A whole new generation of moviegoers is getting introduced to Godzilla.
Everyone knows a little something about the legendary lizard, but fewer are familiar with his
titanic catalogue of films. If you're wondering where you should — or shouldn't — get started,
here are the best and worst movies in the history of Godzilla.
There's a reason the most recent
Godzilla-headlining film, King of the Monsters, features the foursome of Godzilla,
Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah, and much of it can be traced back to this colossal classic
released ten years after the first Godzilla film.
In his first appearance,
King Ghidorah hatches on Earth to rain down destruction with its three heads,
two tails, and lightning breath. Mankind's only hope is a team-up of Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra.
It's a lot of fun, and the kaiju carnage is some of the most powerful in the franchise.
Godzilla was a massive success upon its release in 1954,
so of course it made sense for Toho to push out a sequel to the film as quickly as possible.
That arrived the following year in the form of Godzilla Raids Again,
and as is the case with a lot of quickly made sequels, the results are disappointing.
For one thing, though this is the first film to feature monster vs. monster combat as Godzilla
battles fellow dinosaur-like creature Anguirus, the battles are not yet what they would later
become. There's a lot of shuffling around, much of it an effort to look animalistic,
but it's just not as fun as the full-on wrestling matches that would follow in future films.
The mythology is also a little underwhelming, particularly when you find out that this
Godzilla is actually just another giant radioactive lizard from the same species,
since they killed the original monster at the end of the first film. The film also suffers
technically, featuring a good deal less atmosphere and visual artistry than its predecessor.
All that said, Godzilla Raids Again is still watchable,
but it's the definition of a lackluster sequel.
The Heisei era of Godzilla films kicked
off with an attempt to return the character to its atomic horror roots with the somewhat
divisive The Return of Godzilla in 1984, and things remained rather dark with Godzilla
vs. Biollante in 1989. Those are both solid films, but the Heisei period really
picked up steam with its third entry, which managed to maintain a relatively serious tone
while also developing its own version of the Showa era's "throw everything at the screen" approach.
The story begins with the notion that Godzilla actually first appeared to humans as a smaller,
less mutated dinosaur version of himself in 1944,
when he saved a group of World War II soldiers. A group of time travelers from the future
embark on a mission to stop the dinosaur from being irradiated and thus turning into Godzilla.
"Got him … take that you dinosaur."
It turns out, though, that their real mission was to swap the dinosaur out for
three smaller creatures who would then be irradiated to create… King Ghidorah.
Things only get more convoluted from there, but what all of this essentially builds to is a battle
between Godzilla and Mecha King Ghidorah, a version of the three-headed monster that's
been mechanically modified by people from the future to give it one cybernetic head and a host
of other gadgets. The whole film is a blast, but it's worth it for the final battle alone.
For a little while in the
middle of the Showa era of Godzilla films, Toho experimented with broadening the franchise's
appeal through the introduction of various new characters. At the same time, they were trying
to keep budgets low, which unfortunately brings us to Godzilla's son, Minilla.
There's nothing inherently wrong with Godzilla having offspring.
In fact, later films also toyed with this idea to varying degrees of success. Here,
though, the interactions between Godzilla and Minilla are played with such a comedic,
put-upon-father sensibility that it starts to grate on you almost immediately.
That's not the only problem with the film, though. The creatures this time around — the
giant mantises and the giant spider called Kumonga - look cool, but because they're puppets
instead of men in suits, the fight scenes are rather limited in terms of intensity.
"Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack."
What a title! It's one of the best introductions you could hope for to a Godzilla film,
because it tells you exactly what you're about to see without spoiling how you're going to see it.
Like many other entries in Godzilla's Millennium era, Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
functions as a direct sequel to the original 1954 film, ignoring all previous installments.
That means this film once again frames Godzilla as a villain hellbent on destruction,
and once again depicts the first meeting between Godzilla and two of his greatest co-stars:
Mothra and King Ghidorah.
