-= Godzilla (1954) =-

Spoilers Ahead - this post contains the plot for Godzilla (1954)

My personal notes can be found at the bottom

The movie opens with sailors upon the Eiko-maru ship when they suddenly witness an explosion of light from under the surface of the sea. The Eiko-maru is instantly destroyed by an unseen force; the beginning of many ships to fall at the hands of this anomaly.

One of our main characters, Ogata, is called out to investigate their SOS signal, which was immediately cut. Survivors tell him and his colleagues that the sea just exploded; and some are saying its reminiscent of a volcanic explosion when an SOS was sent out but the destruction was so instant there was no further call for help.

On Odo Island, a fishing island nearby, the locals aren't catching a single fish. Suddenly, a raft carrying three surviviors from one of the destroyed ships appears, and one of the Odo Island elders deducts that it must have been the doing of Godzilla-- an ancient threat in their local traditions that must be returning. The village even has an exorcism ritual they perform in hopes of driving the monster away. Soon after, a horrible storm rolls in; one so strong it topples houses and even blows away a helicopter. This disaster sparks the formation of the Odo Island Disaster Petition group, where their losses (architectural, livestock, and even human lives) are itemized. Someone claims that the damages on the buildings and helicopter aren't that of a monsoon; they're more like they were crushed from above.

As a result of this observation, paleontologist Professor Yamane is brought in to examine the damages. This research team he leads discovers raditation, but it is strange because it is only in single spots, not spread throughout the entirety of the island.

Yamane then discovers a living trilobite in a puddle formed by Godzilla's large footprint-- I'll discuss this a bit later.

An alarm then sounds, signifying that Godzilla has been spotted on the island. This is the first time we actually see him poking his head over a hill-- Yamane describes him as "a creature from the Jurassic era", which, I guess? Close enough.

Once Godzilla returns to the ocean, the researchers hold meetings with the authorities to discuss what they witnessed. Yamane opens the discussion by claiming "approximately two million years ago, brontosaurus and other dinosaurs were at their peak. Scientists call this the Jurassic period. It's believed that during the following period, the Cretaceous, a rare intermediate organism was evolving from a marine reptile into a terrestrial animal."

There's some implications to this I'll also mention later, but I don't want to break up the flow of the plot too bad.

He continues by saying that Godzilla is an estimated 165 feet tall, and he was most likely a relic of the mesozoic that was hidden away in a deeo sea cave, where Hydrogen bomb tests from the war destroyed his natural habitat, causing him to surface. The trilobite, he says, was thought to have gone extinct two million years ago, and this prehistoric proof is further supported by the fact that sand recovered from the trilobite (and thus Godzilla) is from Jurassic strata.

Upon this knowledge breaking news, a disaster response team is established. People are claiming that tuna is radioactive, and at this point nearly 20 ships have been sunk. So, Godzilla is not just killing people and destroying things, but he is also contaminating the fish that the island relies on heavily. In addition, they are worried they will have to close international trade routes due to the threat he poses to ships. They begin forming potential plans to attack Godzilla-- initially, this means attacking Godzilla with depth charges.

Here we focus on the humans of the movie a bit further. Yamane is shown to be visibly withdrawn and upset; he doesn't want to see Godzilla killed for multiple reasons. One, he is a new species and any man of science would want to see something like that preserved, and two, he wishes to study Godzilla and his resistance to radiation. This is expanded on a bit later. He then continues to claim

"Godzilla was baptized in the fire of the H-bomb and survived. What could kill it now?"

It is then revealed that Dr. Serizawa, another secondary main character, is supposedly studying a method on how to potentially defeat Godzilla. Serizawa has been a rather secretive character thus far (he's got the mysterious eyepatch to prove it), but it is revealed that he is betrothed to Emiko, Yamane's daughter. This, however, poses a bit of a subplot since Emiko and Ogata are the ones who are in love. Whenever Serizawa, Emiko, and Ogata are the current focus, Emiko and Ogata are bringing up how they need to bring up their relationship to Serizawa. If you hadn't told me this, though, I would have had no idea- Serizawa is never seen in a romantic or even really platonic light-- he seems to only exist to be the secretive scientist, and that's a bit of a shame. But moving on.

Emiko asks him what he's working on since he's always so reluctant to talk about it with anyone, so he brings her to his lab to show her on the promise that she won't tell a soul about what she sees. In this lab, there's test tubes everywhere, very mad science vibe. There's also tanks full of live fish, and Serizawa horrifies Emiko when he puts a small pellet into the tank, detonating it. We don't exactly see what happens quite yet, but we see Emiko's reaction-- she recoils, turning away and covering her eyes as she grimaces. She goes home and claims everything is fine, but Ogata and Yamane can tell she is acting strange.

Godzilla returns once again, and the townspeople attempt to shoot him with guns. Yamane warns them not to shine spotlights on him as it will only make him angrier-- and it does. We then see the classic scene of Godzilla stomping on a train track right as the train conductors are approaching, and we see the two of them screaming and attempting to screech to a halt. Godzilla once again has his iconic moment where he picks up and chews on the train car, a cinematic classic.

International research teams arrive and make a plan to erect a perimeter of electrified barbed wire to shock Godzilla-- because we're totally sure that will stop him.

