As the technology used to create blockbusters rapidly advanced through the 1990s, the Kaiju (Japanese for “strange beast”) genre was about as fast to embrace it as Godzilla was at plodding his thunder thighs down the streets of Tokyo. While other blockbusters like Independence Day, the Jurassic Park franchise, and the litany of 90s disaster films employed cutting edge CGI and animatronics, giant monsters largely stayed loyal to rubber suits and model buildings.

The Kaiju genre progressively fell into a sort of effects-limbo. In Japan, where the genre was at its most popular, the technology simply wasn’t there for filmmakers. State of the art effects were in Hollywood’s hands, and giant monsters had become a bit of a punchline in the West.

Years of actors lumbering about in rubber suits stomping on toy tanks or swiping at model airplanes on stings had turned the public’s perception of Kaiju films into B-grade, campy entertainment. Compounding the dilemma was that many die hard fans of giant monsters affirmed that practical effects brought character to the films, where CGI would be soulless.

To an extent, they were right. In the 90s, and even in the early 2000s, unless the CGI was absolutely top notch (which called for big money), Kaiju generated on a computer would have looked about as good as the ones in those Saturday night SYFY channel specials.

The giant monster genre had its first chance to modernize in 1998 when TriStar Pictures tried its hand at Godzilla. All of the tools were there for the most iconic beast in the business to help the genre break out in the West: a major American studio was on board, was willing to dole out a big budget, had the technology to create convincing CGI, and had some really great ideas from film minds Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Jan de Bont, and Stan Winston. Their plans carried the spirit of Japanese Kaiju movies, while elevating that spirit to blockbuster levels of spectacle.

Too bad those ideas never got the greenlight. Following a disagreement with TriStar over the exact dollar amount for the budget, Jan de Bont left the project as its prospective director—even though TriStar would eventually go on to approve a budget that was higher than what de Bont asked for.

When the duo of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich entered the picture, out went Elliott’s and Rossio’s script, and de Bont’s direction. Out went the concept of a Godzilla created by Atlantis to protect earth from the shapeshifting monstrosity known as “The Gryphon”. What we ended up getting was the Godzilla that came not to tear down New York City, but to give birth, and who ran away from a couple of military helicopters. No amount of strong marketing or impressive CGI could save GODZILLA from underwhelmed critics, moviegoers, and enraged giant monster fans.

20 years later, every possible gripe and condemnation that a longtime Kaiju fan could say about GODZILLA has been uttered, whether verbally or in text. But TriStar’s lackluster reimagining did a lot more damage than just to stain the reputation of the Japanese icon. GODZILLA’s poor reception brought the Kaiju genre’s attempt at reaching mainstream audiences in the West to a grinding halt. When GINO (the raptor-like Godzilla dubbed by fans “Godzilla In Name Only”) died on the Brooklyn bridge after being hit by a few conventional missiles, so, too, did the giant monster genre’s chances at becoming anything more than a niche interest outside of Japan.

It’s painful to look back at the concepts that were thrown out by Devlin and Emmerich, and to think of what they could have been like with $100+ million behind them. Stan Winston’s designs for Godzilla and The Gryphon were fearsome; those two deserved for Hollywood special effects to bring their conflict to life. Scenes from Elliott’s and Rossio’s original script like Godzilla breathing his atomic fire into the East River so that the fog of steam enshrouds and blinds the Gryphon is the kind of scintillating action that would have resonated with mainstream audiences around the globe, and given them a new appreciation for giant monsters.

Because of GODZILLA’s blunders, Kaiju didn’t get their next big budget, Hollywood blockbuster until 2005, with Peter Jackson’s King Kong. That remake may not have had a single practical effect or real background throughout its three-hour running time.

For those who don’t quite consider the 30-foot Kong a Kaiju, the wait was even longer. 2008’s Cloverfield was the Kaiju take on the found footage concept, first rousing intrigue with mysterious trailers before performing admirably with critics and at the box office.

But for all of the quality movies that dropped here and there, the giant monster genre still wasn’t establishing any consistency. At least, not until the 2010s.

