Just Beastly: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms

1952, two years before the creation of Godzilla, saw the re-release of King Kong, which made four times what it had on it's initial release. Hoping to capitalize on the success of the film, Warner Brothers set about unleashing a similar film, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. Their gamble paid off. Beast was a spectacular hit, and a very clear influence Godzilla.



This is the first of three giant monster films created by Eugène Lourié, who felt with each film that he was being increasinly pigeonholed. Which is a pity: Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Gorgo are delightful monster films. I'll be discussing The Giant Behemoth next week. The fim's monster was the work of Ray Harryhausen, pupil of Willis O'Brien, who brought Kong and The Lost World's dinosaurs to life.



The rhedasaurus is the first giant monster to be precipitated by a nuclear detonation, a film trope that would continue throughout the 60's and 70's. The explostion is shown through a bright flash, and then stock footage of a Bikini atol detonation. Godzilla had to make do with just the bright flash, but the panic brought on by the unexpectedness of the blast gives the scene more fear than Beast, since the witnesses are all men of science who are expecting it. This is a national difference between the American and Japanese experience with nuclear weapons. To Americans, they are a tool, an experiment. To the Japanese, they are weapons of fear and destruction. Rhedasaurus is not nuclear powered, nor scarred or angry. It was merely woken by the nuclear test.



Nine and a half minutes into the film, the beast is first glimpsed. Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is not ashamed of its monster, perfectly willing to give the audience a preview to whet their appetite for the inevitable city-based rampage. Interestingly, the Beast's first victim is not killed by an attack, but by an avalanche brought on the by the beast's passing. No malice or hunger involved, the human simply was in the wrong palce at the wrong time, emphasizing the destructive capacity of the beast. It is from a different time, and its presence in the modern world is disruptive and deadly.



The rhedasaurus is a magnificent fictional dinosaur. Low-slung on four legs, it does not stand like Godzilla, and can be more aggressive than Lost World's bronotosaur. As with Kong, when the rhedasaurus is on the screen, nothing else is as interesting. All the memorable moments in the film are at the end, during the city-destroying rampage. Harryhausen's technique is every bit as good as O'Brien's, although he does not utilize shots quite as complex. Given the more limited budget of Beast, there are no full-scale mock-ups of any part of the rhedasaurus, forcing Harryhausen to use a small stable of tricks to show interaction between the monmster and the landscape. He does this by picking a car out of a traffic jam of mixed real and miniature cars, deceving the eye aso to where the miniatures begin. When crowds are fleeing into the subway, the Beast rushing toward them, the famous Flatiron Building behind them all.



Other events recur in Godzilla. The military attempts to stop the rhedasaurus with high-voltage wires. We also get a scene in a hospital, where doctors talk about the ancient disease the Beast has. As they talk, they minister to dying patients, and several muffled forms on stretchers are carried bhind them. This moment is the only one in which we see the suffering of those the Beast comes in contact with. Again, this was handled with much more emotional punch by Ishiro Honda.





Structurally, the film The film begins, and is aped by the later Gamera with an arctic nuclear test. The rhedasaurus then smashes a fishing vessel, as Godzilla will do next year. However, Godzilla, rather than leaving the destruction as it was, showed the effects on families and community, showing us the haunted eyes of mothers and sisters whose men would never come home. Godzilla also redefines the protagonist triad of two professors and the pretty female assistant to two professors, a pretty daughter, and a working man, effectively splitting the Tom Nesbitt role into two different characters; Dr. Serizawa, the brilliant scientist, and Hideto Ogata the man of action. Ishiro Honda didn't seem to believe in two-fisted professors.



