understanding what we are, part seven

Godzilla
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Godzilla, as portrayed during his latest film from the Millennium series. (Godzilla: Final Wars, 2004)For other uses, see Godzilla (disambiguation).
Godzilla (ゴジラ, Gojira?) is a fictional monster featured in Japanese films and has become the world over one of the most recognized movie characters of all time. He was first seen in the 1954 film Gojira, produced by Toho Film Company Ltd. To date, Toho has produced 28 Godzilla films. In 1998, TriStar Pictures produced a remake, set in New York City.

Godzilla is a gigantic mutant dinosaur, born in the heart of a nuclear blast. His sheer size, power and destructive might evoke the fury of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the Godzilla series continued, the great beast was developed as a character, and has become something of an anti-hero.

Godzilla is one of the defining aspects of Japanese popular culture for many people worldwide. Though his popularity has waned slightly over the years, he is still one of the most renowned monsters in the world. To this day, Godzilla remains an important facet of Japanese films, embodying the kaiju or "giant monster" subset of the tokusatsu genre.

Godzilla's appearance has changed between films over the years, but many defining details have endured. In the Japanese films, Godzilla is depicted as a gigantic dinosaur with rough, bumpy, (usually) charcoal grey scales, a powerful tail, and bone colored dorsal fins shaped like maple leaves. His origins vary somewhat from film to film, but he is almost always described as a prehistoric creature, and his first attacks on Japan are linked to the beginning of the Atomic Age. In particular, mutation due to atomic radiation—fury unleashed from man splitting the atom—is presented as an explanation for his great size and strange powers. Godzilla's iconic design is composed of a mixture of various species of dinosaurs; specifically, he has the body and overall shape of a Tyrannosaurus, the long arms of an Iguanodon, and the dorsal fins of a Stegosaurus.

Godzilla remains an enduring fictional character beloved by fans worldwide, and is among the few fictional characters granted a Lifetime Achievement Award when he was awarded one by MTV in 1996, becoming the second fictional character (and the first to be completely non-human in nature) to receive it.

"Godzilla, King of the Monsters" was honored on its 50th anniversary by having a plaque placed at the site of the former studio where Raymond Burr filmed his scenes, now an elementary school in March 2006. The plaque was sponsored by the Godzilla Society of North America, Platrix Chapter No. 2, E Clampus Vitus and the Los Angeles Unified School District. The location is at Belmont Elementary School, 100 N. New Hampshire, Los Angeles, CA.

Contents [hide]
1 Original concept
2 Name
3 Incarnations
3.1 1954 film
3.1.1 American Version
3.2 Shōwa series (1956–1975)
3.3 VS or Heisei series (1984-1995)
3.4 Millennium series (1999–2004)
3.4.1 Godzilla 2000: Millennium
3.4.2 Godzilla vs. Megaguirus
3.4.3 Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
3.4.4 GXM and GMM S.O.S
3.4.5 Godzilla: Final Wars
4 Powers and abilities
4.1 Atomic Breath
4.2 Nuclear pulse and magnetic powers
4.3 Durability
4.4 Physical abilities
4.5 Amphibiousness
4.6 Weaknesses
5 Roar
6 1998 American film
7 Animated series
8 See also
9 Footnotes
10 External links
10.1 Official
10.2 Information



[edit] Original concept
The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.

For many, the name "Godzilla" is associated with low-budget special effects, men in rubber suits, bad dubbing (by studios not taking the source material seriously enough), and monster fights. This stereotype, based on heavily re-edited American releases, and the less serious entries in the series (the 70's in particular), dilute and even ignore the message behind the original film. The original Godzilla film was meant as an allegorical criticism of the use of nuclear warfare at the end of World War II. Ishiro Honda's witnessing of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the primary inspiration for the anti-nuclear message behind the original Godzilla film. [2]


A statue of Godzilla, located near the Toho Pictures Building in Ginza, Japan.The original film was not widely seen in the US in its Japanese form until 2004, when Rialto Pictures distributed it to art theaters in an uncut, undubbed, uncensored, English-subtitled presentation. Before this, the only domestically licensed version of the film available to Americans was the edited 1956 adaptation, Godzilla, King of the Monsters!. In this version, most of the key anti-nuclear messages had been softened or removed. The original Japanese film referred to a 1954 incident concerning the Japanese fisherboat "Fukuryu Maru" (Lucky Dragon):

"…in March 1954, the United States exploded a fifteen-megaton H-bomb that unexpectedly sent substantial fallout across a seven-thousand-square-mile area. Twenty-eight military personnel and 239 Marshall Islanders at a presumably 'safe' distance were exposed to high radiation. The United States attempted to downplay the incident until it was discovered that a Japanese tuna boat, the Fukuryû Maru or 'Lucky Dragon,' had also been hit by fallout. The entire crew developed radiation sickness, and one member soon died."[1]

[edit] Name
The name "Godzilla" is said to be a combination of two Japanese words: gorira (ゴリラ) 'gorilla' and kujira (鯨, くじら) 'whale'. The word alludes to the size, power and aquatic origin of Godzilla. A popular story is that "Gojira", or "Gorilla-Whale," was actually the nickname of a hulking stagehand at Toho Studio.[2] The story has not been verified, however, because in the more than 50 years since the film's original release, no one claiming to be the employee has ever stepped forward, and no photographs of him have ever surfaced.

