Godzilla And The Bravo Shot: Who Created And Killed The Monster?

Godzilla And The Bravo Shot Who Created And Killed The Monster?

The Showa Era

Toho created the iconic Godzilla series and it holds a record in the longest running movie franchise in the world. Till now the franchise has created a total of 33 films. In the year of 2004, Toho gave the permission to produce a short Godzilla film however due to delay in the project, it was eventually given to Legendary Pictures to make a full feature length film. Warner Bros. then released Godzilla in the year of 2014. Godzilla follows the story of an ancient predator who battles two monsters in a destroyed city. The film is inspired from the 1954 Godzilla. However it does not follow the exact storyline, it can be said that it is a reboot. The Godzilla films over the years have dominated the monster genre of the film industry for over half a century (Tanaka). The film does not represent an unbroken line of continuity from the perspective of the character of Godzilla. Rather the franchise is divided into three periods. Also known as Showa, Heisei and the Millennium series.

The franchise began with the Showa era which was also the longest and the most influential of the three eras. The character of Godzilla began with the 1954 film with the same name that was directed by Ishiro Honda. Being an active part of the war, Ishiro Honda firsthand witnessed many incidents from the World War 2 like the bomb of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing at Tokyo. Honda incorporated these scenes in the film as the character of Godzilla has emerged into the story due to the effects of the war. Immediately after the success of the film, Toho immediately released a follow-up film Godzilla Raids Again (Gerow). Despite the fact the film was not as critically successful as the first one, however the film did bring the concept of pitting a monster against another monster in a battle which would become the definite scenario for the future films (Wetmore). The franchise took a massive leap with its next project, King Kong vs. Godzilla which became the most financially successful film of the series. Even a few year before the release of the film, the audience never expected to witness two monsters from two separate franchise to fight against one another. The Showa era continued to include many more monsters such as King Ghidorah, Mothra, Rodan, Mechagodzilla, King Kong and many more those who became iconic characters for the monster film genre.  

The Heisei Era

Ishiro Honda mainly aimed the films towards the children as the monsters in the films family-friendly, use as much less violence as possible and inoffensive as well (Igarashi). To make that happen, the actors who played the monsters or kaijus wore rubber suits and did battle against one another on screen (Tsuji).. There was issues with the suit during the first initial films was it was very difficult for the actors to breathe inside the suits. It weighted over than a 100 kilos and the temperature inside the suit sometimes rose up to 60 C. The design and structure of the character of Godzilla came from the structure of a lizard and a bear however its name indicated that it was a cross between a gorilla and a whale (Nakano). The original actor who portrayed Godzilla in the 1954 film was Haruo Nakajima who also portrayed Godzilla in any later films of the series as well. The monster battles were all shot indoors and to make it look like the battle is occurring within a city, the film crew designed miniature cities which were the hardly the site of the actors waist. It brought a wonderful display that two monsters were actually fighting within a city and the city gets destroyed. Nakijima also said that during one of the monster battle shoots, he had to tear down a miniature castle that was twice his salary. The castle took almost an entire day to be built and was destroyed in a couple of minutes. The films were certainly children-centric despite the fact they did show a 400 feet monster fighting against another one.

The Showa era ended with the film Terror of Mechagodzilla in the year of 1976. After that, the Heisei era began with is also identical to the same of the same era with the ascension of the Emperor Akihito. The Heisei era lasted for 11 years from 1984 to 1995.The film that started the era was The Return of Godzilla in 1984 which actually was a reboot to the series. There were many changed to the franchise after the release of this film. First of all, Toho decided to change the child-centric tone to the franchise by including more darker elements to the films. There were changed made to the suit as well. There were changed made too the character of Godzilla as well as the Godzilla shown in the films is a new Godzilla (Noriega). In most of the films of the Showa series Godzilla was basically a good character who fought against monsters that threatened the world with other allied monsters however in the Heisei series, Godzilla is more of an anti-hero character. Godzilla does not pick side with human nor the monsters, he fights for himself and is basically a “lone wolf”.  The Heisei series does include many more monsters to the series like Biollante, Space Godzilla and Destoroyah. The Heisei series brought a new element to the franchise that is making Godzilla appear as the underdog. Unlike the Showa era, all the monsters except King Ghidorah were much tall than him (Kalat). However, in the Heisei era Godzilla appears to be smaller than almost every new monster shown. In was done to bring an element of surprise into the genre where it would appear like Godzilla is going to lose however as his opponents would look very intimidating because of their size however in the end, Godzilla manages to win and defeat his opponent.