As is common in science fiction films, the amateur gets to explain how the monster came to be in a hypothetical fashion, in order for it to be dismissed by the “expert”. This allows the information to be handed to the audience, even as it's fantastic and improbably nature is highlighted. And the audience can feel relieved when the world-renowned experd changes his mine and endorses the crackpot theory. After all, he's world-renowned! Professor Elson also makes sure that we know he's about to go on his first extended vacation in 30 years. The Simpsons' portmanteau &lquot;retirony&rquot; seems appropriate here, although Elson does spend his last moments gazing into the mouth of a living specimen of what he has studied for many years.



Beast from 20,000 Fathoms seems caught in between exultation of science, with action professor Tom Nesbitt, and fear of technolgy and scientific advancement, since atomic testing awkaned the creature. But the plusses outweigh the negatives in this case, since a rare radiactive element is what brings the Beast down, delivered by the military (Lee van Cleef, demonstrating that he can shoot and kill damn near anything). As always, it's interesting to look at the film showcasing the technology of the day. The radio announcer, the banks of telephone operators, all are delightfully indicative of the tim period. One of my pleasures when watching a series of Godzilla films is watching the city's height increase from film to film.

Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is a pretty good film. Ray Harryhausen's work on the rhedasaurus is arresting and interesting, and the staging of the its scenes are meticulous and fascinating. A good monster film, highly influential, and essential to anyone who wants to understand the history of giant monster film.



Next week, same director, smaller budget. But tomorrow, I'll be seeing Pacific Rim. If my head explodes I've left strict instructions that someone is to blog about it.

Why Kong is King: King Kong 1933

Of all the giant monster films, King Kong is the one held in highest regard by people who do not ordinarily watch monster films. It was so successful that after it was released in 1933, it was re-released in 1938, 1942, 1946, and 1952 before being sold into television syndication. That's practically unprecidented. The brilliance of the film stands not with the screenwriter or the director. Before Kong appears on screen, the film is ordinary. When Kong is on-screen, the film is brilliant.



The visual effects that created Kong were the work of one man's workshop. Willis O'Brien was the Industrial Light and Magic of his time, creating believable dinosaurs for The Lost World and his crowning achievement, King Kong. He contributed a staggering amount to special effects, utilizing them beautifully in very complex shots that appear natural on the screen. Unfortunately, O'Brien was not as appreciated as he should have been, partialy because the producers of Kong didn't want to let the secret of Kong's special effects out.

O'Brien utilized a lot of tricks that appeared to cross the boundaries of the miniatures effects and the live actors. While fighting a Tyrannosaur, Kong backs into the tree that his pet human Ann Darrow is in, knocking it over. This is something few other Pre-CG monster films achieve, since the monster cannot touch the actors. The many dodges he uses help create the illusion of interaction, giving the big ape credibility. His greatest contribution to film is making a nonexistant giant ape into a sympathetic character.



Kong starts off as a fearful brute, pounding his chest and terrifying Ann Darrow. However, his unexpected gentleness with her is touching, and we begin to realize Kong is not a thing of horror, but a character who grows, has joys, and learns. He lives in a jungle where everything is trying to kill him and the humans, and he protects Ann from them, often getting hurt in the process. We watch him make decisions, as when he is trying to grab Jack Driscoll, and Ann screams because of an approaching dinosaur. This is the quality of a thinking creature, not an animal. Even when he is chained up on the Broadway stage, Kong's head and eyes follow the action of the humans below hime. When climbing the Empire State Building, he stops and looks around.



Kong can be described as a character because he changes as his environment does. In his own land, he is but one gigantic creature among many, able to survive and even thrive. In the land of men, he is a titanic misfit. Ishiro Honda's quote is most applicable here. “Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy. They do not attack people because they want to, but because of their size and strength, mankind has no other choice but to defend himself. After several stories such as this, people end up having a kind of affection for the monsters. They end up caring about them.” Kong is ultimately the victim of Carl Denham's desire to make money.

