Godzilla – 1954

I wanted to write about Godzilla, or Gojira for a long time. It may not be the mother of all monster movies but it’s not far from it. Few films have had such an impact on the monster movie industry. It would be interesting to research a bit but it is my firm belief that without this movie, there wouldn’t be many of the giant monster movies we see all over the place today. Of Course, there were a few others before this, most famously King Kong, where giant creatures have roamed the earth, spreading terror.

The difference with Godzilla is the political aspect of the story though. There is actually a social context of the movie. First of, the Godzilla monster, or Gojira, is supposedly a Japanese legend around the Island of Odo. At least that’s what they say in the movie. I see no reason to doubt this. It’s supposedly an ancient monster but it’s unclear what the purpose of the legend is. Ofter, such legends of hideous creatures have a basis in fear. You can probably recall numerous legends that are told to scare young children to stay away from the water, or to stay away from strangers for that matter.

Godzilla

In many other Godzilla movies, I’ve often got the impression that Godzilla himself is on the people of Japan’s side because it is male – right? On the People side again external threats such as other monsters in sequel Kaiju movies. There are loads of them where Godzilla fights one or the other monster. We have movies with Mothra, Destroyah, and King Ghidorah to just name a few. Godzilla is fighting these monsters to defend humanity right? Well, not in this movie. First of all, there are no other monsters featured in the movie. There ser probably not invented yet. But the whole parade of sequences featuring the giant lizard is more to show off the movie’s main attraction wrecking stuff.

Like many of these movies, there are lots of miniature sets and it’s quite obvious when there are so. The special effects may not be the best of all time and I think they might have had use of Ray Harryhausen. But the scenes are charming and funny. I don’t think they were supposed to be funny though. But today it’s easy to laugh at those early attempts to create the compositions necessary to fool the audience into thinking that it was all shot in one take. There are numerous combined shots in it though, there’s a heavy use of matte and things like that.

Practical Effects

But in all this, cheap and amusing special effects stuff there is also drama. There are people we actually care about. Some of them are portrayed pretty wooden perhaps but I still like that there are actual people portrayed. There are social comments about nuclear downfall, the atomic bombs released over Japan, and so on. There is also a comment bout the dangers of creating powerful weapons without thinking about the consequences. Even though we might benefit from their use now, WWE must also be aware that any scientific discovery or invention can potentially be used as a weapon.

Godzilla is just not only another monster movie. I like the original film and it’s an important one for sure. But it has not aged well. Today we’re too used to CGI getting better and better, and many of us might even have forgotten those superior practical effects. To me, those genuine practical effects is the way to go. Those are part of film history and we should turn our caks at them. But, as I said, it hasn’t aged well. But you need to see it, just for the historical values.