Look Out Tokyo !!!

Posted by Nostalgiaholic | on January 15, 2008

Godzilla, the Lazarus-like Lord of Lizards was created by Japanese movie producer Tomoyuki Tanaka in 1955. Tanaka, working for the Toho Movie Company, along with writer Shingeru Kayama, special effects guru Eiji Tsuburaya and director Ishiro Honda came up with the idea of a giant nuclear monster movie

Long shot of Godzilla in water
“ATTENTION !!! ATTENTION !!! STRANGE RADIOACTIVE SIGNALS HAVE BEEN DETECTED OFF THE COAST OF YOKOHAMA !!!”

…But first, this breaking story from Belleville, Ontario :

Ever since I can remember, every house on the street that I grew up on would come to life early some Sunday morning in July to take part in that most joyous of communal events, the Glen Rd. annual yard sale day !!! Every house on the block would open their garage doors and empty their attics in an attempt to sell off ping-pong tables full of old clothes, toys, and paperback books to anyone who would haul it all away. Of course, once the sun began to golden and the last of the morning bargain hunters had left, there wasn’t much point in staying open for business. So every family on the block would get together in someone’s backyard and fire up the old BBQ… And here’s where we find our hero, or in this particular case… not find me.

I think I was twelve years old the summer that my buddie Matt and I blew off the annual Glen Road backyard BBQ bash to stay inside and watch a Godzilla movie marathon. Now attendance was mandatory for this kind of event (parents can be sooooo weird), so Matt and my risky, Mission Impossible-style escape had to have a HUGE payoff…. and we weren’t disappointed. We stared transfixed at my family’s downstairs TV as six back-to-back Godzilla movies stomped all over our impressionable little minds. SIX !!! Thank you public access TV !!!

Starting with the original N. American release of Godzilla : King of the Monsters and followed by the next five flicks in chronological order, the whole marathon took over eight hours ! Matt have to leave after the first three, but I stayed late into the night, surviving on stolen potato chips and hot dog buns supplied by my brother. He was the kind of guy who could be counted on to get things… no questions asked. The image of a twelve year old me wrapped in a beach towel in our darkened basement, staring amazed at grown men dressed in rubber monster suits leaps into my mind whenever I hear the piercing roar of Godzilla.

“ATTENTION !!! ATTENTION !!! OHTO ISLAND IS UNDER ATTACK !!! IT’S SOME KIND OF GIANT LIZARD !!!”

KING OF THE MONSTERS

Art from Godzilla (1955) Godzilla, the Lazarus-like Lord of Lizards was created by Japanese movie producer Tomoyuki Tanaka in 1955. Tanaka, working for the Toho Movie Company, along with writer Shingeru Kayama, special effects guru Eiji Tsuburaya and director Ishiro Honda came up with the idea of a giant nuclear monster movie. It would feature an actor in a rubber suit equipped with some minor special effects terrorizing tiny models of cities. Early “blue-screen” chroma key filming, would allow the monster to be added to the background of pre-filmed city skylines later in post-production, making it seem like the behemoth was actually hundreds of feet tall. The fire-breathing beast from the east was given an origin story as epic as the American equivalent King Kong (1933) and was suitably dubbed “Gojira” (a combination of the Japanese words for “Gorilla” and “Whale”).

For all of Gojira’s bells ‘n whistles, it wasn’t a movie just about special effects or rubber-footed city smashing, it was a dark, claustrophobic allegory for Japan’s post World War II fear of nuclear annihilation. Godzilla represented the United States and their atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the war. The fear that leftover radiation was slowly poisoning rural Japanese communities became the impetus for the Ohto Islander’s virgin-sacrificing sea-monster myths. This is some scary stuff…

All the actors really sell their fears, especially when the towering beast finally strides from the ocean to flatten Tokyo. The first full view of the soon-to-be icon is terrifying, a huge black shape with glowing eyes transposed on the night sky.