In the iconic climax, Kong squares off again against the technology of a modern city. Having succumbed to the gas bombs, but destroyed the chrome steel manacles, Kong comes up against airplanes. The expression of bewilderment and anger on Kong's face as he realizes he has been wounded humanize him even more. No matter which side the audience is rooting for, the climax provides plenty of dramatic tension. Kong manages to down a plane, but eventually, he is too wounded to keep his precarious footing. He wipes at his eyes, makes a gesture to Anne. He knows he is going to die, and so does the audience. This is the brilliance of O'Brien's work, making the giant monster into a sympathetic creature, turning what could have been a disaster film into a tragedy.



A racist text can be easily seen in the film. Aside from the uncomfortably inappropriate Skull Islanders, Kong himself can be seen as a metaphor for racist fear. The gorilla, a stand-in for supposed black male aggression, is fine where he is, but infatuated with the blonde and brought to the big city, he goes on a destructive rampage. It it left up to the viewer to decide if it's the photographer's flashes that enrage Kong, or Jack Driscoll embracing Ann Darrow. Fortunately, this is not an aspect that carries over into later films that do not feature giant apes, but it is a reason I'm not interested in subsequent ape films.

How influential was Kong on Godzilla? Tremendously. Many moments are echoed, especially in the first Godzilla. Like Godzilla, at first we get a short glimpse of the giant monster, but later we get a longer view, and the monster is not diminished by the audience's long look. Kong looks good. Godzilla looks good. There is a time to hide the monster (although 2006's The Host shows us that even this is unnecessary, given the right plot structure), and there is a time to show that the monster's actions are what make it monstrous, rather than it's appearance. Both monsters wreck with a train. Kong destroys the elevated train, while Godzilla merely steps in front of one, emphasizing their differences. After an initial sighting, humans discover the footprints of the giant creature.



Which is not to say that the later film is a copy of King Kong. Godzilla dispenses with King Kong's middle act, going straight from the discovery of the giant monster to the rampage in the city. This is partially because Godzilla has no place on this earth. He is not a natural creature. Kong's time on New York City is less then twenty minutes, his rampage only fifteen. Godzilla's Tokyo rampage takes about the same amount of time, but the film shows us the human consequences of that rampage, after which a way must be found to destroy him. The nature of Godzilla is that nothing as simple as planes and bullets will do. Further, Honda takes the mother and child moment, seen in both The Lost World and King Kong, where the child or mother and child are directly in the path of the rampaging monster, and turns it into a heart-wrenching moment. Godzilla's version of this scene has her say that they will reunited their father, and is vastly more effective because the mother is humanized with dialog. None of O'Brien's mothers in peril have depth.



Once Godzilla was a working franchise, it was perhaps inevitable, given Kong's fight with a Tyrannosaur, that King Kong and Godzilla would fight. The combat between Kong and the Tyrannosaur is one of the most memorable moments in the film. Again, moments were repeated from King Kong, such as when Kong throws Godzilla the same way he throws the Tyrannosaur. There is also a moment where Kong shoves a tree into Godzilla's mouth; a moment not actually in King Kong, but in a promotional photograph. Interestingly, the film was based on a Willis O'Brien idea.





King Kong is a magnificent film that no lover of monster film can ignore. So many tropes were created with this film that it is the complete break-out of the genre. There have been dozens, if not hudreds, of references to the film and character in film since then.



I also want to take a moment to acknowledge Kong's most successful descendent, Donkey Kong. In the 1981 game Donkey Kong, a large gorilla kidnaps Pauline and stands at the top of a series of girders, as if the Empire State Building were a constructon site. Mario climbs the building and attmepts to rescue Pauline. While the initial game is similar to the King Kong scenario, later versions are not.

As with Godzilla, the monster that is familiar becomes our friend. Donkey Kong is no exception. Like Son of Kong, a sequel to Donkey Kong was Donkey Kong, Junior, which made the giant ape more sympathetic, as the player was rescuing him from the mean carpenter. Kong and his son then go on to be popular characters starring in their own game series, and appearing in most interations of the Mario Brothers franchise. The monster becomes our friend.



