With this weekend's anticipated release of Godzilla, Andrew breaks down the films that started it all.
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| "Must. Destroy." |
With the recent release of Gareth Edwards' hotly
anticipated re-imagining of one of the world's most famous movie monsters of
all time, it's inevitable for critics to reflect on the big fella's grassroots
and why his existence is as important today as it was in 1954 for Japanese
audiences. With this I decided to look
back not at the 30+ entries that led the beast to where he is now, nor do I
wish to discuss American cinema's disastrous attempt at re-filming the monster
with 1998's Roland Emmerich bomb.
Rather, the fear and awe I felt in the initial trailer for 2014's
“Godzilla” was something I hadn't felt since I saw “Godzilla 1985” (the
American-ized version of “The Return of Gojira”). Somehow, Gareth Edwards understood what it
was about “Gojira” and “The Return of Gojira” that resonated with audiences
around the world. “Godzilla” isn't so
much a classic movie monster deeply entrenched in Japanese culture and
franchise icon as it is a metaphor for the horrors of steadily advancing
technological warfare and nuclear holocaust.
At once a special effects phenomenon and a downbeat rumination on post
WWII-Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both films capture the stark terror of
witnessing a tornado or tidal wave firsthand while lamenting our own complicity
in the creation of the disaster. With
this, let us move forward with a reflection on the two Japanese kaiju movies
that saw the beast emerging from the mushroom cloud.
Gojira
(1954 – directed by Ishiro Honda)
Ishiro
Honda's “Gojira” is the one that started it all, second to King Kong as the
penultimate monster movie. It's at once
a spectacle of special effects miniatures depicting the rise and fall of a
giant radioactive amphibian wreaking havoc on Japan as well as a tragic
metaphor for the Japanese man transformed by the aftermath of the nuclear
bomb. It announces itself with the
simplicity of thundering stomps followed by the creature's great death roar
(created by a slowed down recording of a violin) as the title cards unfold,
striking terror into the hearts of all who hear it for the first time. The movie opens on a series of bizarre
flashes of light which consume a number of fishing boats and ships near
them. Villagers blame the disappearance
of the ships on a mythical sea creature they call Gojira (renamed 'Godzilla' by
US distributors). Soon giant footprints,
creatures extinct since the Cretaceous and finally the creature itself turn up. Concluding the creature is the result of nuclear
testing, orders are dispatched to destroy the creature which ultimately prove
to be futile, as the beast bulldozes over Tokyo, Japan night after night,
leaving in it's wake a hellscape of death and destruction. Only a scientist secretly developing an
ultimate weapon of destruction holds the key to kill Gojira, but will he be
convinced to allow his deadly toy to be put to use before the creature wipes
out everyone and everything?
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| "You see that? I think it's giant poop." |
While
many reflect on 'Gojira' as the charming science fiction monster movie classic
that spawned an entire franchise of increasingly silly kaiju battle movies of
the creature doing dance moves, using his tail to fly, or using his fire breath
to fly in the air, many who see 'Gojira' for the first time will be surprised
at just how profoundly depressing and bleak the thing really is. While yes the visual effects by today's
standards are hokey (and according to Roger Ebert, beneath the quality of other
visual effects bonanzas released before and around the same time), for Japanese
audiences, many relived the experience of witnessing the atom bomb being
dropped firsthand. The aftermath, with
long dolly shots of Tokyo in flames and ruin, accompanied by scenes of Japanese
civilians bloodied and bruised in hospitals as young crying children clinging
to their dead parents, can't help but tug at our basic human emotions and
remind of the destructive power of nuclear war.
The creature itself, with its coarse scales and reptilian eyes, could be
read as the Japanese man stricken with cancer having been burned by nuclear
fire and radiation fallout. An evocative
score by Akira Ifukube, alternately epic in action scope, dread of the beast,
and finally, somber as a requiem, works furiously to run the audience through a
gamut of emotions and ultimately drain the viewer dry. The ultimate tragedy of Gojira is the
acknowledgment that humanity itself is responsible for the surrounding
apocalypse and maybe, just maybe, a notion that Japanese pride in the face of
the enemy deserved every bit of Hell the creature brought upon them. In the age of Japan still without
renunciation for their involvement in the second World War, it's a remarkably
anti-war statement, blaming both advancing technological warfare and finally
themselves for courting the warfare in the first place.