The Millennium Era

Toho also decided to remake the monsters those who appeared in the Showa series. This would include King Ghidorah, a three headed dragon like monster who is also the arch nemesis of Godzilla in the franchise. In the reboot film Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah in 1991, the appearance of Ghidorah made him the tallest kaiju created by Toho. Another prominent kaiju is Mothra who is basically the only good kaiju in the franchise. Mothra does not cause harm to the humans or the society, with an appearance of a gigantic moth, there are many instances where Mothra has helped Godzilla in battling other kaijus where it seemed like Godzilla was going to die. She is basically an alley to the humans and Role of human characters also increased in the Heisei era (Low). As two monsters those who does not have control over their power can easily destroy a massive city and turn into rubbles, the government decides to interfere into the battles where they would try to lure the monsters away or protect the city from them. Sometimes human also design their own kaijus or monsters like Mechagodzilla to fight against Godzilla (Schilling). To Godzilla, the humans and his rival kaijus are the same. However what makes Godzilla an antihero and not a villain in the films is that after Godzilla defeats the rival monster he does not continue to destroy the city and instead returns to the ocean from where he came from.

Finally, Toho created the Millenium era that lasted for a short five years from 1999 to 2004. In the Heisei series, the 1995 film Godzilla vs Destroyah, at the end of the film Godzilla dies from a radioactive disease and passes his abilities to his son (Inuhiko). The son of Godzilla, in the Millenium series is an adult who takes the place of his father (Brophy). The first film of the series is Godzilla 2000 that shows the return of the Godzilla. There are not much changes in the characters of Godzilla from the Heisei series. What is actually different is that Toho included computer graphics in the monster characters and the battles to make the scenarios more realistic. It was around the same time that Hollywood also used special effects and high end CGI in their films, this would include the Matrix saga (Tsutsui). Toho started to incorporate these elements like the destruction of the cities and the atomic breath attack of Godzilla in computer graphics. Another major difference noticed in the Millenium series is the staggered continuity of the films. The entire series does not maintain continuity but rather are standalone movies that are not direct sequels but has no connection the films in that era. The Millenium era also does not include any new kaijus except Orga and Megaguirus but are all the remakes of the previous ones.

Kaijus and Human Characters

The rest of the films that follows in the series are shown in different locations including Tokyo. This is because in the last two eras the battles between Godzilla and the other kaijus usually took place in Japan, however this was changed in the final installment of the Millenium series, Godzilla: Final Wars which was released in 2004. The film features more than 10 kaijus excluding the central protagonist Godzilla. Final Wars was a very ambitious project from Toho as it would bring a crossover of many monsters that were shown since the Showa era (Emmerich). However at that time Toho was thinking of ending the Godzilla franchise therefore the wanted to end it with an ambitious yet incredible battle that would feature a lot of kaijus and would take place across the whole world. The concept of “monster mash” further expanded the genre to new heights. By bringing in many monsters in the same film and making them battle was something that was not done before. The film pays homage to much popular franchise including the Star Wars, X-Men, Independence Day and more (Napier). The character of Godzilla is the film was also showcased to be extremely powerful as he takes on multiple kaijus at the same time. The film was also the longest one in the franchise that was over 2 hours long. However being a long feature length film, there were many critics who said that the kaijus shown did not get enough screen time. The Millenium series overall is a homage to the earlier two eras of Toho’s Godzilla series despite they are standalone films, they consist of many references from the earlier films.