Next up? Ray and Ray make the beast!

Godzilla's Grandpaw: 1925's The Lost World

So, a bit of mission creep. I originally wanted to just discuss Godzilla and a few of his imitations, but I realized that I was also interested in where the idead behind Godzilla came from. Giant radioactive lizards do not spring from nowhere. Ideas, especially film ideas, have a traceable ancestry, as well as a list of descendents, and I want to delve into the origins of ideas and the way they combine to create something extraordnary. As a result, I'll be in black and white for a little whle. I hope you don't mind.

I would be remiss if I did not include what is considered the first appearance of a giant monster in film, George Melie's À la conquête du pôle (The Conquest of the Pole). In it, a frost giant attacks the party, consuming (and then regurgiating) one of its members.



The anmation of the large puppet is pretty good; the eyes, brows, and ears wiggle, the mouth moves. The professors react in the same way as all humans confronted with gigantic monsters; they fire at it, to no effect. Only when a canon is brought to bear does the giant leave off snacking. It is not killed, however, but withdraws from the noise and smoke of the canon.

But The Frost Giant really didn't have much influence on Godzilla, or many other giant monsters. The construction technique is very different, it is not central to the film, and it has very little personality. The monster is in it's own territory, rather than trespassing on the the realm of mankind.

The oldest film that had the most lasting effect on Godzilla, and giant monster film in general, is the 1925 The Lost World, with dinosaurs animated by Willis O'Brien. This is, rather famously, a film greatly loved by Rays Harryhausen and Bradbury. Dinosaurs and humans share the screen effortlessly, thanks to O'Brien's pioneering use of split screen.



The Lost World was the first very successful dinosaur film, and the first international success of Willis O'Brien. As I discuss Godzilla's ancestry, Willis O'Brien and Eugène Lourié will consistently crop up.

O'Brien's work in The Lost World is meticulous and fascinating. For this film, he incorporated bladders into several the models, allowing them to simulate breathing. His attention to detail and desire to make each model have its own personality serves him well here, but much more so in King Kong, since the big ape has a lot more screen time. The amount of time the film devotes to dinosaurs is impressive. They first appear 36 minutes into the film, and the model sequences are pretty consistent from then on. It's one of the most extensively special-effects films filmed up to that point.



After an hour's worth of adventures on the Plateau of Dinosaurs, Professor Challenger manages to apprehand a sauropod and bring it back to London. In the book, his capture was a pterodactyl, but the brontosaur was a much better idea for on-the streets mayhem. In the Crichton/Speilberg film, it is escalated again to a T-Rex. Kong-style (but off-screen) it gets loose and rampages for five muinutes at the climax of the film. People panic, fences are stomped, a building smashed, all before it crashes through Tower Bridge and into the Thames. Back in its element, it swims off, one of the few giant monsters to survive its inital clash with mankind.





This is an enormously influential sequence, and will be referred to by Willis and his protegee Harryhausen several times. Images and scenes that are repeated or imitated include mother and child in the path of the onrushing giant monster (later seen in King Kong). The dinosaur is intrigued by the street lamp, as the Rhedosaur is intrigued with the lighthouse and fog horn in Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Tower Bridge is prominently featured, then damaged, as it would be in Gorgo. The brontosaur sticks its head in a window, the way Kong puts his hand into a window. Fleeing men and women turn to the underground for safety, as they do in Godzilla, Godzilla Raids Again and Gorgo, while monster's heavy tread causes debris to rain down.



In this five-minute sequence, the seeds are laid for the first generation of giant monster films. The beast runs amock, people flee in panic, and destruction ensues. Godzilla Raids Again changes the dynamic of the genre, adding the opponent for the monster to fight, but so many of the films I'll be discussing, from Beast from 20,000 Fathoms to Cloverfield take their inspiration, directly or indirectly, from this sequence.