Lastly,
the greatest source of inspiration to Gojira goes back to an incident known as
'The Unluckiest Dragon' about a Japanese fishing boat named 'Lucky Dragon 5'
that happened to be near a US testing site for the Hydrogen Bomb. Due to a miscalculation based on how many
megatons were being used, many believed to be in the safety zone (including the
Lucky Dragon 5) were subject to radiation poisoning. Fish and livestock within range were
transformed by the blast, and overwhelming fear of the unpredictable nature of
nuclear arms as well as national regard for the testing as thoughtless and
uncaring, began to take shape in Japanese public opinion. Clearly, the Unluckiest Dragon was there on
the wall for the filmmakers to run away with, functioning as the inspiration
and subtle reminder of the tragic incident that claimed the lives of those who
were aboard 'Lucky Dragon 5'.
The
Return of Gojira (1985 – directed by Koji Hashimoto)
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| "We're going to make beautiful babies.... |
In
the years since Ishiro Honda's 1954 creation, 'Gojira' in the process of
thirty-something sequels depicting the beast battling other monsters (guys in
rubber suits) against a fake miniature backdrop, devolved far from the
terrifying beast he once was. By this
point, the big fella had become something of a clown figure, culminating in the
ridiculous children's movie 'Godzilla's Revenge'. After 1975's “Terror of Mechagodzilla”, which
depicted yet another “Destroy All Monsters” kind of epic monster fight, the beast
was shelved until 1985 when Toho Studios proposed a return to the dark and
brooding 'Gojira' that first appeared in 1954.
An offer was made to Ishiro Honda to bring the beast back to his
depressing glory, but the decline of the creature's image soiled Honda's
interest in the project and the closest he would come to rekindling the classic
imagery of nuclear fears found its way into 'Mount Fuji in Red', a segment
Honda directed for “Akira Kurosawa's Dreams”.
The task of directing eventually went to Koji Hashimoto and thus began
Toho's attempt to rehabilitate their beloved monster's image.
Serving
as a direct sequel to the 1954 film, ignoring all of the sequels in between,
'The Return of Gojira' once again finds a fishing boat bearing witness to the
blinding nuclear flashes of the beast rising from a rocky mountain and roaring
to life. A news reporter stumbles upon
the boat and rescues its one remaining passenger, who reports to the press
that Gojira appears to have returned.
Afraid of creating panic, the story is withheld from the public until a
secondary incident involving Gojira destroying a Russian submarine, thus
creating tensions between the US and USSR (germane to the time the film was
made). In an effort to ease tensions,
the news is broken that Gojira is in fact back and is heading for Tokyo. A proposal to use nuclear arms is made by the
US and USSR to Japan, who flatly refuses any involvement in, fearing it would
only feed the creature rather than destroy it.
Eventually, the beast appears upon Japan and thus begins his destructive
onslaught. Scientists studying the
creature from afar discover a link between Gojira and birds, as the beast
aborts his evisceration of a nuclear factory to pursue a flock of seagulls
nearby. This is the first time it's
suggested the beast might in fact be a dinosaur, as endless paleontological
studies have shown a clear evolution between the prehistoric creatures and the
airborne egg-laying vertebrates which greet our every morning.
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| "MMMM.....I can't stop.....eating... these...Doritos!" |
While
notably darker in tone as well as restoring the creature's impersonal regard
for the destruction he's wreaking, 'The Return of Gojira' doesn't quite reach
the gloomy depths of its 1954 predecessor.
A scene of the beast blasting a hovering helicopter with a fireball,
cutting to a shot of the airplane falling next to a 'Ghostbusters' poster, seem
to suggest the film is something of a
'Gojira-for-the-Ghostbusters-generation'.
It's fun at times, with some comic relief added in involving a bum
mouthing off to the beast about the city not being big enough for the both of
them. Curiously, upon Americanization
(which once again brings Raymond Burr into the picture), a scene involving a
Russian officer attempting to stop the launch of a nuclear bomb upon Tokyo was
re-edited to make it seem as though he were trying to launch the bomb,
exacerbating the tension between the US and USSR at the time of its
release. Even more curious is the fact
that of all the Gojira films released in the United States on DVD, 'The Return
of Gojira' is the only Gojira entry yet to garner an official US release. Perhaps with the release of the new
'Godzilla' film by Gareth Edwards, we will finally be granted 'The Return of
Gojira' on home video (beyond old VHS tapes and laserdiscs of 'Godzilla 1985'). As for now and for those who have managed to
see it, 'The Return of Gojira' is a somewhat successful attempt at reminding
audiences of what it was that catapulted the creature into pop cultural
consciousness in the first place.
-Andrew Kotwicki