Monsters terrify us as much as they fascinate us. It's the power of the imagination where everything is possible, even the worst: who never thought of this creature who dwells in his closet or under his bed? In the land of the rising sun some monsters do not hide, on the contrary, they are giant; They come from space, from the ocean, or from scientific manipulation. Incarnation of trauma, monsters go through the cinema. The Japanese have pushed the concept ever further so that our fears are as big as buildings. The Kaijus are out!
Monsters and Co.
Let it not stand, giant monsters exist from the dawn of time, whether in the literature of tales and legends such as chimeras and other dragons, to the representation of the first dinosaurs in the cinema. These big reptiles stopped feeding fiction. Among the many species dug up under our feet, the most famous highlight on our screens remains the king of the tyrannosaurus rex (Trex) lizards.
Prior to the iconisation of this dinosaur by Steven Spielberg in Jurassic Park (1993), the cinema represented the T-Rex with a much more vertical design and posture. It all starts with the movie The Ghost of Slumber Mountain directed in 1918 by Willis O Special effects stop motion (a combination of photos to create an animation) staged the king of carnivores with a realism never reached. To the audience, the dangerous monarch came to life. But Japanese directors also dreamed of their own monster king.
Godzilla after the war
We're in 1954, and Ishiro Honda is making a movie of giant creatures. Unfortunately time constraints prevent the use of stop motion, we will have to go faster and it is then that the technique of Suitability is created: an actor, here Haruo Nakajima, wears a 100 kg rubber suit to embody the king of monsters. Godzilla is an allegory of the traumatic fear of the A-bomb from which the Japanese were victims in the Second World War. His Japanese Name Gojira, is the assembly of two animals: Gorilla (Go) and Whale (Kujira) but no connection seems to weave between these beasts since in fact our monster is a mixture of a T-Rex for posture and a Stegosaurus for dorsal plates (certainly to hide the sewing of the costume).
The design of the creature follows its metaphorical logic; in fact the preliminary sketches of the swollen face of Godzilla the shape of the atomic fungus. The result is a giant monster coming out of the ocean to attack Japan. Revealed by nuclear tests, the creature operates as a divine punishment to show men that they are nothing in the face of nature. One of the iconic techniques of the king of monsters is his devastating atomic ray which he expels from his mouth, a « Beam » that destroys everything in its path. Godzilla thus makes appear a whole new kind of film: the Kaiju-Eiga. Many origins stories have redefined the birth of the monster through about thirty animated films and series that I propose to discover through a few examples.
We all have the Showa (1954-1975)
The Showa period of films Godzilla began in 1954 and ended in 1975. The creature is a prehistoric beast dating back millions of years; It is an unknown species that appeared at the end of the Cretaceous. An intermediate life form between the marine reptile and the terrestrial animals, it hibernate in a cave at the bottom of the ocean until nuclear tests awakened the beast. The possibility of her being transferred is highly probable since each passage leaves behind her an abnormally high rate of radioactivity. His awakening is considered a punishment and the inhabitants of the island of Ohto had already predicted his return, baptizing her Godzilla.
A new Heisei (1984-1995)
The Heisei period of feature films Godzilla Starting in 1984 and ending in 1995. For the return of the creature, Koji Hashimoto takes over the mythology of the license from the beginning, or almost. His film The Return of Godzilla is the continuation of the first film of 1954. With his evocative title, he wanted to follow in the footsteps of Honda's masterpiece thirty years later. Same creature, but not the same design or symbol. Kaiju wakes up following an underwater volcanic eruption and swims back to Tokyo. If the first Godzilla Incarnates the fear of nuclear power, the 1984 Kaiju is the representation of the Cold War where Americans and Russians are ready to test their new nuclear weapons in the land of the rising sun.
A trauma that must be prevented from reborn through political discussions throughout the film (which announces the beginnings of the future film of Shinji Higuchi and Hideaki Anno). The fast-paced solution of the great Western nations seems to be obsolete as this film presents a Godzilla feeding on nuclear power plants, which makes it increasingly powerful. Destroy Godzilla then becomes an arms race, but maybe the best weapon remains nature itself?
Mille & Nium (1999-2004)
The new millennium offers a series of films for the King of Kaiju. Thus the Millennium era began in 1999 to extinguish in 2004. Short period that opens with the film Godzilla 2000 Takao Okawara. He portrays the monster as a force of nature, incarnation of the typhoons that then devastated Japan. In the suites, our reptilian creature is introduced as a retcon where the giant monster would have survived the end of the first film. But among the feature films of this period, only one decides to create his own mythology.
Thus was born Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monster All-Out Attack more simply named GMK, directed in 2001 by Shusuke Kaneko, a great director who had brought his unique, dark and bold vision to the competing franchise, namely the Gamera trilogy of the 1990s. In this slasher-like film, Godzilla is the embodiment of the anger of the victims of the Japanese imperial army during the Second World War. It represents a demon with repulsive eyes: never had the king of monsters incarnated so much anger and the thirst for destruction, acting as a curse for Japanese youth that fails to remember past sacrifices.
Lana Del Reiwa
Twelve years after the last film by Godzilla On a large screen, the Reiwa era welcomes its first variation of the monster king in 2016: Shin Godzilla. Contemporary Japanese did not experience the trauma of his country's defeat in 1945. On the other hand, there is a real fact that he cannot ignore: the Fukushima nuclear site, watered daily since the tsunami broke down the power plant in 2011.
