Godzilla (Japanese: ゴジラ Hepburn: Gojira) (/ɡɒdˈzɪlə/; [ɡoꜜdʑiɾa] is a fictional monster,
or kaiju, originating from a series of Japanese films of the same name. The
character first appeared in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla and became a
worldwide pop culture icon, appearing in various media, including 32 films
produced by Toho, three Hollywood films and numerous video games, novels, comic
books and television shows. Godzilla has been dubbed the King of the Monsters,
a phrase first used in Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, the Americanized
version of the original film.
Godzilla is depicted as an enormous, destructive,
prehistoric sea monster awakened and empowered by nuclear radiation. With the
nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Lucky Dragon 5 incident
still fresh in the Japanese consciousness, Godzilla was conceived as a metaphor
for nuclear weapons. As the film series
expanded, some stories took on less serious undertones, portraying Godzilla as
an antihero, or a lesser threat who defends humanity. With the end of the Cold
War, several post-1984 Godzilla films shifted the character's portrayal to
themes including Japan's forgetfulness over its imperial past, natural disasters
and the human condition.
Godzilla has been featured alongside many supporting
characters. It has faced human opponents such as the JSDF, or other monsters,
including King Ghidorah, Mechagodzilla and Gigan. Godzilla sometimes has
allies, such as Rodan, Mothra and Anguirus, and offspring, such as Minilla and
Godzilla Junior. Godzilla has also fought characters from other franchises in
crossover media, such as the RKO Pictures/Universal Studios movie monster King
Kong, as well as various Marvel Comics characters, including S.H.I.E.L.D., the
Fantastic Four and the Avengers.
Overview
Name
Gojira (ゴジラ) is a portmanteau of the Japanese words: gorira (ゴリラ,
"gorilla") and kujira (鯨, "whale"), owing to the
fact that in one planning stage, Godzilla was described as "a cross between
a gorilla and a whale", due to its size, power and aquatic origin. One popular
story is that "Gojira" was actually the nickname of a corpulent
stagehand at Toho Studio. Kimi Honda,
the widow of the director, dismissed this in a 1998 BBC documentary devoted to
Godzilla, "The backstage boys at Toho loved to joke around with tall stories".
Godzilla's name was written in ateji as Gojira (呉爾羅),
where the kanji are used for phonetic value and not for meaning.[citation
needed] The Japanese pronunciation of the name is [ɡoꜜdʑiɾa] the Anglicized form is /ɡɒdˈzɪlə/, with
the first syllable pronounced like the word "god" and the rest
rhyming with "gorilla". In the Hepburn romanization system,
Godzilla's name is rendered as "Gojira", whereas in the Kunrei
romanization system it is rendered as "Gozira".
During the development of the American version of Godzilla
Raids Again (1955), Godzilla's name was changed to "Gigantis", a move
initiated by producer Paul Schreibman, who wanted to create a character
distinct from Godzilla.
Characteristics
Within the context of the Japanese films, Godzilla's exact
origins vary, but it is generally depicted as an enormous, violent, prehistoric
sea monster awakened and empowered by nuclear radiation. Although the specific details of Godzilla's
appearance have varied slightly over the years, the overall impression has
remained consistent. Inspired by the
fictional Rhedosaurus created by animator Ray Harryhausen for the film The
Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla's iconic character design was conceived as
that of an amphibious reptilian monster based around the loose concept of a
dinosaur with an erect standing posture, scaly skin, an anthropomorphic torso
with muscular arms, lobed bony plates along its back and tail, and a furrowed
brow.
Art director Akira Watanabe combined attributes of a
Tyrannosaurus, an Iguanodon, a Stegosaurus and an alligator to form a sort of
blended chimera, inspired by illustrations from an issue of Life magazine. To emphasize the monster's relationship with the
atomic bomb, its skin texture was inspired by the keloid scars seen on survivors
in Hiroshima. The basic design has a
reptilian visage, a robust build, an upright posture, a long tail and three
rows of serrated plates along the back. In the original film, the plates were
added for purely aesthetic purposes, in order to further differentiate Godzilla
from any other living or extinct creature. Godzilla is sometimes depicted as
green in comics, cartoons and movie posters, but the costumes used in the movies
were usually painted charcoal grey with bone-white dorsal plates up until the
film Godzilla 2000: Millennium.
Godzilla battles King Kong in King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962).
This film attracted the highest Japanese box office attendance figures in the
entire Godzilla series to date.
