A Tale of Two Godzillas

“Godzilla” (1954)
Starring Akira Takarada, Momoko Kôchi, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shimura
Directed by Ishirô Honda
Written by Honda and Takeo Murata, story by Shigeru Kayama
Not rated

“Godzilla: King of the Monsters!” (1956)
Starring all of the above, plus Raymond Burr
Directed by Honda and Terry O. Morse
Not rated

Rewatching “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” revived my dormant kaiju curiosity and led me to start something I wanted to a few years back: Watching all the Godzilla movies. And I figured since the blog is what prompted me to do so, I might as well write about them.

Probably not regularly, though. I’m already a few weeks behind on my Amalgam read-through, and that only requires me to read a single comic I already have. I’ve got a decent sampling of Godzilla movies on DVD, but I’ll have to access a lot through the library, streaming, etc.

Then there's the question of which movies and in what order. Forbes.com has a fine rundown of theGodzilla movies in order of release date, but they don't list films like “Rodan” and “Mothra,” whose title characters go on to fight against and alongside Godzilla – and one of whose movies I did find at Dollar Tree. Do I include King Kong? Which ones? Plus, there's the different versions and reboots. Several of these still treat the original “Godzilla” as canon and skip the sequels. Then they have sequels of their own, that are then ignored by other reboots. And now there's a “Godzilla Minus One?”

Getting too tangled up in this could cause me to lose sight of the overall reason to watch a whole bunch of movies about giant monsters: It's fun.*

That sounds weird to say after a double feature of the original “Godzilla” and its American version, the original “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.” If there were any tongues in cheeks for these, they were placed there subtly.

I always knew, of course, that Godzilla started as a metaphor for atomic weapons, but I never really thought about what that meant in the time the films were being made. The original “Godzilla” was released in Japan in 1954, less than a decade after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There's a scene in which some Tokyo residents discuss the looming threat of Godzilla while on a train, and one lady just casually references barely making it out of Nagasaki and now this.

That stuck with me more than anything else in the movie. The existence of atomic weapons is horrifying and frightening, but these were characters (and probably actors) for whom the actual detonation had become a part of their lives. I guess 9-11 is that way for some of us - not that it wasn't and isn't profound and horrible, but it's also an event we had to learn to live with.

Before this gets too heavy, I'd like to also remember the still shot of Godzilla shown to a government body after we get our first view of him. He looks like a Muppet, and not a particularly advanced one.

But that's an outlier. The effects exceeded my expectations in most cases. Sure, the seams show in some of the efforts to put people in the same scene as Godzilla, but in most cases the creature himself is solid and foreboding, more intimidating than some later renderings, as the series became more lighthearted, and more convincing than some bargain CGI nowadays.

I’d never watched the original Japanese film before now, but I thought I'd seen the Americanized version that came out two years later. Now I’m not sure. I think I may have gotten it mixed up with one of my first VHS tapes, “Godzilla 1985.”

Besides the title Titan himself, both movies star Raymond Burr. And he was added to the Japanese version of both movies after the fact. I knew this but didn't realize how awkwardly and yet thoroughly.

Burr plays American reporter Steve Martin, which makes me want a Godzilla movie in which the other Steve Martin and Martin Short play the human POV characters.** He’s in Japan to visit his college friend, Dr. Sarizawa (Hirata), the scientist who in both movies invents the oxygen destroyer used to kill Godzilla and appears not to actually have or want any friends. But when Martin finds the story of the century in a massive, radioactive fire-breathing dinosaur, he stays on it.

He’s helped by a Japanese security official who sounds like he grew up in Nebraska.*** It gives him someone to interact with other than doubles of characters from the original movie whose faces we can't quite see. I think his insertion into the activities would have been less obvious if I hadn't watched the original version a week or so earlier, but that experience also helped me understand what was going on, with a lot of the Japanese story and dialogue cut out, particularly that line about the woman who’d been in Nagasaki.

Not that the Americanized version was all bad - the introduction with Burr narrating as we survey the destruction wrought by the at-that-point-unseen menace sets a terrific mood. But the love triangle between Serizawa, Emiko (Kôchi) and Ogata (Takarada) loses almost all of its oomph. Same with the misgivings Emiko’s father, the paleontologist Dr. Yamane (Shimura), has about efforts to kill a singular specimen like Godzilla.

Kôchi, Hirata, Shimura and Takarada

Points to Burr’s Martin for actually being a reporter: observing, asking questions and telling the story, rather than trying to activate the oxygen destroyer himself or generally behaving like a movie journalist.

The finale is interesting in both, with Serizawa and Ogata descending into the water to set off the oxygen destroyer. The glimpses of Godzilla sleeping, unaware of his impending doom, lend a little weight to Yamane’s feelings. And Serizawa’s decision to stay behind so the knowledge of the weapon dies with him is pretty moving.

I have a few other Godzilla movies from different eras, and I could go the route I did with “Halloween” and jump to a more recent iteration. But I can also get “Godzilla Raids Again” from the library. Then again, that precedes the American version chronologically, so maybe I've already broken the order.

I think it will be an interesting journey regardless of the sequence I choose, and I’m intrigued to see if anything can dislodge the absurdly delightful “Godzilla vs. Megalon” from the kaiju throne in my heart.

This is only touching on the movies. Don't think I’ve forgotten the comics…

* - Wait, were you coming here for thoughtful criticism? I mean, some might slip in by accident, but no promises.

** - Only Kaiju in the Building? On the Building?

*** - According to IMDb, it was Frank Iwanaga, and he was born in California.