That atomic radiation is better than heart oil? Because, in the year of his seventieth birthday, Godzilla appears to us more popular and in better shape than ever.
Seventy years and not hearing them. Indeed, celebrate them in a big waywith a celebratory screening at the Berlin Film Festival of the film where it all began, with a Oscar Prize went to the most recent Japanese branch of the saga, and with a new Hollywood blockbuster – part of the so-called MonsterVerse – which arrives in cinemas around the world. Godzilla, in this 2024 which marks a very important anniversary, is more present, vital, and protagonist than ever.
Progenitor of all kaiju to come, Godzilla (which at home is called Gojira) was born in 1954, protagonist of the legendary – and beautiful – film of the same name directed by Ishirō Honda. It is a prehistoric dinosaur, which was awakened from a thousand-year sleep, and made even more gigantic and lethal, with the ability to spit destructive rays from its mouth, by nuclear experiments carried out in the Pacific. He awakens, and lands on Japanese things, sowing panic and destruction.
You don't need to be a particularly attentive scholar to understand and know that Godzilla was born as a reaction to the dropping of the US atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki which put an end to the Pacific War, but also indelibly marked the history and psyche of a nation, and the history of the whole world.
The fact is that Honda's film – the one that had its world premiere at Berlinale a few weeks ago in its restored version in 4K – it is an extraordinary success, and that Godzillaat the time played by real actors in rubber costumes, instantly became a legendary character, who would give life to a genre and a long, very long series of films.
For a long time, for several decades, Godzilla remains a Japanese prerogative: to date there are thirty-three official films of the saga produced by That one, the Japanese studio that holds the rights to the brand. Even Godzilla films, as often happens in those parts in other areas, are divided into “eras”: the era Showa (which includes films made up to 1975), the Heisei (films shot between the second half of the Eighties and the first half of the Nineties), the Millennium (from '99 to 2004) and the era Reiwa (the one currently underway, which began with Shin Godzilla of 2016 and which currently reaches up to Godzilla Minus One which this year won a historic Oscar for best special effects).
If the monster itself was born as a consequence of an American gesture, in some way we can say that the era was too Millennium (not very happy) and the Reiwa (on the contrary, quite remarkable), were born in reaction to what was happening on the other side of the Pacific, in Hollywood.
In fact, right from the start, ever since that first film in 1954, the American film industry attempted to somehow take possession of Godzilla, but for a long time the only result was the co-production of a 1965 Toho film (The invasion of the astromonsters) and redubbing and adaptation with various video inserts (such as those in which Raymond Burr appears in the role of journalist Steve Martin) to replace some original scenes of the films from the East.
The first Hollywood Godzilla arrived in 1998 (one year before the dawn of the Millennium era, therefore), when Ronald Emmerich he is going to disembark his “Zilla” in New York to sow panic and destruction, as happened time and again in Tokyo. Emmerich's film was highly contested by the most ardent fans of Godzillabut ultimately it is precisely his freedom and his not taking himself too seriously that make him, for the less squeamish, a sort of guilty pleasure.
The fact is that, between one attempt and another, more than fifteen years had to pass before seeing an American Godzilla at the cinema again, when with the approval of Toho the US companies Warner e Legendary they inaugurated what they baptized “MonsterVerse”with the Godzilla of 2014 directed by Gareth Edwards: an astonishing commercial success which, in addition to supporting the idea of the MonsterVerse, led as a reaction in Japan to the creation of Shin Godzilla (sort of reboot of the Japanese saga) and the birth of the Reiwa era.
The “American” Godzilla, after the inevitable sequel arrived in 2019, crossed paths for the first time with the King Kong of the MosterVerse (which was featured in Kong: Skull Island) in Godzilla vs. Kong of 2021, which is now followed by the brand new and imminent Godzilla and Kong: The New Empire. What the future holds for us, and for our favorite lizard, we still don't know for sure. For now, however, this present is all to be enjoyed, and the horizon appears decidedly auspicious.