Godzilla's signature weapon is its "atomic heat
beam" (also known as "atomic breath"), nuclear energy that it
generates inside of its body and unleashes from its jaws in the form of a blue
or red radioactive beam. Toho's special
effects department has used various techniques to render the beam, from physical
gas-powered flames to hand-drawn or computer-generated fire. Godzilla is shown
to possess immense physical strength and muscularity. Haruo Nakajima, the actor
who played Godzilla in the original films, was a black belt in judo and used
his expertise to choreograph the battle sequences.
Godzilla can breathe underwater and is described in the
original film by the character Dr. Yamane as a transitional form between a
marine and a terrestrial reptile. Godzilla is shown to have great vitality: it
is immune to conventional weaponry thanks to its rugged hide and ability to
regenerate, and as a result of surviving a nuclear explosion; it cannot be
destroyed by anything less powerful. Various films, television shows, comics
and games have depicted Godzilla with additional powers, such as an atomic
pulse,[50] magnetism, precognition, fireballs, an electric bite, superhuman
speed, laser beams emitted from its eyes and even flight.
Godzilla's allegiance and motivations have changed from film
to film to suit the needs of the story. Although Godzilla does not like humans,
it will fight alongside humanity against common threats. However, it makes no
special effort to protect human life or property and will turn against its
human allies on a whim. It is not motivated to attack by predatory instinct: it
does not eat people and instead sustains itself on nuclear radiation and an omnivorous
diet. When inquired if Godzilla was
"good or bad", producer Shogo Tomiyama likened it to a Shinto
"God of Destruction" which lacks moral agency and cannot be held to
human standards of good and evil. "He totally destroys everything and then
there is a rebirth. Something new and fresh can begin."
In the original Japanese films, Godzilla and all the other
monsters are referred to with gender-neutral pronouns equivalent to
"it", while in the English dubbed versions, Godzilla is explicitly
described as a male, such as in the title of Godzilla, King of the Monsters!.
In the 1998 film Godzilla, the monster is referred to as a male and is depicted
laying eggs through parthenogenesis. In the Legendary Godzilla films, Godzilla
is referred to as a male.
Roar
Godzilla has a distinctive disyllabic roar (transcribed in
several comics as Skreeeonk!), which was created by composer Akira Ifukube, who
produced the sound by rubbing a pine-tar-resin-coated glove along the string of
a contrabass and then slowing down the playback. In the American version of Godzilla Raids
Again (1955) titled Gigantis the Fire Monster, Godzilla's iconic roar was
mostly substituted with that of the monster Anguirus. From The Return of Godzilla (1984) to Godzilla
vs. King Ghidorah (1991), Godzilla was given a deeper and more
threatening-sounding roar than in previous films, though this change was
reverted from Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992) onwards. For the 2014 American film, sound editors
Ethan Van der Ryn and Erik Aadahl refused to disclose the source of the sounds
used for their Godzilla's roar. Aadahl
described the two syllables of the roar as representing two different emotional
reactions, with the first expressing fury and the second conveying the
character's soul.
Size
Godzilla's size is inconsistent, changing from film to film,
and even from scene to scene, for the sake of artistic license. The miniature sets and costumes were typically
built at a 1⁄25–1⁄50 scale and filmed at 240 frames per second to create the
illusion of great size.[74] In the original 1954 film, Godzilla was scaled to
be 50 m (164 ft) tall. This was done so
Godzilla could just peer over the largest buildings in Tokyo at the time. In
the 1956 American version, Godzilla is estimated to be 122 m (400 ft) tall,
because producer Joseph E. Levine felt that 50 m did not sound "powerful
enough".
As the series progressed Toho would rescale the character,
eventually making Godzilla as tall as 100 m (328 ft).[77] This was done so that
it would not be dwarfed by the newer, bigger buildings in Tokyo's skyline, such
as the 243-meter-tall (797 ft) Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building which
Godzilla destroyed in the film Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991). Supplementary
information, such as character profiles, would also depict Godzilla as weighing
between 20,000 and 60,000 metric tons (22,000 and 66,000 short tons).
In the American film Godzilla (2014) from Legendary
Pictures, Godzilla was scaled to be 108.2 m (355 ft) and weighing 90,000 metric
tons (99,000 short tons), making it the largest film version at that time. Director Gareth Edwards wanted Godzilla
"to be so big as to be seen from anywhere in the city, but not too big that
he couldn't be obscured". For Shin Godzilla (2016), Godzilla was made even
taller than the Legendary version, at 118.5 m (389 ft).[80] In Godzilla: Planet
of the Monsters (2017), Godzilla's height was increased further still to 300 m
(984 ft), the tallest height for the character to date. In Godzilla: King of
the Monsters (2019), Godzilla's height was increased to 119.8 m (393 ft) from the
2014 incarnation.
