![]() From the limp adaptation of Gojira into Godzilla, King of the Monsters! where Raymond Burr plays a reporter with a sleepy radio voice, to the 1998 Godzilla, which dropped the monster in New York to stomp Madison Square Garden, Godzilla has been little more than an Asian import who’s more mascot than monster to American eyes. So it’s little surprise Hollywood has seen the monster in playful terms. ![]() Japan’s trauma from the atom bomb is in Godzilla’s DNA. Listen to the opening of Akira Ifukube’s original score and you’ll hear thumping percussions that resemble the booms of bombs exploding. Released nine years after Japan was on the receiving end of the first and only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, Godzilla rose from the sea, cloaked in smoky shadows with scaly skin that intentionally echoed the keloid scars on survivors of Hiroshima. To write the genre off as empty spectacle is, honestly, a very American way of thinking.īy now we should know that Godzilla, birthed in Ishirō Honda’s Gojira (1954), is an avatar of the atomic age. I never liked the underestimating of giant monster movies.
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