﻿Hey guys, I’m Kya, and on this super-sized edition of 'How to Kill,'
we’re taking down the King of the Monsters himself,
the Japanese giant known as Godzilla.
Since he burst onto the scene in 1954,
Godzilla has gone from nuclear nightmare,
to kid-friendly superhero,
and he’s gotten his fair share of scars along the way.
But what would it take to topple this radioactive reptile once and for all?
Well, they say he’s got to go,
so pick up a bus and throw it back down,
because today, we’re going to tell you
How to Kill Godzilla
Over the last 60 years,
Godzilla has appeared in over 30 movies,
and countless cartoons, video games, and comics,
including one where he went to Hell… without dying.
He’s fought King Kong,
killer moths,
and Matthew Broderick.
Perhaps his greatest foe.
That's a lot of fish!
But it almost didn’t happen,
because Godzilla definitively died in his very first appearance,
at the hands of a super-weapon called
The Oxygen Destroyer
The Toho Company’s original ‘Gojira’ film is a far cry from the cuddly cartoon character Godzilla would become.
Made less than a decade after the end of World War II,
director Ishiro Honda envisioned his monster as the living embodiment of the atomic bomb,
an unthinkable, unstoppable nuclear-powered nightmare.
When Godzilla awakens from his slumber and makes his way to the Japanese mainland,
their best and brightest scientists struggle to find a way to stop it.
Bullets and bombs just bounce off him,
depth charges do nothing,
and when they set up a massive electric fence on the coastline,
Godzilla just pulls the spitting high-tension wires down.
There’s only one weapon that can kill this colossal kaiju,
but its creator, Dr. Serizawa, is terrified of the devastation his Oxygen Destroyer would unleash.
I don’t know what’s so scary about turning some fish into skeletons,
but hey, I’m not a scientist, and I don’t have a cool eyepatch, either.
Yet.
After witnessing the destruction Godzilla inflicts on Tokyo,
Serizawa is finally convinced to use his superweapon.
He straps on a scuba suit and activates the Destroyer on the ocean floor,
disintegrating Godzilla and sacrificing himself in the process.
Serizawa’s secrets died with him,
and it’s a shame,
because just one year later a brand new Godzilla emerged from the sea to stomp through Osaka.
Luckily, the air force was able to trap him in an iceberg and drop a mountain on him
but it was just a temporary fix.
Godzilla would return again,
and again,
and as even worse monsters reared their ugly heads,
Godzilla became humanity’s protector.
Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s,
the fearsome King of the Monsters kinda lost his edge.
Becoming a dad will do that to you, I guess.
The series’ popularity started to wane,
so in 1984 Toho rebooted Godzilla into a towering terror once more.
He was bigger, badder, and a whole lot tougher,
but he had one fatal flaw:
A Broken Heart
Godzilla actually dies twice in the Heisei Era Godzilla films,
but only one of them sticks.
In ‘Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla 2,’ the big G faces off against a new version of his robot doppelganger,
which actually manages to kill him with a barrage of lasers,
paralyzer missiles,
and electric shocks that destroy the second brain Godzilla keeps in his butt.
For safe. Keeping.
Fortunately, Rodan was able to resurrect him,
but this does count as a death, even if it didn’t last long.
The big guy died for good in 1995’s ‘Godzilla vs. Destroyah,’
where he battles a byproduct of Serizawa’s long-lost Oxygen Destroyer,
hence the name.
Destroyah isn’t actually the one who does him in, though.
After years on the rampage,
the nuclear reactor that is Godzilla’s heart is undergoing a catastrophic meltdown,
threatening to blow up the entire planet.
The body of ‘Burning Godzilla’ is glowing with red radioactive energy,
and he uses his new power to defeat Destroyah,
just before his heart finally gives out.
The resulting fallout decimates Tokyo,
but his son sucks it all up,
and survives to carry on his father’s lumbering legacy.
After they killed Godzilla,
Toho took a break from the franchise.
But over in America, TriStar Pictures was working on reboot that would surely blow the doors off the box office and usher in a new era of monster madness in the states,
Yeah, no.