The decade that we currently find ourselves in will go down as the time when giant monsters finally became cool, again. With Legendary Pictures’ rebooted take on Godzilla steadily gaining hype, Guillermo del Toro laid the first brick for this Kaiju revival with 2013’s Pacific Rim, before Godzilla even stomped his way back into theaters. Del Toro brought more than just massive creatures to the screen; he also tapped into the love for giant mecha, like what long filled the schedules of Saturday morning cartoon programs: Transformers, Voltron, Gundam, Robotech, just to name a few. What did many little kids find just as cool as some mammoth, fire-breathing creature tearing down cities? Piloting a titan of metal, gears, and missiles that could be used to punch said mammoth, fire-breathing creature in the face.

Pacific Rim wasn’t a massive hit in North America, finishing with a domestic gross just over $100 million. But thanks to its foreign inspirations, and a multiracial, multinational cast, it found great success overseas, collecting a $309 million international gross. China was its biggest market, totaling almost $112 there. Its eventual sequel, Pacific Rim Uprising, which just released last weekend, has so far seen similar results; a so-so return in North America, but strong numbers internationally that currently has it sitting above $150 million earned.

A year after Pacific Rim hit theaters, Godzilla had no problem finding an audience in North America. By taking the material seriously and marketing it effectively to mainstream audiences, Legendary’s reimagining of the Big G was an instant success with critics and moviegoers. The responses were so positive that Warner Bros. and Legendary inked sequels after the first weekend, which hauled in nearly $200 million globally.

Pacific Rim’s and Godzilla’s achievements proved something monumental—giant monsters could entertain mainstream audiences in the modern age. The Kaiju genre wasn’t doomed to stay locked in the depths of cheesy, so-bad-it’s-good entertainment.

Where there was once aversion to seeing our favorite beasts created on a computer screen, there is now admiration for the art. The suitmation and other practical effects have their charm, but that technology has severe limitations. The genre had to evolve; to create new fans, to show the rest of the world what kind of thrilling stories that giant monsters could tell, we had to accept CGI’s influence. Alleviating that acceptance was the advent of motion capture technology, which feels like a spiritual successor to the suitmation acting. By building the CGI models based on the movement of actors portraying the monsters, there remains a personalized, human element to the monsters when they appear on screen. Their appearance may come from the clicks of a mouse, but their gestures and reactions ultimately are born from a living being.

Scale and spectacle that could match our growing imaginations could no longer be created with models and rubber suits, alone. Those techniques are immortalized by the productions of the past, but for the giant monster genre to thrive, again, like it did long ago, it needed special effects that all can enjoy.

Hollywood’s recent handiwork accomplished that, and there are already several more opportunities on the way for American studios to accomplish that. With the release of Kong: Skull Island in 2017, Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures’ had firmly established that the MonsterVerse is a franchise to be reckoned with. The reboot for the Eighth Wonder of the World seamlessly guided Kong and Skull Island into the same world as that from 2014’s Godzilla, while setting the tone for what the rest of these monster-centric films would entail.

2014’s Godzilla was a slow burn for much of its duration, dedicated to capturing the effects of Godzilla and the MUTOs on civilization more so than the monsters, themselves. It was a well-received technique by many, but not all. Plenty of moviegoers wanted Godzilla and the MUTOs to take center stage and bring more carnage to the screen than what we ended up with.

Kong: Skull Island more than answered that appeal. It’s fast-paced, energetic story put the spotlight unequivocally on Kong, a slew of other dangerous creatures, and all of the wonders that could be uncovered on Skull Island. It found a balance between artistry and action, never allowing itself to become a dumb, bombastic feature that was without narrative merit. Skull Island earned its place in the MonsterVerse by adding to the world that Godzilla introduced, diving into not just the lore for the titular island, but also the background for Monarch, the scientific organization specializing in giant monster research. It gave audiences a deeper look into a version of planet Earth where a variety of monstrous, unknown species made their home.

In pulling $566 million at the global box office (more than Godzilla’s $529), Kong: Skull Island cemented the blueprint for how the MonsterVerse could boast both action and worldbuilding. That was an important step for this brand, because the next two entries have every intent to do the same.

2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters is bringing legendary Kaiju Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah into the mix for what has every opportunity to be a battle royal for the ages. With the three iconic monsters comes three new backgrounds and origins, which are already setting up to contain diverse lore. Director and writer Michael Dougherty’s Saturn Award-winning work on the Superman Returns script, and his equally-acclaimed work on X2: X-Men United’s writing should go a long way toward making the melee as grandiose as it needs to be, while making the participants fascinating, in the first place.

