Godzilla Through the Years

Godzilla Through The Years: Text

Gojira would spawn a franchise as a year later, Godzilla Raids Again would be released. Honda would not return as the director and the film would be a tonal shift from the original. In this film, another Godzilla awakens and has a battle against another monster named Anguirus. The sequel would focus more on action sequences than its predecessor. While Godzilla would go on a seven-year break after Raids Again, Honda, Tanaka, and Tsuburaya would go on to make more monster films such as Mothra, Varan, and Rodan. Honda would continue to incorporate social issues in these films. For example, the film Mothra is an anti-capitalist film portraying greedy businessmen caring more about their bottom line by using Mothra's twin fairies as attractions to make themselves rich rather than saving the lives of people. Godzilla would come back under the trio with the original King Kong vs Godzilla. In this film, Godzilla is portrayed as an antagonist while Kong stays close to his original incarnation. The theme of this film would be a satirical critique of how the media has become commercially exploitative, especially in advertising. As such, the human characters would deliver over-the-top performances. For Honda, he wanted to show the fight between the monsters through a “prism of a ratings war” (Ryfle and Godziszewki 187). The titular monsters would also be given wrestling mannerisms when facing off against each other with some of the human characters taking bets on who would win.

Godzilla Through The Years: Text

The series continued to portray Godzilla as a force of nature until Godzilla vs Mothra. However, Godzilla would undergo changes that reflected Japan. Godzilla would become an antihero, joining forces with other monsters against bigger threats. Instead of an untested weapon defeating a threat, Godzilla would be substituted into that role. For example, Godzilla would be a begrudged human protector against the cosmic horror King Ghidorah. The character would continue to shift, changing into a hero and catering to a younger audience, reducing his nuclear origin such as with Godzilla vs Hedorah where he would protect Japan from the pollution monster Hedorah. Honda was disappointed in this new approach by Toho, going on to say, “Godzilla movies started to move to a younger audience. [But] the fact that they decided to make Godzilla act like a human, it was not a good decision” (Ryfle and Godziszewki 188). Gone was the metaphor for nuclear devastation, and now a protector of mankind was in its place.

Godzilla Through The Years: Bio

The shift in direction reflects how genres shift over time. Gojira was a film reflecting social problems during a specific period of time as An Klein states, “the content must be timely so that the audience will recognize the problem depicted as something that is happening ‘now’ and the issue being depicted in the film must affect a significant portion of the population, “it must be perceived by that segment of society to be a problem” (62). The fears and anxieties of nuclear catastrophe were eroding, and a younger generation was not as connected to the events of the 1950s. Due to this, the films started to incorporate comedy. This change would define Godzilla movies, especially in the West where they would be looked at as pure entertainment. Camp has been used to describe the Godzilla franchise as, for example, in Godzilla vs Megalon, Godzilla performs an over-the-top dropkick and the film's dubbing would be notorious for their over-the-top delivery of out-of-sync dialogue. Comedy is the most common mode taken up by a dying film cycle. Ann Klein argues that combining comedy with “different genres or cycles also ensures that studios can appeal to the widest segment of the audience with just one product” (90).

Godzilla Through The Years: About

While infusing Godzilla movies with comedic elements to appeal to young children, Toho would still see a decline in profits for the series, and, as such, they would end the first era of Godzilla films known as the Showa era. In the mid-1980s, Tanaka wanted to bring the character back to his nuclear roots and started the Heisei era films. Films such as in Godzilla 1985 tackled Japan’s position in the 1980s during the Cold War. Godzilla vs Biollante questioned genetic engineering. 1992's Godzilla vs Mothra criticized capitalistic greed as it existed in the late 80s and early 90s. The series, however, would lean more on its action sequences with improved special effects technology. As Ann Klein argues, film cycles go back to what was successful “as long as the familiar icons, formulas, conventions, and themes of these cycles are deployed in a new way or in a new generic setting, they are capable of resonating again with audiences” (97). The films would follow some of the same formula that the Showa era films followed by having a greater threat that would appear, placing Godzilla in the anti-hero position once again. This era would last until 1995 leading to Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla.

Godzilla Through The Years: Bio

Emmerich’s Godzilla would change the character in a way that previous entries did not. Emmerich would change the character from a prehistoric creature to a radiated lizard that would run away from American military forces and be killed by them instead of being an unstoppable force. While the creature would also have sympathetic characteristics, many would be disappointed by the stark departure. After TriStar failed with the American 1998 Godzilla film, Toho would bring the character back in 1999 for Godzilla 2000. The subsequent millennium era would follow in the steps of the Heisei era films, incorporating social issues of the present day. However, these films would be an anthology series as each film would ignore the previous entry and have different tones. For example, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack touched upon the subject of conservative Japanese politicians wanting to forget Imperial Japan’s actions as this version of Godzilla would be the manifestation of dead soldiers attacking Japan. Godzilla would go on another ten-year break, allowing Legendary Pictures and Warner Brothers to try to make another American Godzilla film. However, it would take twelve years for Toho to bring the character back themselves and echo another nuclear disaster.

Godzilla Through The Years: About

Sources

Klein, Amanda Ann.“A Dying Serpent: Understanding How Film Cycles Change Over Time.” American Film Cycles : Reframing Genres, Screening Social Problems, and Defining Subcultures, University of Texas Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utd/detail.action?docID=3443575.

Ryfle, Steve, and Ed Godziszewski. Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa. , 2017.

Godzilla Through The Years: Text