Finding himself with a slot to fill when his latest project fell through, he seized upon the opportunity to make a big monster movie of his own, weaponising it with the topical story of Lucky Dragon No 5: a furious beast awoken and transformed by American nuclear testing, while science and the military argue over the use of nuclear weapons (and a girl too, obviously). Both hits, they certainly caught the attention of Tomoyuki Tanaka, a 10-movie-a-year producer for Toho Studios. The monster’s DNA also contained a few hairy strands of 1952’s re-release of King Kong and its box office offspring, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953). But Gojira wasn’t just a nuclear shadow burned onto the nation’s body and soul. At the beginning of 1954, a local fishing boat – the Lucky Dragon No 5 – had been caught in the fall out, sending a fresh wave of panic and resentment through the nation.
The USA’s continued atomic tests in the Pacific helped keep that wound raw. It had been less than 10 years since the Allies played their atomic trump card in WWII, killing an estimated 150,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Unthinkable death. Prone to floods, typhoons, earthquakes and fires, Japan’s long been fearful of Mother Nature’s temper but it was sweating over a new national nightmare.
For audiences experiencing Gojira for the first time in November 1954, it was like the monster from the national Japanese id lumbering awkwardly out of the harbour and annihilating their cities. It’s ironic that Godzilla has become synonymous with kitschy laughs.
The King Of Monsters (1954: The Original) Height: 50 metres Looks: Angry, really angry. But with Gareth Edwards’ upcoming Godzilla, the 30th movie in the franchise, about to put the monster movie back on the map – before it’s redrawn after the wholesale destruction of bits of Japan and America – we explore the history of the ultimate monster movie, just in time for Gojira to celebrate his 60th birthday. The endless Godzilla flicks that followed often seem to fade into one badly dubbed blur of Men In Suits clumsily clutching at each other like pre-teens at a school disco. Few Westerners have seen the original Gojira movie.
The icon has become bigger than the movies that he headlines. Having ‘God’ in the title probably helps, but even the ‘zilla’ affix has become common, spliced onto those that have become too extreme, gone too far – Bridezillas, Beerzillas, Dadzillas. The very name Godzilla is part of everyday language, a byword for something that inspires awe and fear. He’s also Godzilla, an unmistakable cinematic icon around the whole globe. Every time a new generation rebuilds Tokyo’s skyscrapers – bigger, higher – he just comes back stronger and taller to demolish them all over again. He is big in Japan, which rattles at the sound of his roar. He is the indestructible nuclear nemesis of Tokyo.
0 kommentar(er)
