Godzilla

GODZILLA ROARS
AGAIN

By TOM SOTER

from DIVERSION, 1998

He destroyed Tokyo, fought a giant worm and a skyscraper-sized chicken, and he’s got bad (as in radioactive) breath you wouldn’t believe. We’re talking, of course, about Godzilla, the meanest monster this side of King Kong and the star of nearly two dozen Japanese science fiction flicks. And the reason anyone should care is because old snake eyes will be back this summer in Godzilla, an American-made extravaganza starring Matthew Broderick and a whole passel of special effects wizards, in which the big guy totals New York.

TriStar Pictures has a lot riding on their new Godzilla, but the studio also has a lot to build on. Believe it or not, Godzilla has a world-wide cult following: over 6,000 internet sites in Japanese, English, Dutch, and other languages (with web page names like “Bob’s Godzilla Shrine” and “Son of Barry’s Temple of Godzilla”); fan magazines (like G-Fan, as in Godzilla-Fan); and even a new, scholarly tome from McFarland Press about his exploits: A Critical History and Filmography of Toho’s Godzilla Series.

Godzilla has also appeared in comic books, cartoon series, commercials (most recently for Nike), CDs, toys, and some unusual gimmicks (instead of hearing music while you wait, a Godzilla-shaped telephone answering machine offers the sounds of Japanese people screaming in terror as Godzilla roars). Besides the TriStar movie, the character is also slated to appear in a new syndicated cartoon series starting in the fall of 1998.

When he was created in 1954, no one thought that the dinosaur with a difference would be so popular. Indeed, Godzilla was to be a one-shot, an exploitation of monster movies that explored the nuclear threat. He was the creation of four men: director Ishiro Honda, a colleague of famed director Akira Kurosawa, screenwriter Shigeru Kayama, Toho Studios producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, and special effects wizard Eiji Tsuburaya.

Tanaka wanted to cash in on what was then a popular cinematic trend: radiation-created monsters. Them! (1954), for instance, featured giant ants that had been created by atomic bomb testing. Combining elements of King Kong (1933) and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), the team cooked up the idea of a prehistoric monster from the deep who has been mutated and awoken by hydrogen bomb tests.

The name for the creature was “Gojira” (pronounced GO-dzee-la), which was a combination of the English word gorilla and the Japanese word for whale (kujira). The behemoth, a mutant dinosaur, would stand 400 feet tall with incendiary, radioactive breath which could melt objects up to 500 feet away. The special effects were well done, especially the charcoal gray two-piece rubber monster suit that was stuffed with bamboo and urethane foam. The actor inside could open and close the mouth, while the tail was manipulated by wires. Composer Akira Ifukube created Godzilla’s distinctive roar by rubbing a leather glove across a contrabass and applying an echo to the recording.

While the effects were impressive, what made Godzilla resonate was its message. After visiting Hiroshima in 1946, director Honda had became fascinated by the threat of nuclear holocaust. “When I directed that film,” he said once, “...there was a heavy atmosphere – a fear the Earth was already coming to an end. That became my basis.” Indeed, as David Kalat points out in his critical history of the Godzilla series, “Honda saw an opportunity to make radiation visible...[he] saw his monster as a narrative device to discuss the terror of the nuclear age. This intelligent, sensitive approach gave Toho’s Gojira a depth few monster-on-the-loose films have.”

Raymond Burr was inserted into the U.S. version.

Set in Tokyo a mere eight years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Japanese cities, the movie has a sense of doom and foreboding that continues until the closing shot. Even the first sign of Godzilla in the opening sequence is like a bomb blast: a mysterious blinding light is followed by a fire storm of destruction.

The film takes a somber, almost documentary-like approach, focusing on characters and moral issues. The central figures are a paleontologist who believes Godzilla should be studied not hunted; a bitter, war-scarred scientist who holds a terrible invention that could destroy the monster; and a young couple in love but torn apart by the horrors they are witnessing. The reclusive scientist becomes the pivotal figure: a man of principle whose discovery could save humanity, but at a terrible cost. Using his invention could lead to a new and very deadly arms race, one of the issues of the story. The last speech in the movie is a grim warning. “I cannot believe we have destroyed the last of the Godzillas,” laments the paleontologist. “If we continue H-bomb testing, other creatures like Godzilla will doubtless appear again somewhere in the world.”

Godzilla was a huge success, both in Japan and abroad. In 1956, it turned up in an Americanized version as Godzilla: King of Monsters. The complex moral issues were eliminated, however, replaced by heavy-handed narration and scenes with a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr as a reporter.

The movie’s popularity (in either form) led to more Japanese monster movies, all involving giant creatures. One of the most significant was Mothra (1961), about a giant worm. The difference between Mothra and Godzilla was personality. Whereas Godzilla lived to destroy, Mothra was a sympathetic monster – an anomaly in the ‘50s when films presented such creatures as unthinking terrors that had to be killed.