And it was with this new incision that two genius directors took over the project "Shin (new) Godzilla" , the complete overhaul of the myth under the direction of Hideaki Anno (papa de Neon Genesis Evangelion) and with the no less famous Shinji Higuchi (Gainax, trilogy Gamera of the 1990s). A new era for a new creature and incarnation of a new vision. This film evokes real constitutional problems, where politics is overtaken by nightmare events: the moving nuclear power plant, the calamity and always indomitable Godzilla.
The creature passes through several forms marking the poles of despair that flow into the hands of statesmen, themselves forced by procedures baffled with inefficiency. Because yes, it's a talkative film, which informs grotesque formalities in the face of an emergency situation. Here, the creature has no connection to previous films. The King of monsters is an ancestral underwater species that would have eaten nuclear waste thrown into the ocean. Becoming an amphibian, Godzilla then has eight times as much genetic data as humans, making him the most advanced on the planet. Kaiju is capable of self-mutilation and regeneration, its definitive form is humanoid with the ability to fly. Its weak point being the obligation to cool its internal nuclear engine by diving into the ocean. If he uses energy attacks, he must also rest and remain motionless for several days.
The film was such a success that it won many awards including the best film from 2016 to the 40th Japan Academy Prize, however no cinematographic sequel took place and it will take seven years to see reborn Godzilla with a whole other form in the very recent Godzilla Minus One by Takashi Yamazaki.
Godzilla Minus One, towards a new era?
Like his colleagues Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi, director Takashi Yamazaki is an artist trained in animation, he is found on well known licenses such as Dragon Quest: Your Storyor Lupin III: The First, two films released in 2019. The relationship with Godzilla is done elsewhere, Yamazaki is also a live film director, in 2005 released Always : Twilight on Third Street, and his second opus in 2007.
A slice of life where the monster king appears in the imagination of a potential writer, Ryunosuke Chagawa performed by Hidetaka Yoshioka (an actor who will come back to play an important role in Godzilla Minus One). The film begins with the fictional vision of a post-war Japanese writer with a white-eyed Godzilla destroying everything in his path, and strongly recalls the creature of Shusuke Kaneko's GMK film. If the feature film has nothing to do with the Kaiju, it is difficult not to see there a call from Yamazaki's foot which, almost a decade later, ties to the VFX of a certain Shin Godzilla…
A film he will gladly quote as one of his favourites during a video interview for Letterboxd, with the Godzilla of 54, GMK (of course) but also Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Ishiro Honda's 1964 film which presents Godzilla's first unmissable antagonist. Yamazaki is deeply marked by the three-headed golden dragon which led him to make a Godzilla film for a Japanese attraction in 2021. Name Godzilla the Ride: Giant Monsters Ultimate Battle, the five-minute film puts the spectator in subjective view crossing a ruined Tokyo in the middle of a titanic battle between the King of Kaiju and his Nemesis King Ghidorah. Godzilla has a design that benefits from the latest 3D technologies that the director masteres perfectly, a Glow-up of the Godzilla seen in Always. The creature is totally detached from the graphic proposal of Shin Godzilla And the new monster is close to that of Heisei. This same design model will serve two years later for its Godzilla Minus One released on November 3, 2023 in Japan.
Godzilla before Godzilla
It is difficult not to enter the spoiler area to describe the new birth of the beast. Here the first minutes of the film will be revealed. We will stop there for the coldest, and for the lovers of the great G, it is with pleasure that we will dive into the deepest origins of this new monster.
In the very first film of Godzilla 1954, it was discovered that the beast was a prehistoric creature awakened by bombs, so in Honda's feature film we only saw the result of a probable mutation of a dinosaur. But in Kazuki Omori's film, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) we find Godzilla in its form of premutation, the... Godzillasaurus. A tyrannosaur on the island of Lagos, who will, by contemplation, defend Japanese soldiers against the attack of the American army during the Second World War. He died under the assaults before being reborn in the form of Godzilla After being exposed to the explosion of the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb on the nearby Bikini atoll in 1954.
This is exactly the starting point for Godzilla Minus OneYamazaki presents a Godzilla in the dinosaurian form, but with other protagonists, and without the American presence. One thing to remember, Godzilla is an antagonist, on the island of Odo it does not protect anyone, if this is its territory. Interestingly, this giant tyrannosaur does not eat humans, it only tramples and ejects them away. The creature does not seek food, it kills.
Rebelote, the beast undergoes nuclear attacks with full whip, this is the beginning of the birth of the king of monsters. Godzilla becomes a colossal titan that seems immortal where each cell regenerates, except that Yamazaki takes a different direction than Honda's film by bringing in his Kaiju in 1947 and not 1954. How could a post-war Japan end such a creature without advanced weapons? A utopia where the American army deserted the land of the rising sun, leaving the Japanese people alone facing their responsibilities, those of having to rebuild. This is the whole problem of the film, the reconstruction after the destruction of Godzilla which plunges the Japanese back to level minus one.
Trailer of Godzilla Minus One
Very informative article, thank you.
I went to see Minus One today and I never thought I'd be so moved in front of a disaster movie.
[...] in beauty with a flower for France and its two days of unannounced projections of Godzilla Minus One, the Japanese Top Gun that blooms antimilitarism. As the dictatorship of the top [...]
[...] The Tokyo Ice Age episode of Tokyo's Ultra Q series Hyogaki (1966) as already reported by Guillaume Lopez (see excerpt below). Far from Maverick's displayed trust and blind confidence in [...]
[...] Japanese reboot of the famous Toho franchise, this disaster movie which pays a roaring tribute to the original d'Ishirō Honda [...]
[...] The birth of the king of monsters until Godzilla Minus One by Guillaume Lopez [...]
[...] awakened by nuclear tests. If everything seems to be a copy of Godzilla (read our file), it is nothing, the difference comes mainly from the function of the creature: [...]