Review #231: Godzilla (1954)

This review was originally written in October 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #85: Godzilla (1954)

I've never really been a big Godzilla fan; before today, I'd only seen the 1998 Matthew Broderick movie, 2019's Godzilla: King of Monsters, and for some reason 1966's Ebirah: Horror of the Deep (though I swear it was called something like "Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster" but I can't find that title anywhere). I've seen bits and pieces of various movies here and there, so it was nice to go back and see what the first entry was like.

Godzilla has a fairly simple premise, padded out with a lot of reactions from the characters: a group of ships are seemingly attacked off the coast of Japan, and after some time and some investigation it's discovered that a giant, radioactive, prehistoric lizard has come from beneath the sea, and it's angry. Some people want to study it, others want to kill it, but it forces humanity's hand as this giant beast starts destroying everything it comes across with its immense might and radiation powers. Eventually, a scientist reveals that he has made a discovery that has the potential to kill it, but seeing how mankind's weapons were what created (or at least awoken) the monster in the first place, he destroys all of his research and allows himself to also be killed by this new weapon so that nobody else will be able to use it ever again.

So, first things first: it's no secret that this movie is largely inspired by the horrors of the atomic bomb (and allegedly one of the early designs for Godzilla was going to have a head shaped like a mushroom cloud). It's a pretty big part of the movie, with the Japanese government acknowledging that weapons testing awoke the monster from its million-year slumber (or something; I'm a bit unclear on whether the monster was alive before the bomb testing, or if the bomb testing created it, or if it was a normal non-dangerous giant lizard and gained radiation powers and a grumpy disposition as a result of the atomic bomb) and a lot of time is spent lamenting the danger that mankind is in due to their own machinations. Of course the film was setting up the idea that the only thing that can stop this weapons-created-monster is a bigger badder weapon, and I'm glad that the end result was to not allow this bigger badder weapon to fall into anyone's hands after the credits roll. However, there's also a lot of time spent talking about how much it would benefit us if we could study the monster instead of kill it, and of course that doesn't end up happening. (Though, I could be wrong, but I think this is the only movie where Godzilla actually dies, and I've heard that at some point it's claimed that all later Godzilla movies actually follow a different member of Godzilla's species, hence why this one died and yet comes back for like thirty more movies.)

Although I enjoyed this movie, I'm not really crazy about it. The creature design is fantastic and I really think the first twenty minutes did an amazing job of showing rather than telling (you don't actually see any part of the monster until about twenty minutes in, and instead spend those twenty minutes seeing the aftermath of its attacks in various ways), but the entire rest of the movie is really pretty slow and indirect. Like, there's a LOT of "Let's see a bunch of government people making decisions about what to do later" which isn't very exciting. The scenes of the monster's rampage are pretty well done- a lot of craftsmanship went into creating a scaled-down replica of Tokyo for Godzilla to destroy, and the costume actually looks REALLY good for the time, largely because all of its full-body shots are at night so you can't really see it well enough to break the illusion- but there's like a thirty-minute period of this film where it's just "Watch an attack. Watch the army shoot at it during the attack. Watch everyone run away from the attack. Watch a short scene of the protagonists, and then watch another attack. Then watch the army shoot at it again" and it gets old really fast. I appreciate that there is a good amount of humanity on display and seeing the disaster the beast has wrought reflected on the faces of the survivors is very powerful, but it's just a bit too slow and feels like it missed the mark.

It's not a bad film, and it definitely looked way better than I expected (I'm pretty sure the series eventually becomes a guy in a rubber suit flailing around at another guy in a rubber suit on a cheap set made to look like a mountain) but I think it holds up a bit less than some others.

Overall Rating: 5/10 Sandy Trilobites

Zilla Face-off: The 1998 American Godzilla film was largely critically panned, and isn't well-respected among Godzilla fans for many reasons, one of which being the American redesign of the iconic lizard. Apparently, there was another film- 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars- where the classic Godzilla encounters the American Godzilla (nicknamed "Zilla") and classic Godzilla defeats its opponent in the shortest battle in Godzilla history (at a mere 14 seconds). You can watch the entire fight on Youtube.You can watch the entire fight on Youtube.