“Godzilla was the most masterful of all dinosaur movies because it made you believe it was really happening. “ - Steven Spielberg

The movie ate up mad money in Japan, and it wasn’t long before North American producers snapped up the footage for a slightly re-edited release in our cinemas. The creature was Re-dubbed “Godzilla” (which is American for : “We don’t pronounce Japanese names properly“), and the movie was given the subtitle : KING OF THE MONSTERS. The original Japanese version was cut into pieces and sandwiched in between clips of Raymond Burr (the orchid-crazy actor who did the Perry Mason TV show) as a reporter trying to figure out just what the heck is going on. The movie became a drive-in classic.

1955 to 1975 (The Original Series aka The Showa Series)

With Godzilla’s multi-cultural stardom, came the promise of more dollars and yen for everyone involved if there was a sequel to back it up. Godzilla Raids Again was released the next year, and though critically maligned by Japanese fans as more of the same city smashing with less of the cultural commentary, American fans ate it up with a monster-sized spoon !!! re-dubbed badly (as all American versions would be) the movie transformed the heroic main character Kobayashi into a Lennie Small-type character (from the novel Of Mice and Men ya know ?).

The movie featured Godzilla beating the bejeezus out of a second giant monster named Anguirus. The two titan’s climatic brawl over Osaka Castle became a model for the next film’s clash between the famous US monster King Kong and ‘Zilla over Mt. Fuji in the 1964 release of Godzilla vs. King Kong.

“ATTENTION !!! ATTENTION !!! GIANT UNIDENTIFIED CREATURES ARE BATTLING ATOP MOUNT FUJI !!!”

Mothra

Mothra vs, Godzilla (1964) and it’s lightning fast follow-up flick Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster (1964) both featured a lot of monster-on-monster wrestling. The former movie introducing Godzilla’s equally famous, and human-loving co-star Mothra, the giant Moth. The latter movie introduced Rodan, a giant pterodactyl and Godzilla’s most powerful and popular nemesis King Ghidorah, the three headed golden dragon from space. It is interesting to note how closely the monster Ghidorah resembles a mythological Chinese dragon. Most Godzilla fans assume that the creature represented Japanese anxiety with the now communist-China’s growing Nuclear power and advanced satellite programs.
King Ghidorah
These movies sure did represent a lot of angst didn’t they…? With a earthly protector in place, and an evil threat from outer space looming, Godzilla’s original concept of a mindless, human-punishing force of nature began to change.

It was the 1960s now man, and Godzilla was now in colour !!! And as cool as being more colourful was, poor ‘Zilla had lost some of his mono-chromatic menace. With the sharper picture quality that technocolour provided you could plainly tell the beast was a guy dressed in a poorly spray-painted rubber suit. It was often unintentionally hilarious (especially in the poorly-dubbed N. American versions) to watch scores of Japanese fisherman run screaming from a huge, clumsy dude in a monster suit with sneakers protruding from beneath his feet. Ahhhh well…

Godzilla had become such an icon that he couldn’t stay evil for very much longer. Through a telepathic conversation with Mothra in Gidorah, The Three Headed Monster,Godzilla admits to smashing buildings only because humans shot at him first. Godzilla was now the neutral wild card in the giant monster movie world balancing the forces of good (Mothra) and evil (Ghidorah). He even got a comical sidekick in the form of Manilla, his offspring in Son of Godzilla (1967).

POster for Godzilla vs. Megalon And the humans…? Since the menacing and emotional atmosphere of the first flick was all but gone, and people were really going to theaters just to see big rubber beasts fight it out…. well…. no-one really cared much what happened to humanity during all this chaos. By the release of Destroy All Monsters in 1968, it was clear what the public wanted, and the movie featured very little human storyline and an all-out world-wrecking Royal Rumble involving eleven different rubber monsters !

The 70s featured a constant stream of Godzilla releases including the darker, environmentally aware acid trip-gone-wrong flick Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster (1971), and the same-old multi-monster brawling in Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972) and Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973). The era of the uber-goofy Godzilla film was almost at an end, but first another important giant monster had to take on the G-Man.

