Godzilla is still king

Godzilla has starred in the biggest box office hit in the history of Japanese cinema,

Godzilla Minus One

(2023), with a worldwide gross that is close to 100 million dollars (in Spain it reached 200,000 euros).

Meanwhile, on Apple TV his ghost flies over the entire dramatic arc of a series,

Monarch: Legacy of the Monsters

.

The premiere on March 27 of another American feature film, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

(2024),

is also approaching .

The most famous of the

kaiju

remains the King.

In

Godzilla Minus One

, director Takashi Yamazaki takes the story to 1946, to Tokyo after World War II, to tell a story about internal battles, mourning for the loss of loved ones, and pacifism.

According to the director in the promotion of the premiere: “Godzilla belongs to those years and that is why I chose to return him there.

It was a period of considerable misgovernment, there were hardly any weapons and people had to use other means to defeat it.

Furthermore, another of the keys to its success is that it has always told a human story in parallel.”

More information

Why the umpteenth resurrection of Godzilla, the radioactive monster of Japanese origin, is due

In his film, the reproduction of that Tokyo in ruins becomes the excellent portrait of a population that was made to believe all-powerful, and only obtained destruction, defeat and the horror of being the first victim of nuclear horror.

In his autobiography, filmmaker Akira Kurosawa perfectly describes the mood of the population in those years: “On August 15, 1945, they summoned us all to the studio (…) The emperor was going to speak to the nation.

I will never forget the scenes I saw in the streets that day.

As I walked along Soshigaya towards Kinuta Studios, the shopping street was preparing for the Honorable Death of the Hundred Million.

The atmosphere was tense, alarmist.

There were even shopkeepers who had already taken their swords out of their sheaths and sat staring at the naked blade.”

A moment from the attack on Tokyo from 'Godzilla Minus One'.

For Enrique López Lavigne, producer of

Verónica or I'm Going to Have a Good Time,

the film narrates in the first half hour “the events that lead to the appearance of Godzilla: the atomic bomb and the destruction of Tokyo, where the only neighborhood left unrazed It's Ginza, and Godzilla kills it.

It is almost a historical film.”

Japan Under the Terror of the Monster

(1954), by Ishirô Honda, marked the screen debut of Godzilla.

Released three years after the end of the American occupation, from the first moment it was interpreted as a metaphor.

“Many readings have been done,” explains Oriol Estrada, specialist in Japan, writer and creator of the Daruma Space.

“The easiest one to understand is that Godzilla is a metaphor for nuclear devastation.

But there are those who believe that it is a reflection on the role that the Japanese played in the Pacific War, and whether what they received was deserved,” he points out.

One of the characters in

Godzilla Minus One

states that “not having gone to war is something to be proud of,” and the protagonist character, Shikishima, played by Rynosuke Kamiki, takes his name from the first successful kamikaze squadron that sank the aircraft carrier

St. Lo

in 1944. For the actor Kamiki, also speaking to the press in the promotion, the “character [a failed kamikaze] blames himself for having survived and that makes him have a lot of pain in his heart.”

In

Minus one,

the strict Japanese honor of those years is redefined thanks to characters with contradictions who know the futility of war and the opportunity that peace represents.

The emotional scars are joined by the physical ones: “Think that Godzilla's appearance,” says López Lavigne, “is rough and resembles the wounds and scars left by atomic bombs on the civilian population.”

Now, the most spectacular sequence of

Godzilla Minus One

, the monster's attack on the Ginza neighborhood, ends with an explosion in the shape of an atomic mushroom, followed by a black rain, like the one that fell on the population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, liquid radioactivity which over the years caused as many deaths as the explosions, an image with a powerful anti-war charge.

Gareth Edwards, director in charge of reviving Godzilla in Hollywood as a franchise in 2014, has recognized that

Minus One

marks the path for future productions about the Japanese titan.

“Beyond the monster, the Japanese Godzilla is a demigod,” says producer López Lavigne, “while the American Godzilla is basically a monster.”

Japan specialist Oriol Estrada agrees with this: “Every time the US releases a new version, in Japan they put their hands on their heads and say, 'Hold on, I'll show you how to do it!'

That's what happened with

Shin Godzilla

, a huge success.

In the United States they may admire Godzilla a lot, but I think they have never understood or wanted to understand his cultural background.”

If in the main Japanese films, the colossus is a destructive force with a particular fixation on Tokyo, in the recent American versions he is a kind of godfather of humanity who protects us from other MUTOs (English acronym for Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) with special fixation on destroying San Francisco (since 9/11 New York has practically disappeared as a scene of brutal destruction in cinema).

If in Japan Godzilla is a metaphor for nuclear horror, in the US it becomes a protective weapon and we already know that in

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

, the next Californian installment, the approach is repeated and both little animals will defend humanity from a global threat.

As for the series

Monarch: Legacy of the Monsters

(Apple TV), the viewer has gone through 10 episodes without enjoying its charms.

“I really like these types of experiments, but I don't think there is a great contribution.

“It disappointed me a little,” says Enrique López Lavigne.

“Just as

The Mandalorian

series is capable of contributing something to the

Star Wars

universe , here it adds quite little to that of Godzilla.

As in the films produced by Legendary, he has nothing more than a prehistoric monster straight out of

Jurassic Park

.”

A moment from the battle at sea from 'Godzilla Minus One'.

Godzilla returns and attacks everything at once, everywhere, and he does it when the world is in trouble.

“I think Godzilla symbolizes all the problems we have in the world: covid, the invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in Palestine... It is the representation of everything,” says its director Takashi Yamakazi.

For López Lavigne, “the coincidence of two very different films that talk about nuclear danger,

Oppenheimer

and

Godzilla,

is curious .

The terror of the atomic returns, the uncertainty of the future returns.

The Kaiju resurfaces every time there is fear, and it does so as an enemy.”

Oppenheimer,

by Christopher Nolan, has achieved 13 nominations for the Oscars and

Godzilla Minus One

has only scratched one nomination for its excellent visual effects, but beyond the coincidence that López Lavigne talks about, there are three things that are certain: one, that there is a monster for a while;

two, that the Japanese did not like the disregard for the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Nolan's film, so much so that its release is scheduled for 2024, a year later than in the rest of the world, and three, that both have been a commercial success.

So perhaps Hollywood will opt for a different duel than

Barbie

versus Nolan's film, that blockbuster tandem nicknamed

Barbenheimer

, and opt for Godzilla versus

Oppenheimer

which could be titled

Oppenzilla

or

Godziheimer

.

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