Godzilla (1954)

Well, I warned you all it was coming. If you didn't heed me before, now is the time to report to your nearest shelter.

Because October has come to the Criterion Challenge, and kaiju are coming with it!

As promised last time, from here till the end of the year, it's a deep dive into the complete Showa Era of Japan's most successful giant lizard himself - Godzilla.

So, let's begin --

This isn't my first time writing about Ishiro Honda's 1954 classic for this blog. It's not even my first time doing for October. Despite that, I'm not terribly worried about repeating myself, though I will be hitting a few familiar points in more detail.

The original Godzilla has an interesting place in my heart and in my life. It's one of those certain things - we all have them - that I come back to over the years and my experience with it is different every time.

There are two things I will say this movie has stayed consistent on for me. The first is that it has been a genuinely well made movie that still holds up for me. The other is that, for a film in which a giant lizard rampages through a city, it finds ways to genuinely unsettle me.

To give this some context - Godzilla, as a character, has been a part of my life since I was a little kid. To the point where what memories I have of my grandfather on my mother's side (who died when I was young) were watching some of the Godzilla vs movies with him. The big lizard has been a nerd gateway drug for me in a lot of ways.

I say this to make clear - I first knew the version of Godzilla that was akin to The Incredible Hulk: he's big, he's destructive, but at the end of the day, he's still on humanity's side.

So, as a kid, my first time watching this movie (in its Americanized King of the Monsters cut) was like watching Superman toss a little old lady into traffic.

I had gone in not knowing this started as a very direct take on the impact of the atomic bomb on Japan, so I was shaken by seeing this character I had come to love as a horrific force. I still liked the movie, but seeing the very human toll of destruction was genuinely upsetting to me at the time.

I would come back to the movie over the years, first through that redone version and later when the original Japanese finally became more readily available, and over time, I've been pleasantly surprised to realize it still shakes me, but for different reasons.

A big part of that comes down to how I've looked at the movie over time. As a kid, I came to the movie for Godzilla, so my attention was largely there for Godzilla (and credit where it's due, for pushing 70, the effects work still looks good in this movie.) As I've gotten older, the human face of the movie becomes more prominent.

Which is part of what makes it fascinating to watch in the larger arc of the property. A lot of the later installments in the series we'll get to are over the top, silly, and yeah, I'll say - fun.

By comparison, the first movie in this series, true to its origins as a movie made in response to the horrors of the atomic bomb, is a very somber, human story. Even the movie's main set piece - in which Godzilla rampages through Tokyo - takes a lot of time to focus on the people on the ground caught up in the destruction. As a result, moments like the news crew reporting on the rampage to their bitter end, or a terrified mother trying to reassure her children as death bears down on them give the scene more heft than it would have as just an actor in a suit tearing up a cardboard city.

That the movie commits as much to showing the destruction and aftermath on that level is part of what makes it work so well. It takes itself seriously enough that it's hard not to engage with it on its own terms, rather than just a kaiju rampage.

Alongside the destruction, there is one other part of the movie's human side I have to acknowledge my increased appreciation for. That is the depiction of the brooding, troubled Dr. Serizawa.

For much of the first two acts, the man is framed as a cypher - his major role being as the fiancé to Emiko that complicates her relationship to Ogata. His work is secretive, he is aloof, and even his appearance, complete with eyepatch, suggests a mystery. It's only in the wake of Godzilla's destruction that his secret comes - not even from himself, but from Emiko recognizing his research could be vital.

With the reveal, in which we learn of his work developing the device known as the Oxygen Destroyer, our perspective on the character changes. If Godzilla is the atomic bomb, Serizawa is the movie's answer to Oppenheimer - he didn't have a hand in the lizard's creation or rampage, but in turn, his research has birthed the one destructive force that could match or surpass him. Like his real life analogue, he's not proud of what he's created - the reason he is secretive is because he's horrified with the potential for what he's created. Even when Ogata and Emiko come to him to ask him help stop Godzilla, he is justifiably reluctant - he recognizes the good, but is also all too aware of the evil that his research could do in the wrong hands. When he ultimately does agree, he does so with the assertion that this will be the only time his device is used - a vow he guarantees in his decision to die with Godzilla.

That the movie presents Serizawa in as nuanced a light as it does is a pleasant surprise. Given how fairly fresh the memory of the atomic bombs was at that point, one could see a lesser version of this where a character in this role would be as a monster in his own right. Instead, the movie frames him much as history would come to remember him - someone who didn't set out to unleash this sort of power, and who genuinely regretted it on seeing what it could do.

It's also part of why the ending has come to resonate more for me over time. Those final scenes draw a  comparison, even a kind of kinship between Serizawa and Godzilla. Ultimately, neither set out intending to be destructive (while a stand-in for the bomb, the movie also frames Godzilla's dinosaur origin as tragic - potentially the last of his kind, out of his own time) but the fact remains, their paths have both led them to that outcome. More simply put, wo beings who, like it or not, are too dangerous to live in the world as we know it. I realize that makes it sound edgy put into text, but it's a tragic beat within the film, and the fact the movie commits to it as seriously as it does helps offset any underlying silliness the premise could otherwise have.

In a few years, this movie will turn 70 years old. It speaks to the dedication of the people involved that, even after all this time, there is a power to how it commits to its themes. This isn't to say it's all silliness from here on out, but that this can still resonate this much after all this time is something to commend this movie for.

Yeah. What can I say? I have a lot of feelings on this one.

As we're at the end of the movie with that point, it seems as fitting a place as any to wrap up the writeup. Keep an eye out, we'll be back soon with the still serious, if less grim follow up to this in Godzilla Raids Again.

Till next time.