King Kong vs Godzilla (1963), which added humor to the mix, began a pattern that continued for most of the series. Godzilla would be paired with other monsters as they fought over the fate of the world. He also developed a distinct personality. As the series developed, the creature became intelligent and could be found winking at the camera, waving to the humans, and even doting over a cute son who blew smoke rings.

His adventures became increasingly more silly and bizarre, as spies, space aliens, and industrialists all took turns as villains controlling the evil monsters. Godzilla himself lived on Monster Island, where he spent the time wrestling other monsters until he was called for help. He would usually battle against overwhelming odds and then walk off into the water, roaring a goodbye like some grotesque version of The Lone Ranger.

The plots became incomprehensible and interchangeable, with Tokyo and other Japanese cities being destroyed every other year. By the time of Godzilla’s Revenge (1969), Godzilla had become a role model for young children. Gone were the nuclear angst and somber tone of the original. The colorful adventures were campy, cartoon-like, and absurd, especially in their dubbed American versions, which often used ridiculously inappropriate voices and inane dialogue for many of the characters (Scientist 1: “This metal can only be space titanium.” No. 2: “Space titanium! You mean it’s from outer space?”).

After the movies hit their creative and economic nadir in the mid-’70s, Toho ended the series. The studio then licensed the character for toys, comics, games, and T-shirts, and even an animated Saturday morning American TV series (in which Godzilla had a wacky nephew named Godzooky). He we finally revived in 1984, with a film that once again raised the issue of nuclear power, and painted Godzilla as a tragic symbol. (The U.S. version downplayed these themes and again added Raymond Burr.) A new, more serious series of Godzilla movies began.

In 1992, TriStar picked up the rights to the character. Various scripts and directors were linked to the much-delayed project before producer/writer Dean Devlin and director/writer Roland Emmerich, the team that had crafted Independence Day, came on board in 1996. Unfortunately, their version of the monster – at least based on an draft of the script – has more in common with the cliches of 1950s “big bug” flicks than it does with the original Gojira.

“What we are trying to do with Godzilla [is reinvent] him as though there was no previous one,” claimed Devlin in a Los Angeles Times interview. “We went for a completely different look, not slightly different, but totally different...We want to give birth to the whole legend again. We want to start at the very beginning and reintroduce Godzilla.”

The creature in the first-draft script has been given new abilities. “Because of the limitations of technology, the Godzilla of the other films is this lumbering Frankenstein,” claimed Devlin.  “We’ve got this agile, quick, scary wild creature and suddenly all the possibilities opened up and what you could do in a film seemed really endless.”

Transplanted to New York City, the American Godzilla involves handsome scientist Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick), a radiation specialist who is called in when a fishing boat is destroyed off the Atoll Islands in French Polynesia. In a homage to the original, the script starts with a storm and even has a Japanese cook crazed by the incident incoherently mumbling “Gojira, Gojira.”

From there, it’s a duplication of every classic sci-fi movie cliche. The characters include an aspiring reporter who is a former love interest of Nick’s; a comical TV cameraman; a nasty TV reporter; a blowhard mayor; and a no-nonsense general. The movie has its share of destruction – the Flatiron Building, various subway stations, Planet Hollywood – and cheap gags (the mayor says he’s reduced crime moments before Godzilla makes his first appearance). It also imitates sequences from Aliens (1986) and The Birds (1963).

When Godzilla is finally introduced in this new script, he is a far cry from his Toho days: smaller (he can hide in subway tunnels) and faster on his feet, the monster leaps buildings and lacks radioactive breath. Some of this may change by the the movie hits the screen, however. Although TriStar is keeping mum, there is some indication that the monster’s size has grown since the early scripts, otherwise the movie’s catchy slogan, “Size Does Matter,” makes little sense.

Nonetheless, in this new version the Japanese subtext seems to be gone: Godzilla is no longer the Bomb, just a byproduct of it – created by French nuclear testing, to boot. The hero warns everyone that a new species of Godzillas could overrun the earth, but naturally no one takes him seriously, until it turns out that this Godzilla has laid over 200 eggs in Madison Square Garden.

The film promises to be exciting but unless the script has been changed drastically during filming, it also looks to be very disappointing because it is just another “kill-the-monsters flick,” lacking the moral debate and high symbolism of the original. Yet millions of dollars have been spent on it – and millions will probably be made.

Still, Godzilla and his special message will undoubtedly endure. For the creature is more than a monster. He is a fiercely resonating idea. “Nature has a way sometimes of reminding man just how small he is,” observes a character in Godzilla 1985. “She occasionally throws up the terrible offsprings of our pride and carelessness to remind us of how puny we really are in the face of a tornado, an earthquake, or a Godzilla. The reckless ambitions of man are often dwarfed by their dangerous consequences. For now, Godzilla, that strangely innocent and tragic monster, has gone to earth. Whether he returns or not or is never again seen by human eyes, the things he has taught us remain.”