Introduction to Godzilla
Godzilla is a series of movies from Japan that deal with a giant monster and his everyday struggle to protect mankind (or kill mankind depending one which movie) and kill other monsters (or gang up with other monsters to kill yet a third group of monsters) The Godzilla movies started in 1954 with "Gojira" or "Godzilla:King of Monsters" and is still going strong in 2002 with 24 movies. I will try to keep up with them as I write these reviews. so far I have seen about 19 to 20 of them and I liked all of them but one (Godzilla's Revenge, which shows how a Japanese boy learns to fight bullies by watching file footage of Godzilla and talking telepathically with Godzilla Junior AKA Minya) throughout his life time Godzilla has saved the world upwards of 20 times from about 27 monsters and threatened the world about 5 times and in those cases was beaten (thankfully so, I like the world after all) in case you where wondering for most of Godzilla's courier he was 50 meters tall and 20,000 tons. In the 90's he bulked up to a beefy 100 meters and 88,000 tons (I assume that's metric tons since it is a Japanese film) any way now the reviews start.
title: "Godzilla: King of Monsters"
AKA: "Gojira" and "Godzilla 1954"
characters: Godzilla (of course) and Steve Martin (not the actor)
Summary: This movie is a perfect example of how any foreign movie you see in America will be messed with somehow. When "Gojira" first came from Japan the people who bought the rights to the film thought that the name was to hard to pronounce so they turned it into the dumbed down "Godzilla: King of Monsters" now changing a name is bad but I can forgive them because honestly "Godzilla" just sounds cooler. The real shame of this movie is that in the American version (the only one I've ever seen) they cut out about half of the Japanese scenes and put in an American character called "Steve Martin." Steve explains the plot in easy to understand English via voice overs and dialogue often too himself.
Ok now that I'm off that rant. Godzilla: King of Monsters really is a cool movie. (even the American version) the basic plot is this: the US test atomic bombs in the pacific ocean near Japan. Nature always has a way of ruining man kinds fun. on this particular day nature accomplishes its goal (of ruining mans atomic blast fun day) by allowing an ancient monster to be awakened by the nuclear devastation raught on the ocean floor. The monsters name is Godzilla (it is named after an old Japanese legend that says a monster will punish man for..... do you really care?) any way Godzilla goes to Tokyo and bust some stuff up, while Steve Martin and a Japanese scientist and his daughter look on. a lot of dramatic scenes are at this point cut out to make room for the Steve Martin character to say things like "if you had of told me this was Tokyo 3 days ago I wouldn't have believed it." (Tokyo was already destroyed when he said that) While Martin is thinking of new things to say the Japanese scientist is thinking op the most devastating weapon ever created, "the Oxygen Destroyer" (available at your local Kmart for $19.95) the scientist test the Oxygen Destroyer on his fish tank and finds that it not only destroys oxygen but also marine life of all kinds. He figures (correctly) that since the giant monster lives in the ocean that Oxygen Destroyer might work on him. The Japanese government sets out on a mission to give Godzilla a taste of the Oxygen Destroyer.... they do, he dies everyone lives happily ever after..... until he comes back in the next movie.... dang indestructible monsters, you gotta hate them (or love them if their smashing a country full of small yellow people far far away)
the moral of the story: you might find it surprising but every Godzilla movie has a moral the moral of the first one is pretty strait forward........ don't play with atomic weapons because it will bite you in the bum eventually. Be it in the form or a giant monster or just radioactive fallout (what Godzilla symbolized in this one)
