch of people run around and scream.
Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971, aka – Godzilla vs the Smog Monster) – Godzilla is now a good guy. He defends Japan from the horrors of Hedorah, a nasty blob-like creature spawned from too much pollution. The film is intercut with weird animated segments of the Smog Monster eating people. Also features a groovy musical number performed by a group of hippies at a peace rally on the slopes of Mount Fuji (at least I think that’s what was supposed to be going on). Utterly stupid.....and stupendous.
Godzilla 2000: Millennium (2000) – Not a lot of good science in this one, but it seems to take itself pretty seriously. There are some pretty cool special effects and rubber monster battles going on here. The movie starts with Godzilla attacking the city (Tokyo, duh!), which is kind of rare, since usually you’d have to sit through at least 35 minutes of boring, badly-dubbed dialogue before you even got to see a monster tail or a shadow. Basically, in Godzilla 2000, Big G fights a constantly mutating alien that crash-landed on Earth millions of years ago, and kicks it’s ass. This film is also notable in that it was the first Japanese Godzilla movie to be released after the American version in 1998. In my opinion, this blows that movie out of the water. The Godzilla suit looks really cool in this one. Oh yeah, and he’s a bad guy again.
Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001) – If you thought Godzilla was bad in 2000, he’s twice as bad in 2001! This is my recent fave. Godzilla rises once again to menace Japan, and 3 Guardian Monsters rise up to defeat him. Yeah, that’s right, it takes 3 monsters to take him down this time! Godzilla looks cool in this one too, and has scary unblinking white eyes. Lots of destruction and chaos in this one. They basically re-vamped the entire Godzilla mythos for this one. But who cares - it’s fun. And it has a long funny name. Highly recommended.
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That seems to be enough about Godzilla for now. Please feel free to ask any questions, and I will readily lend out any of the above movies for your viewing pleasure (for a price). The title of this post is somewhat of a lie. I could never write all there is to know about Godzilla in one article. I’ll just have to get back to this subject later.....but for now....
GO, GO GODZILLA!!
And May the Force be with you...