Next week, the Big Ape. With a quick side digression about a plumber.

Quick, Cheap, and Seminal: Godzilla Raids Again

What does a film company do when they have an unexpectedly huge hit? They follow up with a quick, cheap, sequel. King Kong was followed up in nine months with Son of Kong, and Godzilla was followed six months later by Godzilla Raids Again.



I won't be discussing the American versions of Japanese monster films if I can get the Japanese cut. I'm just not that interested. I'm a subs guy, as I find the process of dubbing can be convoluted, especially when attempting to cram English words into mouths speaking Japanese. This distances the dialog from the original concept, and unless there's some sort of genius doing the translating, it's three removes from the original, rather than one. I prefer to read the dialog, and listen to the voices of the original actors. As a result, I'm enjoying Sony's releases of these films on DVD, since they include a subbed Japanese version, as well as the dubbed and often recut American version.

Godzilla Raids Again provides us with the answer to the impotent military posited in the original Godzilla. If the colossus cannot be defeated by conventional weapons, then how do we provide narrative tension? The answer is to fight fire with fire, and introduce another giant monster. And this is the moment the Godzilla franchise comes into its own, providing a stage for two or more gigantic monsters to meet and fight.

Godzilla is no longer a mystery, so he appears much earlier in the film that the previous one. Less than nine minutes in, Godzilla and Anguirus are shown, already locked in combat. This is a second mutated dinosaur. The original Godzilla was killed by the Oxygen Destroyer, and nuclear testing has once again produced a gigantic version of a dinosaur from the same family. But that's not important. What's important is that Japan must now face another attack by Godzilla.



To remind the viewer of the original Godzilla film (remember this is the fifties, so there are no DVDs or home versions of film avalable), Dr Yamane (played again by Takashi Shimura, one of Kurosawa's pernnial players) shows us a quick reel from the previous film. It's a hoary old device, but one that works. Yamane and the military explicitly agree that the military is useless against these titanic monsters, and that they must keep an eye on the monsters in order to predict where they will be most destructive, and evacuate the civilians.



The device used in this film is that Godzilla is attracted to light. This is a small reference to the first film, when Godzilla attacked the broadcast tower, having seen the flashing lights from the photographers. This may also be a reference to King Kong, as it's the photographer's flashes that set Kong on his rampage. It also reinforces the Godzilla as American military metaphor, since the authorities shut down the lights of Osaka. The audience would have remembered blackouts during WWII bombing raids. It also serves to show the folly of men. Godzilla is indeed distracted by the flares, but a fire at an oil refinery catches his attention, at which point Osaka gets stomped.





The human characters are much more ordinary. Our protagonists are pilots for a fishing company, as well as the girls they are sweet on. Dr. Yamane appears only to give us plot exposition as the Gozilla expert. The smaller lives of these less-developed characters stand in contrast to the previous film. These are working-class, in the employ of Kaiyo Fishing Company trying to do what they can, not researchers or scientists.

Godzilla's breath weapon is used, but in many ways it is downplayed. Anguirus takes a face full of it, but shrugs it off, either because he is already mutated, or it's not that powerful. But we do see the city going up in flames behind him. The wrestling is famously different from the slightly overcranked Godzilla scenes from the original film. These are slightly undercranked, so the wrestling is a bit fast. The effect isn't all that impressive, lending neither weight nor a sense of mass to the struggle. Which is strange, because some of the scenes of collapsing buildings, and a few of the monsters themselves, are clearly overcranked. This (along with the quick glimpse of a crew member while Tsukioka and Kobayashi are on the island) speaks to the cheap and rushed nature of the film.



Anguirus is killed and then incinerated by Godzilla just over halfway through the film. As this was establishing the giant monster vs giant monster genre, this is unexpected. Later, the confrontation between the two monsters will be the set piece climax at the end of the film. Here, Anguirus is more or less there to give Godzilla something to do, rather than just crushing Osaka for the first half of the film.