In this film, the latter two monsters, as well as Baragon in a smaller role, are framed as
"guardian" monsters who have to be awakened to save the world from Godzilla, and the twists and
turns that result from this mythos help drive the film even beyond its fun kaiju battles.
"The guardian monsters are here… they're all here."
The visual effects are a little dated today, but the clash of these titans
still remains a sight to behold. This movie is pure monster fun, and proof that sometimes you
need to wipe the slate clean to build something new within a seemingly immortal franchise.
All Monsters Attack, also known
as Godzilla's Revenge, is the story of a young boy named Ichiro who dreams of Monster Island
to escape his lonely, bullied life. In his dreams he befriends Godzilla's son Minilla,
and the two deal with their respective bullies through the power of friendship.
"Hey, come on over here. I won't hurt ya."
This isn't necessarily a bad concept, but the film also leans heavily on footage of Godzilla that's
been recycled from Son of Godzilla and Ebirah: Horror of the Deep, among others. There's also the
problem of Minilla, who remains annoying despite his noble quest to overcome his bully. There's
nothing necessarily wrong with the premise, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
The final film in the Heisei period of Godzilla
films had to go out with a bang, and while that could have been just another monster team-up
movie, what we got is one of the most moving and ambitious films in the entire franchise.
The film hinges on the discovery that the original "Oxygen Destroyer" device used to kill Godzilla
in the very first film also mutated a group of prehistoric sea creatures into giant crustacean
monsters, which then merge into one super-monster that basically looks like the devil itself.
Godzilla vs. Destoroyah has it all: Godzilla in ultimate peril,
and a monster antagonist that's both legitimately creepy and appropriately massive. It even somehow
manages to pull off a "Godzilla Junior" plot that really lands. It all culminates in a truly
effective finale that shows us the death and rebirth of Godzilla in a way no other film has.
In the 1970s, Toho was hoping to
create its own giant hero modeled after the success of the Japanese character
Ultraman, and held a contest asking children to design their own hero.
The resulting character, after plenty of tweaks by the studio,
was the giant robot Jet Jaguar, who was originally supposed to get his own film. Somewhere along the
way the Jet Jaguar film was merged with a Godzilla film, and Godzilla vs. Megalon is the result.
Godzilla and a giant robot man in the same movie definitely sounds like fun, but the film itself
suffers from a rushed production process, some of the less impressive monster designs
in the franchise, and a plot that spends more time with Jet Jaguar than you end up wanting.
The film is also infamous for its depiction of Godzilla executing the most fundamentally
ridiculous drop kick in movie history, and the monster fights don't really improve beyond that.
Yes, the very first Godzilla movie is still among
the best, and not just because it's where our favorite giant radioactive lizard originated. Back
when his story began, Godzilla was a metaphor for post-atomic Japanese anxieties about the future.
Director Ishiro Honda leans into that metaphor with an atmospheric, dread-filled story about a
nation haunted by the specter of something with massive implications and destructive potential.
Honda took particular time to focus in on the consequences of this giant
monster's destruction, and it remains an absolute classic more than six decades after its release.
Yes, director Roland Emmerich's 1998 Godzilla
film, the first American attempt at a reboot for the creature, gets a lot of hate thrown its way.
People don't like the creature design, they don't like Matthew Broderick cast as the scientist
poised to take down Godzilla, and sometimes they just don't like the 1990s of it all.
"Ugh, tell me that's not another parade."
Despite all of those reasons, though, the biggest problem with Emmerich's film
is the frustration that comes from watching it, because if you're really paying attention you get
the sense that there was almost, maybe, possibly a hint of a good movie lurking
in there somewhere before everything went wrong. There are some interesting moments in the film,
but they aren't enough to carry the film even as a campy "so bad it's good" movie.
It's just a series of confrontations with a monster so things can explode for a few minutes
before the film sets things up for the next set of explosions, and then it ends.
After the success of Legendary's Godzilla in 2014, Toho decided to reboot its own
Godzilla franchise with possibly the scariest incarnation of Godzilla ever.
