What’s intriguing about Gojira is the lost symbolic importance once the film left Japan. Certain aspects were been removed when Americans remade it (ie the fact that the American’s atomic bomb created Godzilla in the first place). The movie originally expressed anger and resentment of the affects of the atomic bomb, but now it’s just another monster for the superheroes of Hollywood to fight. Gojira started out as “an earnest attempt to grapple with compelling and timely issues” (like getting the shit bombed out of them). It was “intended to frighten rather than amuse” and messed with the nuclear problems that came after WW2. Nowadays we see Godzilla as another character, but the Japanese at the time saw it as a metaphor for the aftermath of WW2. Japan already has unpredictable nature because of fault lines they often experience “earthquakes and volcanoes, typhoons and tidal waves, floods and landslides” Godzilla is just a combination of their bad luck with mother nature and nuclear residue from the atomic bomb dropping. The Japanese people did not take the movie lightly. They watched “in respectful silence” and some even left crying. As entertaining as the movie (and its rudimentary special effects) are to us, at the time the movie was a reminder of the carnage of WW2 and the bomb that it brought with it. Godzilla is a physical representation of the war and its effects. By destroying Godzilla in the end and regaining control over their city, the movie is encouraging to post-war Japan.

Many years post war, what does the world have to do with Godzilla? It’s just a plot line. Monster attacks city. Hero fights monster. (Hero might be a robot, a superhuman, biological warfare, or even another monster). Nowadays, Godzilla doesn’t have the same meaning. American Sniper is to modern day America as Gojira is to post WW2 Japan. I’m sure in a couple decades there will be even more war movies based in the middle east, but they won’t hit as close to home because hopefully the fighting there has since stopped. Middle eastern warfare will just be another plot for the next blockbuster.

I was asked the question, what is the monster? I have two answers. 1. Back then it was a reminder and a metaphor for the atrocities of war and the effects of a nuclear bomb. 2. It’s a cool plot that involves nature becoming supernatural for reasons probably related to radioactivity, but the tall and jacked super hero will save the day in the end. So appreciate Gojira for the Japanese as we appreciate the American Sniper and related movies.

Dani