Although Godzilla Raids Again is still grim in tone, the scenes of destruction are not interspersed with scenes of human suffering. There are no crying children, and no scintillation counters. Immediately after the attack, the protagonists are seen cleaning up the burned remains of Kaiyo Fishing, and the president promises that he will rebuild it. This is a spirit of post-war Japan. Their country had been bombed pretty heavily, and there was a lot of work to be done.







Godzilla vanishes the minute Anguirus is defeated. And then we are treated to a sort of slice-of-life comedy. It's a bit strange, although if the intent was to have the characters return to a 'normal' life after Godzilla's rampage, I suppose I understand it. It doesn't contribute to the disaster feel of he film, however.

David Kalat equates the death of Kobiyashi, the popular and genial pilot looking for love, with a kamakazi suicide action. I think that's unclear in the Japanese version of the film. I find it equally possible that Kobiyashi was attempting to distract Godzilla. Yes, he is angry with the big lizard, but he is hit by Godzilla's atomic ray and crashes into a mountain. He was clearly conscious as he did so. If he wanted to crash into Godzilla, he could likely have done so, on fire or not.

For the first tme in the franchise, the military is not entirely useless. Tanks and missiles are ineffective, and when the search is on to find Godzilla, the military deploys jets. It takes Tsukioka in his prop plane to locates him. However, once Godzilla is located, bombs and missiles work indirectly, causing avalanches of ice to fall on Godzilla, trapping the giantic beast at the cost of several planes and their pilots.



Godzilla Raids Again is an unexciting, but not awful entry in the genre. It requires a bit of patience to appreciate and love; it's not a great, layered work of art. I find it interesting as a look into the way that the genre evolved.

In the end, Godzilla is buried under induced avalanches of ice on a remote island. And there he would remain until he wakes again. But was it the footsteps of a giant ape that awaken him to color after a seven-year sleep? Or was it something else?

My Year of Monsters: Godzilla 1954

I suspect Godzilla has more than a hundred reviews around the net, not including Amazon.com. Certainly it's the best known kaiju film, having demonstrated the genre could generate a lot of money. And though it is credited with starting the kaiju genre, the genre's roots go further back than 1954. King Kong (1933) is one of the first giant monster films. Kong doesn't destroy New York, but he presents us with that frission of the monster in a city. The work of Ray Harryhausen is another influence. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Giant Behemoth gave a great deal of inspiration to Godzilla, making the Big Lizard not so much the originator of the genre, but it's mega-break-out star.

Godzilla did, however, establish the Japanese suitimation monster movie, and the dozens of films (Godzilla himself stars in some twenty-nine) that follow the formula of giant monsters emerge and devastate a city.



Giant monsters work best, for me, in film. Film has an immediacy, and an ability to leave questions unaswered where books can be blunt. The way that a giant minster moves is so important to its character, especially as the creature has no words, and thus is very difficult to portray in a static medium, such as in a comic or a book.

Only Japan could have birthed Godzilla. While it is well-known that Godzilla is the the son of nuclear testing and attack (it was released in the wake of not only the atomic bombing of Japan, but also the fallout poisoning of Lucky Dragon 5, which happened early in 1954, the year Godzilla was being made. The immediacy of that connection is often lost on modern audiences. But Godzilla can also be seen as the son of tsunami, typhoon, and earthquake, all natural disasters with which Japan is intimately familiar. Godzilla comes from the sea like a tsunami, or typhoon.



Until 1984's Return of Godzilla, this is the only film in which Godzilla does not fight another giant monster. Here, Godzilla is faced with only the military, which is completely ineffectual. This is a recurring theme in the franchise, the inability of the military to stop the creature. Science destroys Godzilla, not force. This pacifistic paradox stands in many of the earlier Godzilla films. While the military is called in, they merely mark the gigantic creature's invulnerability and frightening powers, such as radioactive breath. In subsequent films, there is a feeling of pro forma military action. Everyone knows tanks and missiles are useless, but something has to be done. In this first film there is some hope that tanks and artillery will work, but it is extinguished when Godzilla responds with a more terrible weapon, his radioactive heat ray. So in addition to everything else, Godzilla can also be seen as a version of American aggression, which responded with nuclear hostility when attacked.



