You may be wondering what a Greatest Living Author watches when he’s not writing. Well, how about the Most Godzilla movie of the classic era of the franchise?
[Plus, some thoughts on the rest of the franchise at large.]
Photo by Nick Kwan on Pexels.com
FYI: Destroy All Monsters is available legally and for free on Tubi both dubbed and with subtitles — along with other Godzilla movies from the Showa era of the franchise (more on what that means exactly later).
Part 1: The Recommendation
In retrospect, it’s kind of amazing how everyone’s favourite giant, radioactive dinosaur turned from a titanic monster rising from depths of the sea and lumbering out of our collective nightmares created by the rise of the Atomic Age to, for all intents and purposes, a big, green superhero.
I took a mere three movies and eight years from Godzilla to go from a walking natural disaster to a fairly goofy, albeit still antagonistic, character.
The first two Godzilla movies are dark, sombre, and genuinely frightening.
The third, King Kong vs. Godzilla, was much lighter and more comical and based on the premise of watching two of the most famous movie monsters beat each other up.
Also, promotional images for the film heavily featured Kong spinning Godzilla around by the tail a la Mario 64.
This is not the goofiest thing Godzilla would ever do in the Showa-era (i.e. the 50s-70s, basically “classic” Godzilla; named for the formal name of the Emperor of Japan at the time).
Not, in fact, the goofiest thing that happened during the Showa era.
Invasion of Astro-Monster: Toho.
Long story short, as the franchise continued, Godzilla got progressively goofier and more heroic and, with a few exceptions, the films themselves got more and more lighthearted and kid-oriented.
This era of the franchise culminated with a film that was initially intended as a potential grand finale to the entire franchise (clearly, that didn’t happen).
That film is 1968’s Destroy All Monsters.
Destroy All Monsters: Toho and the Criterion Collection.
By this point, Toho, the studio behind the Godzilla movies had comfortably settled into a formula for the franchise: aliens are planning to invade Earth for reasons with inconsistent degrees of satisfactory explanation, the aliens somehow mind-control the Earth monsters and set them loose, the human heroes find a way to undo the mind control and free the Earth monsters, and then Godzilla and whichever other monster he’s teaming up with this time around beat up the aliens’ monsters and save the day.
Destroy All Monsters! doesn’t upset this formula, so much as take it to its obvious conclusion.
In the wondrous future of the late 1990s (remember, the movie is from 1968), the monsters have been comfortably settled on Monster Island, which I’m told is just a name —
— until an all-female race of aliens called the Kilaaks get involved and mind-control, well, all monsters. Eventually, the monsters are freed, leading the Kilaaks to go to their Plan B, summoning King Ghidorah and setting him loose.
This of course leads to the climactic final battle between Ghidorah and, well, all monsters. Given that he’s outnumbered about eighty-six to one, he fares about as well as you’d expect, and the day is saved and everyone lives happily ever after.
Except, of course, for everyone who got smooshed by the monsters.
Destroy All Monsters isn’t necessarily the best Godzilla movie, and despite being intended as the grand finale of the Showa-era films, it’s actually still a pretty good place to start or to just be the one Godzilla movie you ever watch. It’s worth watching if only for the chance to watch, well, all monsters get their moment to shine.
It’s not the best Godzilla movie, but it is probably the most Godzilla movie.
And, incidentally, 2004’s Final Wars is very much Destroy All Monsters‘s spiritual successor — meant to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Godzilla himself and serving to cap off the Millennium Era of the franchise by once again unleashing, well, all monsters.
Final Wars isn’t necessarily a good movie. It is however a relentlessly, entertainingly, endearingly dumb movie that knows exactly what it is and goes all in on the premise. Again, it’s not a good movie, but it is a pretty good “Destroy All Monsters for the
Part 2: Further Thoughts on a Giant, Radioactive Dinosaur
Following up on the actual recommendation, here are some quick thoughts on some of the other Godzilla movies.
The original Godzilla got two separate releases: the original Japanese version in 1954 (Godzilla; Gojira in the original Japanese), and an edited American version in 1956 (Godzilla, King of the Monsters). Incidentally, there was also a really weird Italian re-cut of the film. In terms of cinematic merit, the original Godzilla is probably the best in the series, because it’s a stone-cold serious horror movie and a pretty sombre, sobering reflection on the perils of the Atomic Age.
Sure, the special effects haven’t exactly aged well, but the original Godzilla still manages to be genuinely scary and upsetting in a lot of places. And, honestly, the appearance of the original Godzilla still really scares me.
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster is notable for being the first appearance of King Ghidorah (duh), who’d go on to essentially become Godzilla’s primary antagonist. It’s also notable for being the first of many, many time Godzilla would team up with Mothra and/or Rodan. Most significantly, this is the movie where Godzilla first became a good guy, setting the course for Godzilla’s characterisation for basically the entire rest of the franchise.
Godzilla vs. Hedorah is really, really weird and probably made under the influence of something.
