What Makes A Good American ‘Godzilla’ Film?1 min read
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Originally conceived by Japanese filmmaker Ishirō Honda as an examination of national trauma following his home country’s devastating defeat in World War II with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 1954 film Godzilla is a harrowing parable in which collective paranoia physically manifests itself as the titular dinosaur-like monster that demolishes everything in sight.
The seminal film has since given birth to the kaiju (strange beast) subgenre and a surprisingly durable media franchise that capitalizes on the primal appeal of monster-versus-monster melees, foregoing explicit political allegory with each passing entry.
These two discrete halves of the franchise — its origin as a standalone film that doubles as a vital sociopolitical document and its subsequent incarnation as a series of increasingly kid-friendly action films — seem to have confounded Hollywood, which had been thriving on the traditional concept of single-minded film franchises for decades.
As of this writing, there have been three Godzilla films that were entirely produced by major American film companies: Roland Emmerich’s pop-cultural sensation Godzilla in 1998, Gareth Edwards’ franchise reboot in 2014, also titled after the iconic monster, and, most recently, Michael Dougherty’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 2019, a direct sequel to Edwards’ film.
The three Hollywood blockbusters approached the Japanese source material with slightly different styles, but they all operate under a common principle: Godzilla is at its most fun when it’s on pure popcorn mode.
Photo credit: Eleven Myanmar