1998’s ‘Godzilla’ died at the box office,
and the titular star died after a barrage of plain old
Missiles.
Where do I begin with Roland Emmerich’s ill-fated 1998 'Godzilla' movie?
Its annoying ad campaign that took shots at ‘Jurassic Park?’
The extremely obnoxious characters who are joking and quipping as Godzilla reigns death and destruction on New York City?
Look at this! He trashed the Garden! Aw, man, now I'm pissed.
Literally not the time for jokes!
The way Emmerich included obvious parodies of Siskel and Ebert as a 'screw-you’ for giving his terrible movies terrible reviews?
The emptiness of 'Godzilla' was one of the worst achievements, if you can call it that, of the year.
I'm with you there, Gene!
Look, this film has a lot of problems,
but none of them bigger than the big guy himself,
or herself, in this case.
1998’s Godzilla was slimmer and smaller than her Japanese cousin.
She looked like an iguana crossed with a raptor rendered with the best CGI 1998 had to offer,
which wasn’t all that great.
She could sprint and burrow through city streets,
but she lacked her namesake’s awe-inspiring presence,
which is why fans mockingly dubbed her ‘GINO,’ or ‘Godzilla in Name Only.’
Ouch.
The producers took the ‘monster’ out of ‘King of the Monsters,’
robbing her of Godzilla’s trademark Atomic Breath,
and rendering her vulnerable to standard-issue army weapons.
Matthew Broderick and his little pals manage to trap her in the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge,
where she bleeds to death after a barrage of plain-old missiles.
That’s right, not a superweapon, ancient evil or alien technology,
just 40 million dollars worth of taxpayer-funded firepower.
I’m not impressed, guys.
I’m not even against the idea of missiles killing Godzilla,
but they’ve got to be special,
like the
Killer Drillers
that took him down in 2001.
Toho was deeply embarrassed by the 1998 movie,
so much so that they actually brought the American ‘Zilla back in their rejuvenated Japanese series,
just so she could get completely merced by the real Godzilla in like, twenty seconds.
Toho’s ‘Millenium’ series were mostly standalone films,
but they couldn’t resist giving the big G a huge power upgrade.
In ‘Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack,’
which, by the way, is the greatest movie title ever,
the original Godzilla is resurrected by the vengeful souls of innocents killed during World War II.
Earth’s guardian kaiju team up to stop him,
but the fatal blow comes from special missiles designed to drill through Godzilla’s hide.
They open up a hole in his chest that prevents him from unleashing his atomic breath,
and with no way to release the pressure, Godzilla explodes in a burst of radioactive energy,
leaving only his disembodied heart on the ocean floor.
One problem:
It’s still beating.
Check the heart, guys.
Each incarnation of Godzilla is less vulnerable than the last,
and even his most recent sightings have proven tough to take down.
In 2014, America finally got a properly badass version to call its own,
and the heroic ‘Monsterverse’ Godzilla lived to fight another day,
presumably against the king-sized Kong from ‘Skull Island’
Back in Japan, Toho returned with ‘Shin Godzilla,’
a terrifying new incarnation who reflected the fears of a post-Fukushima world.
The government was able to get their shit together in time to drop a few buildings on him and pump some coagulant down his throat,
but all that did was freeze the God of Destruction, leaving him standing tall in the middle of Tokyo.
And i do mean tall, because at 389 feet, this was the biggest Godzilla we’d ever seen,
at least, until the anime that came out the next year.
In the post-apocalyptic ‘Planet of Monsters,’
Godzilla has driven humanity away from Earth.
20,000 years later,
returning soldiers manage to trap Godzilla and penetrate his shield with EMP probes,
only to learn the monster they just imploded was a much smaller clone,
after the real deal bursts from the ground and wrecks all their stuff.
We’ll see how that saga plays out in the coming years,
as well as whatever the Monsterverse has in store for us.
Whether he’s a hero or villain,
a stomper or a savior,
Godzilla is one of the most memorable monsters in all of cinema,
and as history shows again and again,
he’s damn hard to kill.