Since Gojira was neither a gorilla nor a whale, the name "Gojira" had to be devised in a different way for the film's story; Gojira's name was originally spelled in kanji (呉爾羅) by the Oto Island people—however, Toho chose these characters for sound only; The combined characters, oddly enough, mean "give you net". This has been referenced countless times in Japanese books on Godzilla.[citation needed]

There are arguments as to exactly how the creatures name is pronounced. Purists tend to say that the Japanese Kana (ゴジラ), pronounced "Go-Jee-Rah" (with each syllable evenly stressed), is correct while others state that the Americanized name "God-ZIL-la" is closer to the original pronunciation. The reality is a combination of both. The first Kana symbol (ゴ) is pronounced "Go". Modern Japanese pronounces the second Kana (ジ) "JEE", but back in the 1950's when Godzilla was created—and Japanese-to-English transliteration was less sophisticated—it is likely that the Kana was misinterpreted as being pronounced "DZEE", a "ZEE" sound with a touch of a "D" at the beginning. The third Kana (ラ) is pronounced "rah", starting with an "R" sound with just a hint of an "L", similar to the slight tongue flap used in the Spanish "R" sound, followed by an "ah". This would make the original mistranslated pronunciation "Go-DZEE-rah".

Nevertheless, the correct pronunciation is Gojira (ゴジラ), as it was originally meant as the monster's name and has retained the exact writing form from era to era. The pronunciation of cast members varies in accent, thus making the name sound a bit different from different actors.

Contrary to popular belief, the name "Godzilla" is not the idea of the American distributor. Before they sold the film to US distributors, Toho's international division had originally marketed an English-subtitled print under the title of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, which was shown briefly in Japanese-American theaters. Toho came up with "Godzilla" as a crude English transliteration of the name "Gojira."


[edit] Incarnations
There have been eight different incarnations of Godzilla over the course of the character's existence—thirteen if the three different Zillas (the one from Godzilla, released by Tristar in 1998, the one from Godzilla: Final Wars, released by Toho in 2004, and the one from Godzilla: The Series, the one from Hanna-Barbara in The Godzilla Power Hour, and the Godzilla from Marvel. Since the movies created by Toho are what is regarded as canon, the eight incarnations of the cinematic Godzilla will be presented here.


[edit] 1954 film

Godzilla, as portrayed during his self-titled, debut film. (Godzilla, 1954)The original Godzilla in Godzilla or Godzilla, King of the Monsters! was a prehistoric monster 50 meters tall and weighing 20,000 metric tons that was disturbed by American atom bomb testing in the Pacific Ocean. After attacking Tokyo, destroying much of the city and killing tens of thousands, Godzilla was defeated when the scientist Dr. Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) sacrificed himself to use an experimental weapon, the Oxygen Destroyer, which completely dissolved Godzilla. It was stated at the end of the film that it was doubtful that there was only one creature, alluding not only to the many incarnations of Godzilla that would later appear but also to all the other kaiju monsters that would be featured in movies produced by Toho.

The following series would use the events of the first movie as part of their narrative but would occur in their own continuity separate from each other.


[edit] American Version
When first released in wide distribution in the U.S., its footage was reworked and supplemented with new footage featuring Raymond Burr (Perry Mason) for general commercial release as Godzilla, King Of The Monsters in 1956, and the giant monster would be known outside Japan by the name "Godzilla" ever after. In 1957, the American version even worked its way back to Japan, where the Godzilla name also took root. This American version was the only version represented on North American home video until the release of the Gojira DVD in September 2006 (which, incidentally, contains both the unedited Japanese theatrical version and the reworked U.S. version).


[edit] Shōwa series (1956–1975)

Godzilla's appearance gradually changed throughout the early '60s and mid '70s. From top-left to bottom-right, Top left King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), Top right Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966), Bottom left Godzilla's Revenge (1969), and Bottom right Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)As alluded to at the end of the original movie, Godzilla again surfaced at first as a menace in Godzilla Raids Again (shown in the United States as Gigantis, The Fire Monster. Setting the tone for future Showa-series films, Godzilla's fate is uncertain at the end. His next film was 1962's King Kong vs Godzilla ((キングコング対ゴジラ, Kingu Kongu tai Gojira), where once again, the ending was ambiguous. The "bad" Godzilla's final film in the Showa series was 1964's Godzilla vs. The Thing (that being the original American release title, but since better known as Mothra vs. Godzilla (モスラ対ゴジラ, Mosura tai Gojira). Starting with Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Godzilla took on the "good guy" persona he would wear for the remainder of the series. He would team up with Mothra, Rodan, and Anguirus to battle a variety of foes both mundane (Ebirah, Kumonga, and Kamacuras) and bizarre (Hedorah, Gigan, and Megalon). He even gained a son in the form of Minilla. The series ended with Terror of Mechagodzilla in 1975. The final scene depicted Godzilla wading off into the sea, not to be seen until his return in the VS series ten years later (It is notable, however, that the earlier-released film Destroy All Monsters took place in 1999, twenty-four years after Terror of Mechagodzilla, so the series could also be said to truly end with Destroy All Monsters's ending, which depicted all of Earth's kaiju living out the rest of their days in peace on Monster Island. This "jump" of dates also explains how King Ghidorah appeared in movies such as Godzilla vs. Gigan after he was killed in the earlier film.