In the 1974 and ‘75 flims Godzilla vs. Mecha-Godzilla and Terror of Mecha-Godzilla the titular cyborg clone of Godzilla was revealed ! the Godzilla-shaped metal monster cut his way through the giant monster roster armed with flashy special effects like rocket fingers, lazer eyes, and some kinda electro-tazer thingies… Mecha-Godzilla became known as Godzilla’s arch-enemy due to his similarity in strength and style of… well everything… He’s a clone, dig ?

Fans of the Godzilla movies dubbed the series of movies made between 1955 to 1975 the “Showa” series because they were all made during the tail end of Japanese Emperor Hirohito Showa’s reign.

1985 to 1995 ( The VS Series aka The Heisei Series)

Director Koji Hashimoto took the helm of the sixteenth Godzilla flick in 1985 just in time for the 30th anniversary of the movie franchise… and the transfer from Japanese Emperor Hirohito to Emperor Akihito (called Heisei). See the pattern here…?A little bit of Japanese history mixed in with all that monster mayhem… And you thought this post was just gonna be about dudes in rubber suits…

Godzilla had been dropping serious beats on evil rubber monsters as a cartoony anti-hero so far away from the original 1955 version of the creature that Hashimoto decided it was time to get back to basics. His re-imagining of the mythos in Godzilla 1985 was a direct sequel to the original Gojira flick, effectively negating ALL the stories from ALL the movies made during the original series. They even got a much-older Raymond Burr to come back and yell at pentagon officials about the dangers of nuclear weapons (a theme that would continue throuout the VS Series). Godzilla got a fiercer makeover and became the people-eating city trashing force of destruction he once was. Overall, the flick was darker and more pessimistic about mankind’s ability to deal with the horrors unleashed by out own technology.

The equally dark sequel in this new parallel storyline was Godzilla Vs. Biollante (1989), which featured a giant plant monster, James Bond-esque espionage, and plenty of anti-bio/chemical weapons speeches. Much like in Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster, the biological weapon gone wrong goes through a number of different stages of growth before it becomes the towering flower beast called “Biollante”. The usual Godzilla movie formula ensues : Showdown, Nuclear breath, lots of buildings bite the dust, and Godzilla wins the day… Same old plot transposed onto new stories, with new special effects. Toho even dusted off old Showa Series monsters for Godzilla to fight against (Mothra, King Ghidorah, and Mecha-Godzilla) in a stream of movies from 1991 to 1993.

Then in late 1994, after the release of Godzilla vs. Space-Godzilla (in which the G-Man takes on a clone from… you guessed it, SPACE !!!) a rumour circulated that Toho studios was finally putting the big green guy to rest. The beast to do the deed had to be big, REALLY BIG !!! It had to be more of a monster then any that had come before, and that’s covering 40 years worth of giant imaginary creatures. Poster for Godzilla vs. Destoroya (1995)

In December 1995 Godzilla vs. Destroyah hit the big screens featuring the tag line : “Godzilla Dies!” and was true to it’s word. The movie centered around an enormous battle in downtown Tokyo with another multi-formed menace, this time called “Destroyah” (created from the weapon used to defeat Godzilla in the first movie). After administering beatings to his huge mutant insect-on-crack-like enemy, the beast from the east finally succumbed to the nuclear energy that had given it life for so long and went into giant rubber-suited meltdown. The big guy goes nuke and turns Tokyo into a radioactive graveyard for years to come.

The catch of course, like any good soap opera, is to always leave an opening for future stories. Remember baby Godzilla…? Well apparently he was hanging out in Tokyo and sucked up some of the radiation from the explosion, turning into the spitting image of dear ‘ol dad… The science doesn’t make much sense, but hey… I never was that great at science.

The Great American Ripoff, The Millenium Series, and The Legacy of Godzilla

In 1998 the Hollywood film company Tristar bought the rights to produce an American version of the Godzilla film. Passed gently from writer/producer Dean Devlin to director Roland Emmerich, the film had an enormous amount of hype to live up to thanks to it’s classic legacy and fanboy expectations. Hey, they had the latest in CGI technology to make Godzilla more badass then ever right…? And 40 years worth of great ideas to work with. How could it go wrong…?

