Board Thread:Movie Discussions/@comment-343942-20160903040727

Since the Comments section has been nixed, I figured this would be a good excuse to offer a fresher view on these films.

I can't possibly do this film enough justice. It is one of the most important foreign films out there, and is the gold standard to which all subsequent giant monster films have had to live up to.

While the plot itself (that of a giant monster awakened by man's affronts to nature) is hardly special, it is the way it is presented and executed that allows Gojira/Godzilla to stand above the rest in the Atomic Monster genre. The dark, serious tone and emotional depth make the human characters more than just receptacles for half-baked scientific jargon.

The scenes with Godzilla himself, however, are where this film shines. Unlike later kaiju films, where the destruction scenes are more mindless fun than substance to the plot, Godzilla's rampages in this film are truly frightening in my opinion. There is a difference between frightening and startling: Startling is little more than something jumping out from off-screen with a loud noise, while frightening is something, a sight, a sound,or even just a concept, that chills your soul.

Godzilla's rampage through Tokyo is slow and methodical, making sure we see every building crumble and every life snuffed out. And standing above the carnage is Godzilla, who trudges forward like an unassailable force of nature, man's weapons of war no more effective against him than leaves in the wind.

Eventually, however, Godzilla is brought low, and like old King Kong before him we ultimately feel poorer for it. When all is said and done, Godzilla, warped and mutated by radiation, was as much a victim of man's warmongering as man himself.

Godzilla is an important cultural icon, one who has gone through a far more varied evolution than many of his contemporaries, and this is the film that started it all. Here's to sixty more years.

SKREEEEEOOONK!!!! 