It’s got an expository theme song that’s almost like something out of a James Bond movie, bizarre animated scene transitions, and Godzilla using his Atomic Breath to fly around like a rocket.
It’s not even necessarily bad (especially not for an early 70s Godzilla movie), it’s just so singularly, unprecedentedly strange that it’s nothing like any Godzilla before or since.
If nothing else, it’s entertainingly bizarre.
Notably, its director was initially expected to do a sequel, but was immediately fired by the higher-ups at Toho after the movie was released.
Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack! is a mouthful a more recent Godzilla movie, from the so-called Millennium Era of the series (2001, specifically). Even at this point in the series, the movies (especially the dubs) never stopped being goofy and cheesy, but GMK is notable for being a rare return to Godzilla being a villain. For reasons that are never made entirely clear, the Godzilla that was destroyed in the 1950s (i.e. the original movie) is reanimated by the vengeful spirits of those killed the Pacific Theatre in World War II.
Subsequently, the three Guardian Monsters — Baragon (who didn’t even make it into the title for some reason), Mothra, and King Ghidorah (in his only appearance as a good guy) — awaken to stop him. With, uh, mixed results.
As a result of turning heel for the first time in decades, GMK Godzilla also gets a significant upgrade in this power levels, while the Guardian Monsters get a proportional downgrade, which means they spend most of the movie getting beat up by Godzilla. Though, on the other hand, the Guardian Monsters’ stated goal isn’t necessarily to beat Godzilla, it’s to help the humans help themselves stop Godzilla.
Shin Godzilla is the most recent Japanese Godzilla movie (unless you count the Netflix anime trilogy). Released in 2016, Shin Godzilla (shin being a Japanese word that means either “new”, “true”, or “god”, all of which the title is trying to invoke) is basically the 21st century version of the original Godzilla. He’s no longer a destructive protector god, and is once again an inexorable force of destruction.
Where the original Godzilla was a metaphor for the atom bomb, Shin Godzilla is a metaphor for the 2011 tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster. Shin Godzilla himself is an absolute nightmare, even before he starts doing anything — and, man, when he starts, things start going south fast. He just looks so horrifying and wrong by every possible metric.
Shin Godzilla is also a fascinating satire of modern Japanese politics. Part of the reason Godzilla is able inflict as much destruction as he does is because the government’s response is held up by bureaucracy, red tape, and indecision, as observed and navigated by the film’s primary protagonist, a mid-level bureaucrat. And, honestly, he’s one of my favourite human heroes in the entire franchise
Finally, Legendary’s Godzilla movies, 2014’s Godzilla and 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters are two of my favourite movies, like, ever. Legendary Godzilla is just that awesome. Also, Bryan Cranston and Ken Watanabe are along for the ride.
Now, they didn’t really do well with the critics, but I feel like critics expecting a proper work of cinema are unable to enjoy the simple pleasures of watching giant radioactive monsters kick each through buildings. If you like Godzilla, these are pretty much the perfect movies.
Also, in King of the Monsters, Godzilla goes Super Saiyan.
And, of course, Godzilla vs. Kong promises what it delivers. The human plotlines — one following a group of humans following Kong and one following the group following Godzilla — are probably the weakest human story of the Monsterverse films.
But you aren’t watching a movie called Godzilla vs. Kong for the humans. The flipside is that the, to borrow the MPA’s phrasing again, Creature Violence is probably the best of the Monsterverse movies. The two fights before the inevitable team-up against the actual villain — who shall remain nameless but is heavily foreshadowed in the lead-up to his reveal — are awesome.
Sidebar: Godzilla vs. Kong made only about as much money as the 2014 Godzilla, but did it in the middle of a pandemic while being released simultaneously on streaming platforms — HBO Max in the States (where it had one of the most successful debuts in the platform’s history); I rented digitally it via Cineplex, which, for my non-Canadian readers, is basically the one theatre chain we’ve got up here.
I haven’t really been keeping up with the news, but I do recall seeing announcements of a Kong show on Netflix, a Godzilla show on Amazon Prime, and another Monsterverse movie.
Finally, we’ve got 2021 anime Godzilla Singular Point, which is basically “This is your Godzilla on Quantum Mechanics.”
Based on my admittedly not comprehensive knowledge of Quantum Mechanics, Singular Point is based around concepts of space, time, space-time and that sort of technobabble that seems at least internally consistent but sounds ridiculous and is probably going to alienate most of the casual audience.
On the other hand, it’s a novel approach to the whole idea of Godzilla As Walking Calamity. Basically, Quantum Godzilla’s mere existence is threatening to unravel the universe.
Despite the high-concept, high-level Quantum technobabble, it’s a smaller scale, ground-level approach to the human characters trying to solve Godzilla and the other monsters, there are some interesting call-backs to the rest of the franchise and some neat artistic touches, but there’s markedly less Creature Violence and, like I said, the Quantum Mechanics are liable to either befuddle or alienate a good chunk of the audience.
However, it is worth at least trying to watching, if only for how weird it is.
And there you have it: plenty of Godzilla movies for you to look into.
My other recommendations are available here.
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