Unlike subsequent films in the series, Godzilla draws its emotional power by focusing on the suffering caused by Godzilla. Scenes include the relatives of the Emiko-Maru's crew waiting to find out their fate, Shinkichi screaming for his brother to run as his house collapses, children being checked with a scintillation counter, (cut from Godzilla, King of the Monsters), and a mother holding her children in abject terror as the city collapses around them (also cut from the Amnerican release). This aspect, which includes showing us Godzilla 23 minutes into the film, tells us that the monster is not frightening for what it is, but rather what it can do. In later films, we see the stock image of people running from the giant monster, but we seldom see them in pain or weeping as the titan destroys their lives.









In addition, the various protagonists, all sympathetic, are at odds as to what to do about the gigantic menace. Dr. Serizawa has the power to destroy it, but doesn't want to expose the world to his terrible creation. Dr. Yamane wants to study the creature, given its uniqueness. Emiko, Yamane's daughter, promised to Serizawa and in love with Hideto Ogata, it torn between duty and love. Only when she sees the distress around her does she break her promise and sacrifice her personal honor in order to try to destroy Godzilla. Ogata himself, working class and handsome, is the only person convinced (until Emiko walks the corridors of the hospital choked with the wounded and dying in the wake of Godzilla's attack) that Godzilla must be destroyed.



Initially Godzilla is attacked with machine guns. It is only during his second trip to Tokyo that he is attacked with tanks, artillery, and a large electrical fence. During this attack, Godzilla first unleashes its terrible nuclear breath, which melts steel, destroys tanks, and turns Tokyo on a sea of fire. This may be a call back to the horrific firebombing of Tokyo in 1945, and possibly the 1923 Kanto earthquake, which devastated Tokyo and Yokohama. Following the earthquake, enormous fires broke out, consuming more than half a million homes.



As a soundtrack afficionato, I feel that the contribution of composer Akira Ifukube is often overlooked. Some of his atmospherics uninspiring, but the Godzilla theme remains a classic. The heart of the film is in the beautiful "Prayer for Peace" which, accompanied by the scenes of devastation and long panned shots of bloodied hospital patients, punches the audience in the gut. "May we live without destruction/May we look on tomorrow with hope," sings the choir, guiding the audience to the same conclusion Dr. Serizawa does--that peace and hope are worth sacrifice.

Godzilla's death is not a triumph. It is a sad moment, both for Serizawa and for Godzilla. As Godzilla surfaces for one agonized scream, we feel little triumph, despite the reporter calling it such. Instead, we feel relief that the disaster has ended. This identification with the tragedy of the monster is another emotional thread that sets this flm apart from most other monster films. Godzilla is not a villain. He simply is too large, too destructive, to co-exist with humans.



The film ends with an on-the-nose plea for nuclear testing to cease, lest it bring up another Godzilla-like disaster. Ultimately, the world did not grant this wish.



Godzilla is a great film, and practically unique. Few other films take a gigantic monster so seriously. The human action is pretty good, pitting the characters against themselves as the Giant Disaster Lizard pushes everyone. This may not be where the kaiju got started, but for me, it's where they got interesting.

Monsters over Giant Robots

As long as I've liked gigantic things destroying buildings, I've preferred the monsters over the robots. The giant robot genre has never interested me, and I think I finally know why.

A huge monster is what it is. A giant radioactive lizard, a gargantuan moth, a massive alien from another planet, it doesn't require an explanation. It just is, and it's coming to tear down the city, and it has to be stopped. The giant robot, on the other hand, is made by human ingenuity, and the director always feels the need to show off how awesome that creation is. What we inevitably get is the overlong deployment.



