Return of the King: Celebrating Godzilla’s Triumphant Return - Part 1

 

Godzilla is back with a vengeance but which of his nigh 30 films show what makes him such a big deal in the first place?

After a ten year hiatus following a whimper of a finale, The King of Monsters has made his triumphant box office return with his sights set on America. As a lifelong “Godzilla” fan, I lack the ability to properly proclaim or illustrate my excitement for Gareth Edward’s contribution to the greatest kaiju dynasty ever created without understating my anticipation for its theatrical release back in May.

The success of the film has more or less positioned Godzilla back into public consciousness and something noteworthy as a long time viewer of the franchise is just how much respect the film pays to its name sake. This isn’t merely limited to the quality of the film itself or even its tone and reverence paid to the original film but rather right it encompasses the DNA of the genre and franchise's tropes itself.

“Godzilla” has had something of a rocky history of filmmaking in terms of quality but this new film has utilized the best of its franchise to produce an experience unique to outsiders of the genre, yet with a grandeur for veterans that could only have been pulled off with a Hollywood budget. Alas, with Edwards attracting Disney’s eye for a new Star Wars film, America is left with at least four years until the next installment of the franchise’s “Legendary era.”

With The Big G’s fame on the rise now however, several Godzilla films past eras have seen reprinting and renewed availability. So why aimlessly wait for The King’s new adventure when you can whittle away the garbage of the past and watch the movies that have best exemplified the series’ worth across its 60 year lifespan?

As with any list, the picks I have made are of course subjective to personal opinion however it should be noted that when composing this list, I kept more of a mind open towards films that were unique and offered the best possible illustration of what has made the this franchise so enduring.

There are more than a few “Godzilla” films that I love that are not featured on this list and may even enjoy more than a few entries on here. However, regardless of my feelings on the basic entertainment value of watching two men in rubber suits beating each other up with a special effects team, I ultimately wanted to emphasize how much more meaning “Godzilla” can have beyond an admittedly impressive walking disaster zone; what makes the saga of The King of Monsters culturally fascinating and a compelling story beyond its "unique" aesthetics?

This franchise has seen the release of nearly 30 films across the time span of over half a century. That kind of success has to be credited to more than just a potential for unintentional hilarity due to generally low budget filmmaking.

Godzilla vs. Hedorah

This is a film that holds a special place on this list and in my heart, mainly because I’m still not necessarily convinced that it’s a good movie.

“Godzilla vs. Hedorah” is quite frankly, one of the slowest and clunkiest tokusatsu movies that I’ve ever had to sit through. The pacing is wonky, the setup is kind of weak and some of the more psychedelic moments of the film are distracting at best and incomprehensible at worst. And of course, it gave us this little nugget of riffable gold.

“Godzilla vs. Hedorah” ultimately wears many of its problems on its sleeve. However, those same problems additionally contribute several saving graces that make it stand out amongst the increasingly incoherent silliness of its fellow Showa era entries.

The English title of “Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster” was put in place for a reason. Born a microscopic life form feeding off of the sludge of Japan’s intense pollution, Hedorah takes shape and lashes out, using the polluted waters and industrial smog to grow more powerful, presenting itself as a threat to the human race that has grown so powerful, Godzilla becomes their only chance to take it down.

To a modern America, the idea of an environmentalism lesson may seem fairly obnoxious and even in the day, I’d wager Western critics had a field day with “Godzilla vs. Hedorah’s” relative lack of subtlety regarding its moral. However consider the state of Japan at the point that the film came out.

The mid-20th century saw an age of increasingly rapid industrialization for Japan which resulted in a significant rise in waste production. Within the 20 years preceding this film’s release, the sludge and smog produced by industrial activity and environmental wipeout in its name resulted in badly polluted waters and the spread of three different diseases which all impacted the general public, resulting in the founding of the Japanese government’s Ministry of the Environment. The film’s message may have been heavy handed but at the time, it kind of needed to be.