Special effects
details
Godzilla's appearance has traditionally been portrayed in
the films by an actor wearing a latex costume, though the character has also
been rendered in animatronic, stop-motion and computer-generated form. Taking inspiration from King Kong, special
effects artist Eiji Tsuburaya had initially wanted Godzilla to be portrayed via
stop-motion, but prohibitive deadlines and a lack of experienced animators in
Japan at the time made suitmation more practical.
The first suit consisted of a body cavity made of thin wires
and bamboo wrapped in chicken wire for support and covered in fabric and
cushions, which were then coated in latex. The first suit was held together by
small hooks on the back, though subsequent Godzilla suits incorporated a
zipper. Its weight was in excess of 100 kg (220 lb). Prior to 1984, most
Godzilla suits were made from scratch, thus resulting in slight design changes
in each film appearance. The most notable changes during the 1960s-70s were the
reduction in Godzilla's number of toes and the removal of the character's
external ears and prominent fangs, features which would later be reincorporated
in the Godzilla designs from The Return of Godzilla (1984) onward. The most
consistent Godzilla design was maintained from Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989) to
Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995), when the suit was given a cat-like face and
double rows of teeth.
Several suit actors had difficulties in performing as
Godzilla, due to the suits' weight, lack of ventilation and diminished
visibility. Kenpachiro Satsuma in
particular, who portrayed Godzilla from 1984 to 1995, described how the
Godzilla suits he wore were even heavier and hotter than their predecessors
because of the incorporation of animatronics. Satsuma himself suffered numerous medical
issues during his tenure, including oxygen deprivation, near-drowning,
concussions, electric shocks and lacerations to the legs from the suits' steel
wire reinforcements wearing through the rubber padding.
The ventilation problem was partially solved in the suit
used in 1994's Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla, which was the first to include an
air duct, which allowed suit actors to last longer during performances. In The
Return of Godzilla (1984), some scenes made use of a 16-foot high robotic
Godzilla (dubbed the "Cybot Godzilla") for use in close-up shots of
the creature's head. The Cybot Godzilla consisted of a hydraulically-powered
mechanical endoskeleton covered in urethane skin containing 3,000 computer
operated parts which permitted it to tilt its head and move its lips and arms.
In Godzilla (1998), special effects artist Patrick
Tatopoulos was instructed to redesign Godzilla as an incredibly fast
runner. At one point, it was planned to
use motion capture from a human to create the movements of the
computer-generated Godzilla, but it was said to have ended up looking too much
like a man in a suit. Tatopoulos
subsequently reimagined the creature as a lean, digitigrade bipedal,
iguana-like creature that stood with its back and tail parallel to the ground,
rendered via CGI.
Several scenes had the monster portrayed by stuntmen in
suits. The suits were similar to those used in the Toho films, with the actors'
heads being located in the monster's neck region, and the facial movements
controlled via animatronics. However, because of the creature's horizontal
posture, the stuntmen had to wear metal leg extenders, which allowed them to
stand two meters (six feet) off the ground with their feet bent forward. The
film's special effects crew also built a 1⁄6 scale animatronic Godzilla for
close-up scenes, whose size outmatched that of Stan Winston's T. rex in Jurassic
Park. Kurt Carley performed the
suitmation sequences for the adult Godzilla.
In Godzilla (2014), the character was portrayed entirely via
CGI. Godzilla's design in the reboot was intended to stay true to that of the
original series, though the film's special effects team strove to make the
monster "more dynamic than a guy in a big rubber suit. To create a CG version of Godzilla, the Moving
Picture Company (MPC) studied various animals such as bears, Komodo dragons,
lizards, lions and wolves which helped the visual effects artists visualize
Godzilla's body structure like that of its underlying bone, fat and muscle
structure as well as the thickness and texture of its scales. Motion capture was also used for some of
Godzilla's movements. T.J. Storm provided the performance capture for Godzilla
by wearing sensors in front of a green screen. Storm reprised the role of Godzilla in
Godzilla: King of the Monsters, portraying the character through performance
capture. In Shin Godzilla, a majority of
the character was portrayed via CGI, with Mansai Nomura portraying Godzilla
through motion capture.
Appearances
Godzilla is one of the most recognizable symbols of Japanese
popular culture worldwide and remains an important facet of Japanese films,
embodying the kaiju subset of the tokusatsu genre. Godzilla's vaguely humanoid
appearance and strained, lumbering movements endeared it to Japanese audiences,
who could relate to Godzilla as a sympathetic character, despite its wrathful
nature. Audiences respond positively to
the character because it acts out of rage and self-preservation and show where
science and technology can go wrong.
