The King Of Monsters. The God Of Destruction. The Big G. He is the indestructible nuclear nemesis of Tokyo. He is big in Japan, which rattles at the sound of his roar. Every time a new generation rebuilds Tokyo’s skyscrapers – bigger, higher – he just comes back stronger and taller to demolish them all over again. He is Gojira.

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The King Of Monsters (1954: The Original)

The Franchise Hero (1954-1975: The Showa Years)

Manilla - looking like a turd.

Godzilla The Marvel (1977-1979)

He’s also Godzilla , an unmistakable cinematic icon around the whole globe. The very name Godzilla is part of everyday language, a byword for something that inspires awe and fear. Having ‘God’ in the title probably helps, but even the ‘zilla’ affix has become common, spliced onto those that have become too extreme, gone too far – Bridezillas, Beerzillas, Dadzillas.The icon has become bigger than the movies that he headlines. Few Westerners have seen the original Gojira movie. The endless Godzilla flicks that followed often seem to fade into one badly dubbed blur of Men In Suits clumsily clutching at each other like pre-teens at a school disco.But with Gareth Edwards’ upcoming Godzilla, the 30th movie in the franchise, about to put the monster movie back on the map – before it’s redrawn after the wholesale destruction of bits of Japan and America – we explore the history of the ultimate monster movie, just in time for Gojira to celebrate his 60th birthday.It’s ironic that Godzilla has become synonymous with kitschy laughs. For audiences experiencing Gojira for the first time in November 1954, it was like the monster from the national Japanese id lumbering awkwardly out of the harbour and annihilating their cities.Prone to floods, typhoons, earthquakes and fires, Japan’s long been fearful of Mother Nature’s temper but it was sweating over a new national nightmare. It had been less than 10 years since the Allies played their atomic trump card in WWII, killing an estimated 150,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Unthinkable death. Total defeat.The USA’s continued atomic tests in the Pacific helped keep that wound raw. At the beginning of 1954, a local fishing boat – the Lucky Dragon No 5 – had been caught in the fall out, sending a fresh wave of panic and resentment through the nation.But Gojira wasn’t just a nuclear shadow burned onto the nation’s body and soul. The monster’s DNA also contained a few hairy strands of 1952’s re-release of King Kong and its box office offspring, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953). Both hits, they certainly caught the attention of Tomoyuki Tanaka, a 10-movie-a-year producer for Toho Studios.Finding himself with a slot to fill when his latest project fell through, he seized upon the opportunity to make a big monster movie of his own, weaponising it with the topical story of Lucky Dragon No 5: a furious beast awoken and transformed by American nuclear testing, while science and the military argue over the use of nuclear weapons (and a girl too, obviously).The task of bringing ‘Production G’s’ lead character to life fell to SFX guru Eiji Tsuburaya. Realising that King Kong’s stop-motion method would take years when they only had a couple of months, the practically minded Tsuburaya opted for the suit route. Rejecting the initial design ideas – one gave the monster a mushroom cloud head – his workshop found a children’s dinosaur encyclopedia and played mix-and-match. The final result borrowed bits of Tyrannosaurus, Iguanodon and the back-plates of the Stegosaurus, with the charcoal – not green – skin having keloid scarring similar to the Japanese’s atomic victims.Built in top secret conditions, the resulting outfit weighed more than 100kg and stood at two metres tall, with actor Nakajima Haruo passing out as his sweat clogged up the breathing holes. At the end of a day’s filming, a full cup’s worth of body salts had collated in the urethane suit. With little give in the outfit, it was all he could do to walk in a straight line through Tsuburaya’s scale models – some built out of wax to collapse easier.And then there was the iconic roar that shakes Tokyo’s downtown to its flimsy foundations - created by score-maestro Ifukabe Akira by running his waxed hands down a detuned double bass. Remarkably, the composer conjured up his evocative score in a week, without seeing a frame of the movie.And then there was that instant movie-star name. Gojira is a Japanese portmanteau meaning gorilla and whale. The myth has it that it was a rude bastardization of a particularly hefty, hairy member of the crew, which certainly sounds more fun then that it came out of pow-wow between Tanaka, Tsuburaya and co-writer/director Ishirô Honda.It was a huge hit in Japan, if not with critics who sniffed at its atomic cynicism and Hollywood attitude. In fact what stands out today is its unsentimental dealing with the atomic issue – director Honda had journeyed through the flattened Hiroshima at the end of the war – and the eerie, unblinking feel to the mass-destruction, made even more stark and sombre by the use of black and white, another decision made by budgetary constraints. Its first audiences watched Tokyo’s unconventional