When Godzilla was first released in 1954, it was part of a worldwide “creature feature” fever. In America, we’d already seen the emergence of things like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the nuclear-themed Them! There was even a re-release of King Kong that allegedly out-grossed the box office of the original run. But few of these films have matched the legacy of Godzilla, a movie that haunts us to this day, not just for the horrors of the past that it reflected, but the horrors of the future that it promised.
Japan had struggled to recover from the devastation wrought by the twin bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in the following years had much of its traditional structure rewritten during the Allied Occupation. But the terror of the bombs was only a prelude to the paranoia to come. In less than a year, the United States and its allies had begun testing even more nuclear weapons and devices in the Pacific. And in the spring of 1954, Japan would once again be reminded of their power.
The “Castle Bravo” operation unleashed the largest nuclear test ever exploded, one that caused a surrounding environmental disaster. And though the group of Japanese fishermen on the Lucky Dragon No. 5 boat seemed assured of their safety, the blast was much more powerful than anyone expected. They were caught in the fallout, with the explosion being so bright that at first they thought it was an “early dawn.” By autumn, boat radioman Aikichi Kuboyama would be dead from radiation poisoning.
It was in the wake of this tragedy that Godzilla was born. The idea, like the beast itself, was a fusion of ideas, blending the success of recent monster movies like 20,000 Fathoms and the shock and outcry over the Lucky Dragon’s final voyage. And just like it wasn’t alone in the giant monster boom period, Godzilla appeared among a rise in films that tried their best to grapple with nuclear anxieties like Children of Hiroshima, Hiroshima and Akira Kurosawa’s I Live In Fear. However, Godzilla was no less potent than its more straightforward drama peers.
Its story, about a mutated dinosaur that comes ashore to stomp through Tokyo, has been told and retold in the 70 years since. Recent efforts like Shin Godzilla and the Academy Award-winning Godzilla Minus One operate on many of the same beats, from the slow-burn beginning, to the creature’s reveal, to a Tokyo laced with hellfire, to attempts to finally stop it. Godzilla, though, remains singular in its relentless doom and pseudo-documentary stylings. There is little hope to provide. Even the tortured scientist that discovers the way to end the rampage commits suicide rather than allow the plans for his Godzilla-dissolving super-weapon to fall into the wrong hands.
Godzilla is not without its beauty, though. The perennially underrated director Ishiro Honda gives his human scenes an intense pathos. And though stuntman Haruo Nakajima is wearing an immensely heavy suit, he imbues Godzilla with little agitated movements that enhance the agony of this scaly, walking bomb.
But perhaps the crew member to gain the most from Godzilla is special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya. Godzilla is considered the grandfather of “tokusatsu,” a beautiful branch of special effects that often combines practical aspects like man-in-suit creations and on-camera visual techniques. From the many Godzilla sequels, to Tsuburaya-produced TV shows like Ultraman and genre favorites like Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, tokusatsu can be a very good time.
The first of those sequels arrived in 1955, along with an accompanying kaiju for Godzilla to brawl with. It’s a bit of franchising that certainly honors what the thoughtful Dr. Yamane posits at the end of Godzilla: That continued nuclear tests might create more Godzillas. But this goes far beyond sequel-building. The promise of another Godzilla, of another unstoppable thing to wreak havoc on Japan, was a real-life promise as well. Yes, the two atom bombs had effectively ended a war, but it started something potentially more frightening — a world that could fall to ruin at any time thanks to nuclear destruction. It was the new world of the Lucky Dragon No. 5.
In a way, Godzilla, like many works of allegorical fiction, helped us rationalize and grasp these effects on a global level. But there is no solace to be had in our understanding. Not when we’re destined to forever deal with the mushroom cloud on our doorstep and the monster in the bay.
