Godzilla comes home: Japanese reptile takes on Hollywood rival

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A decade after a Japanese film studio sent Godzilla on his “final” journey of destruction, the irradiated monster is set to stomp ashore and trample across Tokyo again as the country attempts to reclaim its creation from Hollywood.

Toho, the Japanese studio that first brought Godzilla to the big screen in 1954, says it plans to rehabilitate the giant reptile in a film to be released in 2016, despite sending him back to the ocean in Godzilla: Final Wars in 2004, supposedly never to be seen again.
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The new film, the 29th in the studio’s series that began as Japan embarked on its postwar economic miracle, will appear two years before Hollywood’s version of the saurian tormenter returns in the sequel to this year’s hit Warner Bros movie, Godzilla, which grossed more than $500m worldwide.

Toho said it had decided to revive the Japanese version in response to demand from the monster’s millions of devotees.

“We have received lots of sincere requests from fans for him to be revived,” a spokesman told Kyodo News, adding that filming could start as early as next summer. The firm has yet to appoint a director and other production staff.

Godzilla has secured an unrivalled place in the Japanese psyche over the past 60 years. Known here as gojira – a Japanese portmanteau of “gorilla” and “kujira” (whale) – he has endeared himself to generations of movie lovers, in spite of his destructive behaviour.
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Godzilla also reflects Japan’s perennial fear of nuclear war. When the first Godzilla film appeared in black and white, just under a decade after the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some of the 9.6 million who saw the film regarded him as a metaphor for the nuclear-armed US and a symbol of the follies of the atomic age.

The debut film’s release came in 1954, soon after the US had tested a hydrogen bomb at Bikini atoll and irradiated a group of Japanese fishermen.

“That year was also when Japan was starting to debate the peaceful use of nuclear energy,” Toshio Takahashi, a literature professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, told Reuters earlier this year. “So the movie expressed fears about nuclear power, as well as weapons.”

When those fears were reignited after the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011, it seemed that all hope of a Godzilla resurrection had been lost.

“Godzilla shows us that we must return to our dark past and then accept it,” Takahashi added. “His purpose is to make us question ourselves. So I think we need to walk with him a little more, especially after Fukushima.”

In more recent incarnations, filmmakers placed less emphasis on Godzilla’s origins as the mutant product of a nuclear test in the Pacific, lending the character a more ambiguous feel that would appeal to children and adults.

“The series has long been pitched at families over hardcore fans, and kids today will greet the movie with fresh eyes, instead of as the latest instalment in a series that’s 60 years old,” said Mark Schilling, an expert on Japanese cinema.
A woman poses with a model of the new Godzilla in Tokyo, 2014. A woman poses with a model of the new Godzilla in Tokyo, 2014. Photograph: Shizuo Kambayashi/ASSOCIATED PRESS

“The connection with the Japanese psyche is certainly there, but tastes change, as the shift from hand-drawn Ghibli animation to 3D computer graphics is proving. How much longer will kids used to seeing digital everything get a thrill from films starring a man in a suit? I’m assuming Toho will stick to tradition.”

The studio has yet to say whether it will fully digitise Godzilla or go with an actor dressed in a latex suit.

Observers doubt the budget will match the $200m lavished on Gareth Edwards’s 2014 Hollywood remake, but Taichi Ueda, a veteran producer who is leading efforts to reboot the Godzilla brand, said he hoped the movie would steal Hollywood’s thunder.

“The time has come for Japan to make a film that will not lose to Hollywood,” Ueda told reporters when the Toho film was announced, according to Variety magazine, adding that he hoped the character would “represent Japan and be loved around the world” by the time Tokyo hosts the summer Olympics in 2020.

Toho’s last Godzilla film – the 2004 Godzilla: Final Wars – struggled to make an impact, earning the studio just $12million dollars.

“Given the expense of making this sort of film, Toho will have to appeal to older audiences as well,” said Schilling. “Final Wars was a money loser, so there’s no guarantee it’ll do better this time.”

Fans, meanwhile, are waiting to see which Tokyo landmark the monster will crush and blast with his radioactive breath: the soaring edifice, Tokyo Skytree, or Tokyo Tower, perhaps. Or – and this may be a more popular choice – he could opt to terrorise the occupants of the Kokkai Gijido, Japan’s parliament building.