Sony recently released a fully revised version of the 1954 Godzilla movie featuring both the original Japanese and the re-cut American versions. This deluxe set also includes commentaries and documentaries on the now-classic movie.
American viewers can finally see in high-quality DVD both versions of this film in what has become the longest-running feature film series in the world. In his 52 years, Godzilla has been everything from an Atom Age nightmare, to a defender of the Earth and even a single dad.
In the 1954 movie, Gojira (as it was known in Japan) was a symbol of the nuclear horror suffered by that country at the end of World War II. Gojira was a saurian mutant that was created by nuclear testing in the Pacific; the movie particularly references the 1954 incident when a Japanese fishing boat was hit with fallout from an American nuclear test.
Unlike many of the later Godzilla films, Gojira maintains a somber and horrific tone and is charged with unease about its relationship with the United States. Despite the quaint special effects, the stark black-and-white cinematography loans the film a nightmarish gravity. The American version (Godzilla: King of the Monsters) has been heavily re-edited and made friendlier to American viewers.
Godzilla was featured through the mid 1970’s in a series of increasingly campy films in which he tangled with other large unlikely monsters through the technique that the Godzilla producers have dubbed suitmation, in which a stuntman is sealed in a large rubber monster suit and placed in a painstakingly detailed miniature set.
The series resumed in 1984 with a now more serious tone and had Godzilla facing off against some imaginative foes such as Biollante, a creature engineered from Godzilla’s own DNA spliced with that of that of a rose. Sadly, Godzilla vs. Biollante is unavailable on DVD in the United States.
The 1991 movie, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah was unavailable in America until recently due to its controversial anti-American content such as a scene in which proto-Godzilla attacks World War II-era American troops on a remote Pacific island. With its dizzyingly convoluted time-travel plot, this film is one of the more notable in the series.
The final film produced in the series, Godzilla: Final Wars from 2004, is a loopy throwback to the movies from the 1960s featuring many of the classic monsters. Some of the newer films strive for the serious tone of the original Gojira movie.
In what is widely thought to be the best of the new movies, 2003’s Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidora: Giant Monsters All Out Attack, Godzilla returns as a symbol of the Japanese killed in World War II and comes full circle to his wartime origins.
Godzilla has been an icon for over 50 years because he is a high quality monster. That is to say, a monster that has a resonance beyond just being cool or scary.
The original Gojira hit a nerve with Japanese audiences and tapped into their fears and preoccupations with the world around them. The modern Godzilla is at its best when it is socially and mythically charged.