makeover in near-silence.Not that the West saw this version for 50 years. Sniffing a hit but feeling it was too alien for American audiences, the importing company Jewell Enterprises recut the movie, adding in extra footage. Now a US reporter (Raymond Burr, the future Perry Mason) commentates over the newly monikered King Of Monsters’ rampage and, thanks to some sharp editing, interacts with the cast too. A third of the original movie was excised to make room, conveniently eliminating anything negative towards the US and a chunk of the movie’s most affecting scenes – the plaintive wails of a mother in a collapsing building, telling her child that they’re about to join her dead father are not subtitled.And then there was that sensational, superstar name: Godzilla. But instead of a brilliant marketing trick – ‘the God of lizards’ – it was simply an accident stemming from an Anglicized mangling of the original title ‘Gojira’. Playing at the B-movie theatres and drive-throughs, it turned over a tidy profit - $2 million – from a $25,000 investment: this was the version imported to Europe and even back to Japan, where Gojira breathed fire at the box office again.Given a license to print yen, Toho studios didn’t wait to resurrect Godzilla from his deoxygenized doom. Godzilla Raids Again (1955) was rushed out within six months, pitting The King Of Monsters against the spiky-shelled Anguirus. Despite being another huge hit, Godzilla would remain buried by an avalanche (and another bucket of critical derision) for seven years until King Kong Vs Godzilla (1962).That movie’s light-hearted feel set the tone for the rest of the series, as television-terrorised Toho chased increasingly younger audiences, as the likes of Gamera had done so successfully. And as Godzilla started to become a force for justice, defending humanity against a series of remarkably Japanese-fluent aliens and their huge kaiju monsters, he became cuter too: he lost his fangs, his features smoothed out, his eyes went Manga. The battles became more stylised and comedic too, based on one of the US’s more-popular imports – entertainment wrestling.By the time of All Monsters Attack (1969), Gojira and his muppet son Minilla – a turd with a tail and eyes - were helping out bullied school kids. And then he flies - backwards - using his breath for fuel (Godzilla Vs Hedorah, 1971). And then there’s the bit where he actually talks (Godzilla vs Gigan, 1972) And lets try to forget his victory jig in Monster Zero (1965). Alright, let’s not, as its funny.Of course, this is what helped burn Godzilla into the hearts of the B-movie drive-through crowds, wanting something cheerful to ignore while they struggled to second base. If the rubber suits and bizarre action beats were endearing, there were easy laughs to be had at the crappy overdubs and stiff translations. Despite pros like James Wong and George Takei on mike duty, lines like “Ah, banana oil” and “King Kong can’t make a monkey out of us” were always going to raise a titter – and the studio knew it too.But beyond the Suitmation kitsch, there was a lot of genuine cinematic joy here. Godzilla’s tussles with the likes as Mechagodzilla (1974), King Ghidorah (1964) and Mothra (1964) – now icons themselves – certainly provide good B-movie buck/value ratio.But there’s no denying a steep downward trajectory as the movie’s ideas, audience and budgets started running dry. By the mid-70s, Japan was a thriving nation that didn’t need reminding of what had happened a generation ago. After the 15th flick, Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975) – from a script by a public contest winner – the franchise waded back into the ocean for the last time.Where else can you see the God Of Destruction tackle the God Of Thunder? While Godzilla had been appearing in Japanese Manga ever since his first tour of Tokyo, it was his 24-issue run in Marvel comics’ Godzilla: King Of Monsters – washing up in an iceberg on the Alaskan shoreline - that brought him to the attention of Western comic books fans, giving the Avengers and The Fantastic Four the chance to show off their talents for corralling huge green rage-beasts.Unfortunately, Marvel didn’t have the licence to the big guy’s usual playmates and most of his purpose-built adversaries – like the diet-Kong type Yetrigar or Batragon – weren’t fit to scratch his muzzle (though Red Ronin has gone on to become a Marvel perennial). Godzilla’s somewhat mute status didn’t exactly endear him to rich character pieces either, his thoughts restricted to captions.This lack of character development also hamstrung the Dark Horse series in the 1990s, seeing Godzilla voyage through time to battle space monsters and, er, the Spanish Armada. However, the series did treat fans to the one-off spectacle of the Terror of Tokyo duelling basketball’s baddest boy Charles Barkley.The current licensee is IDW Publishing, who not only scored a coup by getting legend Alex Ross to do their first issue cover, but also scooped up the rights to Godzilla’s monster menagerie. Very much in the spirit of the original series, one highlight included Godzilla finally squaring up to Zilla, the repurposed beast from Roland Emmerich’s ill-fated Godzilla remake. Bring on the rough justice.