One of the longest-running movie franchises ever, Godzilla is a love song to the natural world and its vast potential. Beginning in 1954 with Toho Pictures’ eponymous black and white movie, Godzilla created a genre of its own while reflecting the cultural and political aspects of the time it. Although 1954’s Godzilla was a scathing commentary on nuclear warfare, it also suggested the destructive potential of nature’s finest overtaking humanity, like all the Japanese Godzilla movies. The American take on the Kaiju is often thoughtful, too, despite having been more action-orientated for the most part.

From Godzilla’s most evil moments to its most heroic, the films never fail to remind people of their relative smallness in the grand scheme. This giant creature is a literal embodiment of how much bigger nature is than humanity, and some of the best Godzilla movies underlined this to striking effect. Toho Pictures followed up its 1954 original with 32 other Godzilla movies and licensed the idea out to American studios, who produced the divisive TriStar picture and the MonsterVerse movies. These films are actually the unlikely source of a lot of environmental wisdom.

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“Godzilla is truly a sign of the end times for humanity.”

The Return Of Godzilla, 1984

Professor Makoto Hayashida spoke the wise words, “Godzilla is truly a sign of the end times for humanity,” in the 1984 Japanese movie The Return of Godzilla. This first movie of the Heisei series blamed Godzilla on the Cold War in a roundabout way, aiming at the issues most current and relevant, as the franchise so often does. But Godzilla was the natural world’s response to humanity’s shocking military crimes, reflecting nature’s all-too-real signs of impending disaster.

Over the years, we have seen several real-world signs of the world heating to levels that endanger us and plenty of other species. Godzilla is just one natural phenomenon that rears its head when civilization impedes on it, which the 1984 movie captured to a tee. The Return Of Godzilla is a must-watch for Godzilla fans making their way from MonsterVerse movies to the Toho classics, dropping pearls of wisdom left, right, and center.

9

“You have no idea what’s coming.”

Godzilla, 2014

Bryan Cranston ranted, “You have no idea what’s coming,” in the 2014 Godzilla movie, echoing the concerns of many ecological scientists. As the literal and metaphorical maelstrom of climate change sweeps across the world, a lot of scientists work hard to mitigate this risk through education. However, many often don’t have any idea of what is coming when it comes to environmental threats.

Gareth Edwards’ Legendary Pictures movie took an impressively environmental stance and applied advanced practical and visual effects to the age-old kaiju. Importantly, this brought Godzilla and its message to a whole new audience in the 2010s and succeeded in subtly dispersing a message that had been key in the franchise for decades – disaster attends humanity when it ignores nature’s warning signs. Cranston’s character, Joe Brody, was able to read the signs, but policy-makers all around the world fail to do so in their unchecked endorsement of fossil fuel consumption and the gradual destruction of the world’s most important carbon sinks.

8

“When the world is in chaos, monsters appear.”

The Return Of Godzilla, 1984

Produced by Toho Pictures and directed by Koji Hashimoto, The Return of Godzilla reintroduced Godzilla to audiences when the world was verging on nuclear calamity. The world was in chaos in real life and in The Return of Godzilla, with monsters cropping up across the full spectrum of political groups and alliances. But perhaps the bigger monster was the one best symbolized by Godzilla – boundless destruction.

As individuals and nations feared the environmental devastation that would result from human conflict, Godzilla helped Japan get in touch with those fears and start communicating them better at home, in communities, and in the media. The Godzilla of Hashimoto’s renowned picture was the result of geopolitical instability and demonstrated the devastation that would befall planet Earth on a far wider scale than humans comprehended. Homes, cities, and landscapes were razed to the ground, proving that monsters could appear anywhere humans let them.

7

“If only the earth and stones could speak, the stories they could tell us.”

Godzilla: King Of The Monsters, 2019

In one of the best quotes from Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Dr. Stanton situated Godzilla and the тιтans in the wider natural world, asking what the animal kingdom and their habitats would ask of humanity if only they could. Directed by Michael Dougherty, the movie wisely ᴀsserted the need to know history to guide the future, with ecological disasters presenting a concerning pattern. It is revealed during the film that eco-disasters have long been covered up or ignored, leaving just the Earth and stones to tell their stories.

Buried truths took the literal form of тιтans in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, with these ancient beings providing a destructive but balancing force. They were connected to a natural order, and indeed, тιтans are often shown in a fairly positive light throughout the Godzilla franchise. Showing off the powers Godzilla has in the MonsterVerse, this natural omen fought Ghidora and warned humans of the detrimental effects of their meddling, raising awareness of real-world environmental issues.

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“A giant, terrifying monster. Once it eats all the fish in the sea, it’ll come ashore and eat people.”

Godzilla, 1954

The original Godzilla movie may have described Godzilla most chillingly as “A giant, terrifying monster” with the kind of endless greed that could end up consuming everything. This epic Kaiju picture is one of the most touching and scary war movies ever made. And, of course, it was never just Godzilla that was looming at humanity’s door, ready to devour them from the inside out; it was humans themselves.

As greed-driven conflict ripped communities and habitats apart in the movie and in real life, nature took the brunt first, as it always does, while humanity was left to gawp at its own vulnerability. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki detonations processed in the movie destroyed lives and worlds across thousands of species.