All hopes of Emmerich creating an American homage to the beloved drive-in franchise were shattered as the collective Godzilla fans of the world stared in helpless abject horror at the flashy, brainless schlock that was Godzilla (1998). The creature bore no connection to the legendary Japanese version in any way, and the movie was… well… let me hand off this review to JoeBlo.com : 10 Reasons I HATE Godzilla ‘98, he’s got a passion for explaining how BAD this movie was (and can use naughty words I can’t on this site).

“THERE WERE REPORTS THAT A GODZILLA-LIKE CREATURE ATTACKED NEW YORK, BUT IT WASN’T GODZILLA, IT WAS IN FACT ANOTHER CREATURE OF IMMENSE SIZE !!!“

The boys ‘n girls over at Toho Studios could not stand by and let this American forgery spew iguana poop all over the Godzilla legacy. The decision was made to resurrect the big guy, or I should say, his son just in time for the millennium in Godzilla 2000 (2000). The movie roared loud and clear that the Toho Godzilla was the one and only Godzilla ! I remember going to see this one in theaters with four buddies… We were the only ones there…

Despite sagging ticket sales in N. America, five more movies were made during the new millennium, each creating their own continuity with the original flick back in 1955. In GMK : Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001) Godzilla was given a whole new concept as an avenging demon fueled by the restless spirits of Japanese soldiers killed in WWII. Throwing another curve-ball into the Godzilla continuum, the movie also featured Mothra, Ghidoirah, and Baragon (sorta like a giant rhino-reptile monster) as ancient protectors of the earth, and enemies of the evil demon-Godzilla.
By the time Godzilla : Final Wars (2004) reached American audiences… there wasn’t much of an audience at all… Which was alright, because as the name implied, this was apparently gonna be the final flick for at least 5-10 years. The idea was to starve the fanboys ‘n girls for just long enough to generate some serious buzz for the film that would be released somewhere around 2014. To mark the occasion, the special effects boys spent more on flying battle ships and explosions in …Final Wars then in any other G-film, and slapped as many old rubber suits on stunt men as they could. Virtually every monster to make an appearance in past Godzilla films showed up to get blasted, kicked, tail-whipped, and incinerated by the main man. A fitting send-off for such an enormous part of both Japanese and North American pop culture.

Cropped piece of a German Godzilla poster
Godzilla is one of the most recognized figures in cinema history, and has a legacy that expands far beyond the confines of just the big-screen. During the 50 year, 28 movie Godzilla odyssey, Toho has collaborated with many different companies to create mountains of ‘Zilla merchandise. Action figures, vinyl models, comic books (in association with Marvel Comics), stickers, novels, even an assortment of video games by just about every company for every system out there. I can remember playing Nintendo’s graphics-deficient NES game Godzilla : Monster of Monsters that came out back in 1988, and being entertained, yet confused all at once…

The big green guy’s journey has been a long one. Starting as a dark post-war metaphor, becoming a goofy rubber ‘rassler in the 60s and the thankless defender of mankind in the 70s, and finally as the big budget icon of vengeance vs technology in the 80s and beyond. The vastness of the Godzilla mythos, and it’s effect on all facets of media make it hard to truly condense it all into a single post. I can’t believe I’ve survived THIS LONG at my computer screen… So it’s probably best to link off to those who’s info is more comprehensive then mine:

Toho Kingdom is THE source of information all Toho-released movies, and even has a “Monster Bios” section that will slake even the most devoted “Zilla nerd’s thirst for monster statistics.
Stomp Tokyo.Com is one of my favourites sites for Godzilla, or any cult movie weirdness! The guys who put the time and effort into this labour of Nostalgic, nerdy love are an inspiration!
Godzilla Monster Music is a site dedicated to exactly what it says… The music of the films!!!

And if you have any space left in your attention span to cram in My Essential Godzilla Movie List, you really do owe it to your inner child to do so… Enjoy !!!

I wonder if Matt still has that Godzilla figure he had when we were kids…?

Much Love…

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