The little romance subplot continues with Ogata wanting to ask for Yamane's consent to marry Emiko, but he doesn't even get close to asking because the professor is so distraught about the whole killing Godzilla thing still. He then reveals that he wants to study him for his resistance to radiation specifically so that Japan can be more equipped to fight and/or survive radiation in the wake of the war.

Godzilla emerges again and of course the fence does nothing to stop his advance, and neither do the cannons that are being currently shot at him. In the following moments, we see the first ever instance of his heat ray ability, as he uses his breath to melt the metal pylons holding up the fence. He then continues to use it to set building on fire, and the entire city is shown to be up in flames.

It is at this moment that they realize that fighting Godzilla is hopeless, and instead they need to focus efforts on extinguishing the fires he has caused and saving citizens. What follows is a lot of footage of Godzilla destroying things-- which may have felt a little to long for some people, but you gotta know they were proud as hell for the minatures they created. If I spent a ton of time and effort creating and destroying such detailed miniatures, I'd linger on those scenes too.

The air force sends out planes, which shoot missles at Godzilla-- none seem to hit, perhaps in order to not set the suit on fire, but in reality the missles were only meant to drive him back out to sea, which they do. We then see a hospital filled with the wounded, and many parentless children. Emiko sees the horror the survivors are experiencing and brings Ogata to somewhere private, unable to keep Serizawa's secret any longer. She tells him about his experiments, and we see a flashback where we actually see what happened to the fish in the tank-- as the pellet is detonated, the fish panic and turn into skeletons. Serizawa in this flashback then tells Emiko about his Oxygen Destroyer; that he had been studying oxygen for many years and he discovered this reaction where he is able to destroy the oxygen in the water, causing the fish to suffocate and then liquify. He urges her not to tell anyone, and that he hasn't simply because he knows how dangerous the technology is if in the wrong hands-- and that he is determined to find a positive purpose for it that will benefit society before he unveils it to the world.

Immediately, Ogata and Emiko go to Serizawa to ask his permission to use the destroyer against Godzilla. Serizawa refuses and they have a scuffle over his research, and Ogata gets whacked. Serizawa exclaims..

"As a scientist-- no, as a human being-- adding another terrifying weapon to humanity's arsenal is something I can't allow."

They then hear young girls singing a hopeful prayer over the radio, which eventually convinced Serizawa-- he burns his research, but concedes to letting the destroyer be used to combat Godzilla.

Using a giger counter to pinpoint his location, the researchers along with Yamane, Ogata, Emiko, and Serizawa find Godzilla's location. Serizawa says that, to be effective, the Oxygen Destroyer must be detonated manually from within the water, so he volunteers to dive down. However, he is a beginner, so Ogata insists that he dives along with him. They descend, coming face to face with Godzilla, and the underwater footage is so eerie and cool in the black and white film. They detonate the destroyer, and Ogata ascends, but Serizawa stays, cutting his line. He sacrifices himself to deploy the destroyer, content that the final remainder of his research will die with him. In his last words, he wishes Emiko and Ogata happiness together, knowing they were a thing the whole time-- right before Godzilla is shown rising and then falling to the seafloor, becoming a skeleton then fully dissolving.

Yamane is horrified as everyone celebrated, stating that he can't believe that Godzilla was the last of his species. He continues, however, that if nuclear testing continues, another Godzilla may appear-- ending the movie with the ultimate anti-war message that spawned his creation in Japanese society in the first place.

-= Notes =-

My first notes are obviously the paleontology depicted in the film. I tried to find what we thought the ages of Earth were back in the 50's but I couldn't find much. That being said, I may edit this later on if I can more accurately find that information. This was before the dinosaur renaissance after all, so I wouldn't be too surprised if we thought the dinosaurs were 2 million years old.

We know the dinosaurs went extinct 65 mya (million years ago), not 2. Same with the trilobites, they were even older than dinosaurs, so while yes, they are a very iconic little critter to include in Godzilla's footprint, something like a primitive spider or dragonfly would've been more accurate... But, then again, having one of those instead of a trilobite wouldn't really get the "prehistoric" idea across I guess.

Making him specifically "from the Jurassic" is also an interesting note-- personally I would've made him from the Cretaceous, since that's where we get most of our most charismatic and derived dinos. One thing I did like a lot was how Yamane theorized that Godzilla was a terrestrial-evolved form of a marine reptile-- this is a fun idea because marine reptiles (like mosasaurs, pliosaurs, etc) are already secondarily aquatic. This means that they were initially aquatic like all tetrapods, then they evolved to move on land, and THEN they evolved further to return to the sea. If I had to evolutionarily place Godzilla, I'd put him as a very derived member of Sauropterygia. But, then again, his locomotion (with a tail like that, I'd assume he'd be swimming like an iguana with his legs held flat against his sides, his tail providing him with movement) gives me more Mosasauria. But maybe I'm just biased because I love them :)

The actual commentary of the film is heartbreaking. There is a moment where a woman on a train doesn't want to evacuate, because she just recently had to because of the war. She exclaims sadly that she barely survived the atomic bomb (it was Nagasaki or Hiroshima, I forget which), and when you think about it, that throwaway line is what the legacy of Godzilla was built on. The devastation and hopelessness that bombs bring; at least Japan succeeded in defeating this specific nuclear threat. Just like Yamane says at the end, though, if nuclear warfare continues, there will be more Godzillas-- and more Godzillas there were.

1.3.2024 - 1.4.2024