On November 3, 1954, the king of the monsters rampaged its way into all of our hearts. Godzilla was released 70 years ago and still reigns supreme as a masterpiece of kaiju cinema. The movie, directed by Ishirō Honda from a screenplay by Honda and co-writer Takeo Murata,follows a post-war Japan faced with an unimaginably destructive force that was awakened by American nuclear testing. The film holds a unique place in pop culture, as both a harrowing post-war drama that serves as an allegory for the destructive consequences of nuclear power, and the start of a long-running, iconic franchise that has taken on so many different forms.
Through all the detours of the Godzilla franchise, the first movie still has the greatest impact.Monster movies would not be the same without Godzilla, and the film’s strength lies in how well it balances the destructive thrills with a sincerely compelling human narrative about resilience in the face of humanity’s most horrifying creations.
‘Godzilla’s Thrills Are Embellished by the Real-World Response to Nuclear Warfare
For as entertaining and thrilling as it can be to watch a giant dinosaur rampage a city, the original Godzilla maintains a reverential tone. This tone was informed by the tragic circumstances surrounding Japan post-World War II, which ended with the United States destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons, killing over 200,000 Japanese civilians and causing widespread destruction. Many of Japan’s acclaimed films from the time around Godzilla‘s release deal with post-war reconstruction. Yasujirō Ozu made many domestic dramas that addressed the challenges faced by multiple generations adjusting to post-war life, and how social structures were altered by the reconstruction period.
Godzilla takes a more direct, allegorical approach by envisioning a world where nuclear power directly provoked the awakening of an ancient, monstrous being. The attacks perpetrated by Godzilla evoke the imagery of Japan’s bombed cityscapes, but Godzilla is not simply a personification of the bombs. The monster acts as a stand-in for the consequences of human cruelty, the idea that humans have become so destructive that nature must fight back to restore sanctity to the world. This is an idea that is expanded on throughout many sequels, where Godzilla acts as less of a villain and more of a force to bring balance to the natural world. But the subtext was already baked into Godzilla from the beginning. Later Godzilla sequels have heightened, goofy action sequences, but this original film, especially when viewed through the lens of the time, frames Godzilla’s rampage in a sobering, horrifying light. The monster was born of the bomb, and therefore cannot be killed by it. Humanity created a destructive force beyond its own grasp and must suffer the consequences. Godzilla speaks to the indiscriminate, unambiguous evil brought into the world by the mere existence of such weapons.
‘Godzilla’ Pioneered Monster Movie Techniques
Anyone with a knowledge of the history of genre filmmaking knows that making a suit that looks good on screen and enables a full range of motion for the performer is a complicated task. From The Wolf Man to RoboCop and many more iconic characters, Hollywood is littered with nightmarish tales of actors spending full days in make-up/wardrobe, only to find that their costumes render them unable to move, speak, or see well enough to perform.
Godzilla popularized a form of suit performance that the Japanese effects crews referred to as “suitmation.” The process was developed after initial plans for stop-motion Godzilla sequences did not pan out. The detail and complexity of the sets might have been greatly hindered by the use of miniatures, and the choice was made to put an actor in a Godzilla suit, with a human-sized model of a city that could be destroyed. Suitmation was a better choice for the larger-scale action in Godzilla, but it was hard on the performers. Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka frequently passed out from heat exhaustion while performing in the suits, and could only film for short periods to avoid putting themselves at risk of harm.
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“We have such sights to show you.”
The effect looked great in 1954 and still holds up today as a charming, innovative effort to practically film catastrophic destruction in a convincing way. It may not look as realistic as the advanced computer techniques used in modern films, but the efforts put into the suitmation are a big part of what makes Godzilla such an inspired production. The process became commonplace in the franchise, as well as other popular Japanese media, like Ultraman or the Super Sentai series which would later be repackaged as the Power Rangers franchise in the United States, and served as a major step forward for practical applications and performances of creature characters in genre film and television.
‘Godzilla’ Brought One of the Most Versatile, Longest Running Franchises to Life
Perhaps no one would have expected that 70 years after this harrowing monster movie about the consequences of nuclear warfare, we’d live in a world with nearly 40 Godzilla films, TV and comic and video game spin-offs, and with this giant creature cemented as one of the most recognizable fixtures in pop culture across the globe. But the most amazing thing about the longevity of this franchise is how each movie is able to take on its own tone, balancing the horrors of destruction with zany, high-flying, ridiculous action, without ever impinging on the impact of the original film. Godzilla was already going head-to-head with King Kong a mere eight years removed from the original movie. By the end of what is now identified as the “Shōwa era” of Godzilla films, ranging from 1954 to 1975, there were 15 more Godzilla features, and audiences had been introduced to Mothra, Ghidorah, and even Mechagodzilla. The franchise has always embraced a balance between the more serious entries that key in on the human drama in relation to kaiju attacks, and the wilder ones where giant monsters are drop-kicking each other like a pro-wrestling match.
Despite the fact that this dichotomy has always been key to Godzilla as a franchise, the American fan base is especially split between the two, with many fans rejecting the more recent entries in Legendary’s American franchise for being cartoonishly over-the-top compared to the 2014 Godzilla which kicked off the Monsterverse. But Legendary is simply following through on the blueprints that have made the series endure for 70 years.Godzilla Minus One became the surprise, smash hit of 2023 and won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. This year, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide, making it the most commercially successful film in the franchise. Audiences clearly still have a taste for all the many shades of thrills that Godzilla offers as a character. We wouldn’t have that hunger for monster movies without the original, a genre-defining classic that endures 70 years later.
Godzilla (1954)
American nuclear weapons testing results in the creation of a seemingly unstoppable dinosaur-like beast.
- Release Date
- November 3, 1954
- Director
- Ishirô Honda
- Cast
- Takashi Shimura , Akihiko Hirata , Akira Takarada , Momoko Kôchi
- Runtime
- 96 minutes
- Main Genre
- Sci-Fi
Godzilla is available to stream on Tubi in the U.S.
Watch on Tubi
