Unlike its sequels (American and Japanese), the very first Godzilla (Gojira in Japan) film was, not only about the fantastically epic monster-man battle, but also centered around the morality of using weapons of mass destruction. Truthfully, using an ancient dinosaur-dragon beast is a particularly strange way of highlighting such a serious topic, but if anyone has the right to talk about the human cost of WMD’s, it’s Japan. At the time this film was released, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had only just been bombed nearly a decade prior and reconstruction (emotional, psychological, and physical) were still taking place. So it makes sense that several of the scenes within the film seem to mirror what Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked like after being obliterated and many pieces of dialogue amongst the characters reflected the opinions of several scientists working on the Manhattan Project.
In the film, Gojira destroys a large portion of Tokyo, leaving smoldering remains and orphaned children that seem eerily reminiscent of the results of a nuclear explosion. In addition, the movie played around with the idea that in order to deal with an unstoppable, destructive force like Gojira (who is an embodiment of a nuclear weapon) another unstoppable, destructive force needed to be deployed. This mirrors the arms race on a small scale; the fear that no one entity can or should control such a destructive force and the only solution is to arm at least one other entity with an equally powerful destructive force. In the case of the movie, it was a WMD that sucked the oxygen out of water and destroyed all organic matter. The creator did not want to use it as a weapon, for fear that it would spark an even more intense arms race from that which was already going on between the USSR and the U.S. He was so afraid that many innocent people would be killed if his invention were to be used for some geopolitical goal that he chose to destroy his life’s work and die rather than leave a single trace of his weapon.
So what’s the message? Nuclear weapons are bad? That was already an established fact (especially to Japan), so why make a film highlighting it? I believe the Ishiro Honda, the director, wanted us to instead focus on the human reaction to a devastating attack. When a WMD
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…is even considered to being used, potentially-affected citizens collectively engulf themselves in fear. Politicians, scientists, and regular everyday people are faced with the possibility of certain destruction, and as a result, often panic and make irrational or exaggerated decisions. I believe Ishiro Honda incorporated major scenes surrounding the use of the oxygen destroyer to set an example to viewers to make rational and calculated decisions in the face of fear. I believe Honda wanted to emphasize that an escalation of destructive force should not be guided by our emotions, but by well thought out logic that takes into account future generations of peoples. It would have been easy for most people in the creator’s position to immediately choose to use the oxygen destroyer to defeat Gojira, but it is a decision that should not easily be made. It should be weighed in as appropriate and absolutely necessary before, which is exactly what the creator of the oxygen destroyer did. Honda wants all of us to follow the same example. Although, not many of us are in control of such powerful weapons, we are in control of who is placed in charge of those weapons via elections. Therefore, we must vote more for rational thinkers, rather than just passionate speakers.