After a long hiatus from Toho, Legendary Pictures received the permission to create a Godzilla film that is the Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla released in 2014. The film brings back the iconic monster back to life with references from the 1954 film (Kerner). The 2014 film recreates the character of Godzilla very different in appearance. Unlike the Toho verison the Godzilla appearing the Legendary films is much bigger in size and stronger. In the film Godzilla appears as an apex predator that has been in existence for millions of years and in the year of 1954, Russia along with United States tried many nuclear weapons to kill the monster however Godzilla survived all the attempts. Ever since then the Monarch that is the organization deals with the information of all the kaijus, tried to conceal the information from the rest of the world about the existence of the monster. Later on it was revealed that just like Godzilla there are two more monsters known as MUTO that attacks the world. Godzilla comes out from the ocean to fight both of them. The film does not include direct elements from the Showa era but rather from the Heisei and the Millenium era (Bernardi). The concept of pitting a monster against another monster exists along with many popular actors from Hollywood including Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston and also the Japanese actor Ken Watanabe. After the success of the film, Legendary decided to go for more sequels where they planned to introduce the sequel Godzilla: King of the Monsters that was scheduled to release in the year of 2019 (Brothers). The film would reintroduce Godzilla after defeating the MUTOs in the last film and the franchise planned to bring three iconic kaijus from the Toho series in the 2019 film. They would include Rodan, Mothra and King Ghidorah where all three of them would battle against Godzilla. Legendary also planned on brining the next film Godzilla vs. Kong in the year of 2020, which would be a remake of the 1962 film King Kong vs. Godzilla from the Showa era. In the year of 2017, the studio made Kong: Skull Island where they introduced the character of King Kong in his juvenile form who would later battle Godzilla

CGI and Special Effects

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that Hollywood had the concept of bringing Godzilla to the big screen much before with the release of Godzilla 1998 that was not a commercial success. As explained earlier, the sequel for the 1998 film was also planned however due to the poor reception from the critics and the fans it was quickly cancelled. However the 2014 film was critically acclaimed not only from the critics and the fans but from Toho as well. Toho said that legendary films did justice to the character of Godzilla and its legacy. Legendary films are considering for future projects, they would include more films on the Monster Verse. Unlike the 3 eras of films from Toho, the Monster Verse actually follows a series and are not standalone films. There are references in a film of the events that would happen in its sequel. For example, in the 2017 film, Kong Skull Island, it was revealed in the end that the Monster Verse would later include the 3 kaijus in the 2019 film Godzilla: King of the Monsters.     

References

Bernardi, Joanne. "Teaching Godzilla: Classroom Encounters with a Cultural Icon." In Godzilla’s® Footsteps. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006. 111-125.

Brophy, Philip. "Monster Island: Godzilla and Japanese sci-fi/horror/fantasy." Postcolonial Studies: Culture, Politics, Economy 3.1 (2000): 39-42.

Gerow, Aaron. "Wrestling with Godzilla: intertextuality, childish spectatorship, and the national body." In Godzilla’s® Footsteps. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006. 63-81.

Igarashi, Yoshikuni. "Mothra’s Gigantic Egg: Consuming the South Pacific in 1960S Japan." In Godzilla’s® Footsteps. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006. 83-102.

Inuhiko, Yomota. "The Menace from the South Seas: Honda Ishiro’s Godzilla (1954)." Japanese Cinema. Routledge, 2007. 120-129.

Kerner, Aaron. "Gojira vs Godzilla: Catastrophic Allegories." Ritual and Event. Routledge, 2006. 119-134.

Low, Morris. "The birth of Godzilla: Nuclear fear and the ideology of Japan as victim." Japanese Studies 13.2 (1993): 48-58.

Napier, Susan J. "Panic sites: The Japanese imagination of disaster from Godzilla to Akira." Journal of Japanese Studies19.2 (1993): 327-351.

Noriega, Chon. "Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When" Them!" Is US." Cinema Journal (1987): 63-77.

Tanaka, Yuki. "Godzilla and the Bravo Shot: Who Created and Killed the Monster?." Japan Focus (2005). 289.

Tsuji, Yuichiro. "Godzilla and the Japanese Constitution: A Comparison Between Italy and Japan." Italian LJ 3 (2017): 451.

Tsutsui, William M. "Godzilla vs. the egghead: Negotiating the cultures of fandom and academe." Journal of American-East Asian Relations 20.4 (2013): 349-363.

Wetmore, Kevin J. "“Our First Kiss Had a Radioactive Taste”: Ohashi Yasuhiko’s Gojira in Japan and Canada." In Godzilla’s® Footsteps. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006. 127-138