Here's Mechagodzilla ("Kiryu") from the 2003 Godzilla: Tokyo SOS. It's being repaired from it's last encounter with Godzilla (Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, 2002). It's big, the third Mechagodzilla, and it looks pretty cool. However, how long are you interested in staring at it? Because the filmmaker, like many before him, gives us plenty of time to look at the mini-maker's handiwork.

We hear the command to deploy Kiryu at 46:20. And then we begin a long series of beauty passes, intercut with people looking or saluting the awesome vehicle.



Which goes on...



And on...



And on...



As it continues to happen...



Until it finally ends at 48:50, a full two and a half minutes after we hear the order to deploy.



The problem is that nothing interesting has happened. I love suitimation more than most, but the long passes don't impress me. I'm more interested in what it does. Heck, you don't even have to tell me all of it's Checkov's Guns. The giant robot is going to pour a bunch of different-colored special effects into it's opponent, and that's going to make explosions. That's what I want out of a giant robot. Imagine a two and a half minute scene, with cuts, of someone awesome standing in an elevator, saying nothing. That's excruciatingly dull. The fact that the character is huge and a robot does not make it any more interesting.

I'm hoping that with the plot elements and human drama that are integral to the the giant robot deployment in Pacific Rim, it will be less excruciatingly wasted time.

Pacific Rim is Coming...

Have you seen those trailers?



Pacific Rim is gong to be the first IMAX film I see, and the first 3d film I see. Yeah, I'm that technologically backwards.

I love monster films. Have for a long time. Godzilla is, among other things, my personal trainer. I own more films with Godzilla in them than any other character. One of the most expensive book I have ever purchased was the second edition of David Kalat's Critical History of Toho's Godzilla Series, 2nd edition. (In case you're wondering, the most expensive was the slipcased God of the Razor from Subterranian Press.) Because Godzilla films are fun to watch, and they also present an interesting history of Japan. As Kalat says, Godzilla is commonly understood to be a metaphor for nuclear bombing, it is also uniquely indicative of the Japanese experience. It almost always comes from the sea, like a tsunami. Under its weight, tall skycrapers crumble, as if from an earthquake. There is a power, and at their best a majesty, to these films.

I also enjoy Godzilla pastiches and homages. I've recently acquired Gorgo, the British version in which the titular monster stomps London. Yonggary is a South Korean remake. Each of these puts a unique national stamp on the story of the creature that destroys cities by stomping on them. The lost Bollywood version is Gogola, and I would love to find a copy of it. So would a lot of other people.

In the next year, two major American kaiju films are coming. Pacific Rim this year, and Godzilla next, which is the 60^th anniversary of the release of the original Godzilla. I'm hoping that these movies will revive the viability of the kaiju franchises. I also hope they don't suck, like the last American version of Godzilla. If these two films are good and succesasful, we might have another wave of influenced films, especially in this climate of imitation over innovation.

Certainly the prices on certain Godzilla DVDs are astronomically stupid. Destroy All Monsters, released on DVD and Blu-Ray in 2011, just two years ago, is a hundred bucks on Amazon. And while Sony is doing a magnificent job releasing the earlier Godzilla films in both American and original Japanese formats (I'm a sub, rather than a dub sort of guy), their release has been spotty. Hopefully, the 60^th Anniversary will prompt the release of the more obscure DVDs, such as Smog Monster, and finally an American release of Godzilla 1984 on DVD. We got Godzilla vs Biollante last year. Weird-o film Zaat just got a Blu-ray release, is it really that difficult to finagle a couple more Godzilla releases?

For the next year, I'll be intermittently (how can a blog that gets updated once a month carry on an intermittant series? Hell if I know). discussing Godzilla and adding a few thoughts I have on the Big Guy.