Co-directed by Neon Genesis Evangelion's Hideaki Anno and Attack on Titan's Shinji Higuchi,
Shin Godzilla's kaiju is entirely new, as if the 1954 version never existed.
The movie features sharp satire of the Japanese government as it deals with a
creature arising from the sea and evolving into an enormous, needle-toothed monstrosity with
beady eyes and a devastating pulse attack that comes out of its mouth and spines.
"This doesn't qualify as an armed attack. And to be accurate, article 76 stipulates,
'by an aggressor country or an equivalent force' — not some monster."
"We don't have time to argue over semantics."
Godzilla here returns to his roots as a metaphor for mass disaster — in this case,
the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear meltdown at Fukushima.
The population's reactions to Godzilla are realistic,
as are the scenes of destruction caused as he morphs from one hideous form to the next.
The way Godzilla is depicted makes it appear that his existence is one of excruciating pain.
While the government dithers in endless meetings and scientists
struggle to come up with a way to stop Godzilla, he slowly lumbers forward as
a walking metaphor for disaster that could always strike at any moment.
Godzilla: The Planet Eater is considered a disappointing end to
an anime trilogy that began with 2017's Godzilla:
Planet of the Monsters and continued with 2018's Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle.
The main protagonist has a big grudge against Godzilla,
and with good reason, as Godzilla and other kaiju have emerged on Earth and taken it over.
Earth has also been visited by not one, but two alien species who can't manage to defeat Godzilla,
foiling their plans to invade the Earth.
Having all fled the rampaging Godzilla on a spaceship, the humans and aliens return
two decades later to find that not only have 20,000 years passed on Earth, but
that both Earth and Godzilla have significantly changed, with Godzilla DNA present everywhere.
The philosophical underpinnings of the trilogy's end are somewhat downbeat.
Humanity can best survive if it reverts to a more primitive lifestyle,
eschewing technology and submitting to the will of gods and monsters,
both literal and not. Suffice to say, it all makes for an unorthodox take on the Godzilla story,
one that appears not to have resonated with as many viewers as the monster's best movies.
This chapter of Legendary's MonsterVerse not only ruled the box office,
but it also has the second-highest audience score for a Godzilla movie
behind Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
Godzilla vs. Kong promises an epic battle between the titular kaiju, and delivers with several
rounds of ferocious fighting as Godzilla and Kong vie for the right to be the one true king.
To borrow from Saturday Night Live's Stefon,
this movie has everything: giant monsters brawling, a creepy mech,
awesome tech, beautiful special effects, Easter eggs galore, and... mostly irrelevant humans.
The film is tons of fun, and in the tradition of many Godzilla films, what the human beings
are doing generally takes a back seat to the spectacle of two of popular culture's
best-known beasts whaling on each other. It's no wonder that fans of the genre
and fans of blockbuster action in general have responded so positively to it.
Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, also known as Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster and
Godzilla – Ebirah – Mothra: Big Duel in the South Seas, begins the stage of Godzilla's Showa era,
when Godzilla gets silly and Toho cuts costs.
The film features a friendlier-looking Godzilla fighting what's basically a giant lobster.
Originally conceived as a vehicle for King Kong, the project was retooled when Toho
and Rankin/Bass, which produced a King Kong cartoon, couldn't come to terms on Kong's use.
Well, not really "retooled" so much as just sticking Godzilla in where Kong would appear.
The movie is a jumble of spy shenanigans, terrorists called the Red Bamboo
enslaving islanders, a damsel in distress, and a criminal who reforms after his misadventures.
Godzilla doesn't just fight Ebirah, but Mothra, too,
as she arrives to save her people, all before the island is nuked out of existence. The movie is
slow-paced and it takes a long time for Godzilla to appear, even by Godzilla film standards.
Where other Godzilla movies evoke bewilderment and terror at the awesome power of nature,
this movie has a scene where Godzilla and Ebirah play ping-pong with a rock. It's... not good.
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