The result is the only “Godzilla” film of the Showa era, save the original “Gojira,” that actually serves as a social commentary of an important issue and as a result, a film that feels pretty culturally significant to the time of its release. Hedorah’s role as a personification of rampant industrial pollution serves as an almost ironic parallel to Godzilla’s original portrayal as a personification of nuclear warfare’s devastation, another majorly important social issue of its time.

The matter at hand is further punctuated by surreal imagery and a psychedelic atmosphere instituted by the film indicative of the mid-60s to mid-70s. When melded together well, the movie takes on a more thought provoking tone than those of previous and even future films of the entire franchise.

For all of “Godzilla vs. Hedorah’s” problems, the passion behind the film’s message and its ambitions of making a social statement while maintaining the crowd pleasing light tone of the Showa era set it respectably apart from the franchise’s bigger 60s and 70s disasters. It’s heavily flawed and is by no means a film to be liked by everybody but it is an admirable one nonetheless. If nothing else, it gave us one of the most unique monsters of Godzilla’s rogue’s gallery.

Hedorah takes on several forms throughout the film.

Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster

“King Kong vs. Godzilla” may have been the first follow up after “Godzilla Raids Again” which established it as a franchise and “Mothra vs. Godzilla” may have been the first film after “Gojira” to feature a substantial story but “Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster” was the precise moment that the “Godzilla franchise” ceased to be a series of films and turned into a true fictional universe.

For the first time in the franchise, the events of previous films really came into play as a tool to inform and enhance the setting and story of their sequel. Humanity’s reception to the existence of Mothra and her fairies for previously defending Japan and the acknowledgement of multiple kaiju existing from the start of the film by the humans truly served to give the setting a unique flavor from our own world that previous sequels had been missing up to that point. This was now another world, with its own timeline of events and differing social norms as a result of a major undeniable occurrences and it finally made the setting just as fascinating as the events of the story set within it.

Mothra and her fairies featured on an evening talk show, giving an interview.

With real world building done for the first time in the franchise, the plot of Earth’s resistance against the first appearance of alien invaders was given a little bit more complexity. Multiple solutions and wild card factors made it so that the problem couldn't just be resolved with a giant brawl following city wide evacuation.

This was ultimately accomplished by taking the kaiju, which had up until this point merely been moving disaster zones and finally giving them character. Godzilla and others like him were finally given a voice. Well, figuratively, not literally… yet.

With Ghidorah on the loose and more powerful than any other creature seen by humanity, while Godzilla and fellow Toho kaiju Rodan pursue a vendetta against each other, Mothra is forced to seek assistance from the two and convince them to stop butting heads with each other long enough to fend off the real threat. All through a series of roars and shifts in body language translated to the human protagonists by her fairies.

A scene in which a larval form Mothra attempts to reason with Godzilla and

Rodan. Discussed in the scene is Godzilla's hatred of humans and why he hates them.

The extent of Kaiju intelligence had never gone this far. No longer was Godzilla just a wild animal acting feral for some abstract reason the audience can't comprehend; he was now an intelligent, yet still animalistic, being with emotion and personality.

With this establishment came the subtle bits of characterization that would come to define the personalities of these creatures through almost exclusively nonverbal interaction throughout the rest of the franchise. Godzilla’s begrudging respect for humanity and eventual growth into an antihero, his eventual friendship with Rodan and other Monster Island Kaiju, his ability to use tactics in combat and the variations that all of these traits undergo throughout different time periods of the franchise can all be traced back to this film; a film that results in the defeat but not necessarily death of Ghidorah, who would go on to become the first major and most recurring antagonist of the entire franchise.

King Ghidorah: The most recurring enemy kaiju of Godzilla across the series

and frequently viewed as Godzilla's arch-nemesis across the span of the franchise.

“Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster” may have been released after the film series had built a name for itself but it was undoubtedly the first “modern” “Godzilla” movie, introducing many elements that many later films would become famous for executing and even bank on as selling points.

Next time in Part 2…

Ghost cyborgs, giant bugs, and Godzilla’s original return to form

Edit: Time constraints have forced me to cut one entry short for the next installment. All entries will still be completed and posted on time however