A year after that comes an even bigger clash, as Godzilla vs. Kong slams into theaters May 22nd, 2020. Director Adam Wingard has gone on record to emphasize that he wants this epic crossover to be emotional, but also that it’s going to be riotous for the senses — “It’s a massive monster brawl movie. There’s lots of monsters going crazy on each other.”

The MonsterVerse is quietly establishing itself as one of the more successful shared universes in cinema, right now. It may not touch such juggernauts like Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but there is a measure of consistency and care being instilled into the MonsterVerse that other shared movie franchises would give anything for. Warner Bros.’ and Legendary’s creature-feature brand came about organically—they started with a single movie (2014’s Godzilla) where director Gareth Edwards was able to tell precisely the stand alone, self-contained story that he wanted. It planted just enough seeds which could allow for future stories, if the setting was so fortunate.

Because of the movie’s success, those seeds are now being cultivated. Warner Bros. and Legendary have taken the MonsterVerse one movie at a time, allowing its biggest (!) stars in Godzilla and Kong their individual opportunities to endear themselves to audiences before throwing them into ambitious mashups. A writers room was established in March 2017 for their creative minds to plot out Godzilla vs. Kong, so that the culmination of their worldbuilding has the structure that is necessary for its grandeur.

The two studios have a track record for granting their directors freedom, but never letting one vision dominate this franchise. When Godzilla vs. Kong is complete, all four films in the MonsterVerse will have had their own unique director, allowing for multiple perspectives to build this universe, and for each director to be laser-focused on their task at hand. When the director is at work, they need not worry about studio or brand interference, but only how entertaining they can make the property they’ve been lucky enough to take the reins for.

As all of this giant monster debauchery has brewed in the Western Hemisphere, Japan has gone to great lengths to do its part in revitalizing the Kaiju genre. Godzilla’s success in 2014 seemed to galvanize Toho, spurring them to prove that the originators of Godzilla could spin their own remarkable tale in this new era of special effects.

2016’s Shin Godzilla was just that. While Hollywood rebooted Godzilla as an arbiter of natural order and an unknowing savior to mankind, Toho resurrected him as a nightmarish entity who would obliterate any and all civilization in his path. It was the first Godzilla film to come out of Japan in 12 years, and the first Japanese production where the eponymous behemoth was portrayed primarily through CGI rather than suitmation. Despite having a fraction of the budget that any Hollywood studio would fund one of their projects with, Toho crafted impressive special effects, and an even more impressive reimagining of Godzilla that was filled with thought-provoking allegories for modern day Japan.

Toho took Godzilla into new territory once against in 2017, when the big guy starred in his very first anime, Planet of the Monsters. This animated entry in the Godzilla mythos kickstarted a trilogy of films that, similar to Shin Godzilla, showcased an iteration of him unlike we had seen before.

Global distributors have been right on top of things getting these Japanese productions out for the rest of the world’s Kaiju fans to enjoy. Shin Godzilla enjoyed solid returns during its limited release in North America, while Netflix had Planet of the Monsters available for users a mere two months after it debuted in Japanese theaters, complete with multiple language dubs.

There’s a growing appetite for giant monster content, and studios are recognizing the importance of satiating that intrigue. Some are getting creative with that effort, putting together movies a little outside the traditional Kaiju fair. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Rampage debuts in theaters next month, finding its basis in the 1986 arcade game, while clearly endeavoring to channel Kaiju cinema tropes. Flying a little more under the radar have been such unorthodox, but inventive movies like Colossal, with Anne Hathaway, I Kill Giants, with Zoe Saldana, and Netflix’s Okja. Perhaps the international success for the Attack on Titan anime can be touted as another example of giant creatures (whatever they may look like) finding new appreciation in today’s age.

This Kaiju invasion has multiple fronts, and, unlike in Pacific Rim, that’s a good thing for the world.

Jeff Pawlak is the Geekiverse’s resident giant monster fanatic. Whether its Godzilla, Kong, Gamera, Mothra, or the Jaegers and Kaiju from Pacific Rim, he loves watching a couple of giants go toe-to-toe. Catch him on Twitter @JeffreyPavs, where he’ll be sharing plenty of thoughts as this Kaiju renaissance continues.

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