In 1967, the Keukdong Entertainment Company of South Korea,
with production assistance from Toei Company, produced Yongary, Monster from
the Deep, a reptilian monster who invades South Korea to consume oil. The film
and character has often been branded as a knock-off of Godzilla.
Godzilla has been considered a filmographic metaphor for the
United States, as well as an allegory of nuclear weapons in general. The
earlier Godzilla films, especially the original, portrayed Godzilla as a
frightening nuclear-spawned monster. Godzilla represented the fears that many
Japanese held about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the
possibility of recurrence. As the series
progressed, so did Godzilla, changing into a less destructive and more heroic
character as the films became geared more towards children. Since then, the
character has fallen somewhere in the middle, sometimes portrayed as a
protector of the world from external threats and other times as a bringer of
destruction.
In 1996, Godzilla received the MTV Lifetime Achievement
Award, as well as being given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004 to
celebrate the premiere of the character's 50th anniversary film, Godzilla:
Final Wars. Godzilla's pop-cultural
impact has led to the creation of numerous parodies and tributes, as seen in
media such as Bambi Meets Godzilla, which was ranked as one of the "50
greatest cartoons", two episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the
song "Godzilla" by Blue Öyster Cult. Godzilla has also been used in advertisements,
such as in a commercial for Nike, where Godzilla lost an oversized one-on-one
game of basketball to a giant version of NBA player Charles Barkley. The commercial was subsequently adapted into a
comic book illustrated by Jeff Butler. Godzilla has also appeared in a commercial for
Snickers candy bars, which served as an indirect promo for the 2014 movie.
Godzilla's success inspired the creation of numerous other monster characters,
such as Gamera, Reptilicus of Denmark, Yonggary of South Korea, Pulgasari of
North Korea, Gorgo of the United Kingdom and the Cloverfield monster of the
United States.
Godzilla's fame and saurian appearance has influenced the
scientific community. Gojirasaurus is a dubious genus of coelophysid dinosaur,
named by paleontologist and admitted Godzilla fan Kenneth Carpenter. Dakosaurus is an extinct marine crocodile of
the Jurassic Period, which researchers informally nicknamed
"Godzilla". Paleontologists
have written tongue-in-cheek speculative articles about Godzilla's biology,
with Ken Carpenter tentatively classifying it as a ceratosaur based on its
skull shape, four-fingered hands and dorsal scutes, and paleontologist Darren
Naish expressing skepticism while commenting on Godzilla's unusual morphology.
Godzilla's ubiquity in pop-culture has led to the mistaken
assumption that the character is in the public domain, resulting in litigation
by Toho to protect their corporate asset from becoming a generic trademark. In
April 2008, Subway depicted a giant monster in a commercial for their Five
Dollar Footlong sandwich promotion. Toho filed a lawsuit against Subway for
using the character without permission, demanding $150,000 in compensation. In February 2011, Toho sued Honda for
depicting a fire-breathing monster in a commercial for the Honda Odyssey. The
monster was never mentioned by name, being seen briefly on a video screen inside
the minivan. The Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society christened a vessel the MV Gojira. Its purpose is to target and harass
Japanese whalers in defense of whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.
The MV Gojira was renamed the MV Brigitte Bardot in May 2011, due to legal
pressure from Toho. Gojira is the name
of a French death metal band, formerly known as Godzilla; legal problems forced
the band to change their name. In May 2015, Toho launched a lawsuit against
Voltage Pictures over a planned picture starring Anne Hathaway. Promotional
material released at the Cannes Film Festival used images of Godzilla.
Steven Spielberg cited Godzilla as an inspiration for
Jurassic Park (1993), specifically Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), which
he grew up watching. Spielberg described Godzilla as "the most masterful
of all the dinosaur movies because it made you believe it was really
happening." Godzilla also
influenced the Spielberg film Jaws (1975).
The main-belt asteroid 101781 Gojira, discovered by American
astronomer Roy Tucker at the Goodricke-Pigott Observatory in 1999, was named in
honor of the creature.
Cultural ambassador
To encourage tourism in April 2015 the central Shinjuku ward
of Tokyo named Godzilla an official cultural ambassador. During an unveiling of
a giant Godzilla bust at Toho headquarters, Shinjuku mayor Kenichi Yoshizumi
stated "Godzilla is a character that is the pride of Japan." The
mayor extended a residency certificate to an actor in a rubber suit representing
Godzilla, but as the suit's hands were not designed for grasping, it was
accepted on Godzilla's behalf by a Toho executive. Reporters noted that
Shinjuku ward has been flattened by Godzilla in three Toho movies.
Comments
Post a Comment