The Spectacle Of ‘Godzilla Minus One’
Plus, A Brief History Of Hollywood Sanitizing The Monster’s Anti-Nuke Symbolism
The following is a snippet from Kevin Gosztola’s movie publication, “The Wide Shot.”
The science fiction classic “Godzilla” (1954) was first released to an American audience in 1956, but it is well-known that the version distributed to United States theatres was sanitized of its allegorical references to the U.S. military’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the nuclear bomb tests that were conducted on the Bikini Atoll, which spread radioactive contamination.
“Godzilla: King of the Monsters!”, as the American version was called, also featured a white savior character named Steve Martin, a reporter played by Raymond Burr. His scenes were added into the movie to essentially deceive an American audience into believing that they were not watching a foreign movie. Not until the 2000s did Rialto Pictures release the original Japanese version in U.S. theatres.
More recent Godzilla movies from Hollywood have continued to modify Godzilla’s origin. In “Godzilla” (1998), the nuclear test that gives rise to Godzilla is instead a French test. “Godzilla” (2014) opens with the detonation of a nuclear weapon on Bikini Atoll that is supposed to kill the monster. And in “Godzilla: King of the Monsters!” (2019), a nuclear weapon is actually detonated to rejuvenate Godzilla.
The anti-nuclear spirit is not absent in the modern Japanese movies. “Shin Godzilla” (2016) told a contemporary story with characters, who were fearful of what might happen if the United Nations was permitted to nuke Godzilla in order to kill the monster.
“Godzilla Minus One” (2023) from filmmaker Takashi Yamazaki reimagines the original, once again conveying the aftermath of the U.S. atomic bombings in World War II and the near-extinction of humanity that could come from further use of nuclear weapons.
Read the full article on Medium.
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