5

“Nature has an order. A power to restore balance.”

Godzilla (2014)

Gareth Edwards’ 2014 movie signaled afresh how forces beyond humanity’s control will turn the tables when people destroy land, air, and sea. Without a doubt, “Nature has an order” and “a power to restore balance,” following an inherent order. Godzilla wasn’t all bad in the movie. Rather, it led a stand against the MUTOs that represented the darker side of the world’s imbalance. These sinister beings wreaked havoc on life, both rural and urban.

Godzilla wasn’t a villain as much as a force counteracting threats to ecological stability. The disaster movie dream of a savior of humanity in the face of all its mistakes is a sad one, highlighting how few fantastical Kaiju saviors are really coming to save Earth from global warming and its consequences. Real stability derives from respecting nature’s processes instead of trying to dominate them, and if nature wins, people can only hope they have a place in its new world.

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“The mᴀss extinction we feared has already begun. And we are the cause. We are the infection.”

Godzilla: King Of The Monsters

The MonsterVerse’s second Godzilla movie directly tackled species extinction and climate change, positing humanity as the Earth’s biggest threat. Dr. Emma Russell touched on the mᴀss extinction that real-life environmental groups like Extinction Rebellion focus on. While world powers don’t prioritize conservation, movies like Godzilla are there to remind viewers that humans could be one of the species to disappear eventually.

Precipitating the brilliant Shin Godzilla, the 2014 Godzilla movie took the franchise back to its roots in many ways. The sequel was more action-packed but still embraced some important themes. Although far from the wartime brilliance of the 1954 picture, which was recently echoed in Godzilla Minus One, it used its high budget to tell horror and fantasy fans an important story about planet Earth. Pollution and unchecked industrialization were endangering species, with people finally having to face the results of their activity when it least suits them.

3

“Nature has a way sometimes of reminding man of just how small he is.”

Godzilla 1985

1985’s Godzilla was full of moments when Godzilla was truly evil, an unstoppable force indifferent to the Japan Self-Defense Forces and Soviet and American control. Koji Hashimoto’s Americanized picture had a mixed reception at best, partially due to its neutering of the political and environmental themes of The Return of Godzilla, which it was heavily based on. But it did demonstrate “the terrible offsprings of our pride and carelessness” well enough.

In one of Godzilla’s most devastating attacks on humanity, Godzilla devastated Tokyo and left buildings, infrastructure, families, and their surrounding environment ruined. The ancient тιтan of the 1985 movie was still recognizable as a parallel to earthquakes and tsunamis, warning people of impending doom. Godzilla was purely an antagonist in this movie, which does not always happen, but in 1985, it served to successfully distill the тιтan into Earth’s revenge on the humans ravaging it.

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“The arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control and not the other way around.”

Godzilla, 2014

Doctor Ichiro Serizawa ruminated on the folly of mankind in Godzilla. Played by Ken Watanabe, Serizawa was a rare voice of reason and echoed the views of environmental scientists and academics the world over. His statement encapsulated the franchise’s long-standing statement against human overreach, which always results in far worse consequences than could ever be expected. The movie illustrated how scientific advancements result in catastrophic failures when driven by arrogance instead of caution.

From Godzilla’s Honolulu tsunami to the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, Godzilla was sure to highlight how nature can wake up when least expected and evolve horrifically out of national failures. While the movie’s MUTOs responded to each other’s mating calls, wrecking everything in their path, people were left to pick up the pieces of their mess. As Godzilla returned to the sea, a new era began in the franchise, and Western audiences started to approach previous iterations of the Kaiju story with even bigger shock value.

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“Nature always has a way of balancing itself. The only question is… what part will we play?”

Godzilla: King Of The Monsters

What may be one of the best-known quotes in the whole Godzilla franchise comes from the mouth of Dr. Serizawa, again aptly summarizing the world as it stands and the choices before the human race. Serizawa believed in surrendering to the natural order and letting Godzilla fight humanity’s fight for them. While Godzilla was this natural order, it stood at a complicated intersection between ecological threat and a force for good.

While the MonsterVerse movies do picture Godzilla as a force for good sometimes, they don’t always get into deeper themes. But as the two legendary тιтans – Godzilla and Ghidora – faced off in the movie’s second half, high-octane action sequences were highly persuasive of Serizawa’s argument. Viewers of Godzilla should always be left questioning their accountability, just as Serizawa was.

Godzilla

The Godzilla franchise, spanning over six decades, follows the adventures of the тιтular kaiju, a colossal, prehistoric sea monster awakened and empowered by nuclear radiation. Originating in Japan, Godzilla has evolved from a destructive force of nature to a protector of humanity, battling various other giant monsters, including iconic foes like King Ghidorah, Mothra, and Mechagodzilla. The series explores themes of environmental destruction, nuclear anxiety, and human resilience. With numerous films, TV series, and an expanding universe, Godzilla remains a cultural icon, captivating audiences worldwide with its epic battles and compelling narratives.

Movie(s)

Godzilla, Godzilla 2, Godzilla 3, Shin Godzilla, Godzilla, Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla Minus One, Mothra vs. Godzilla, Godzilla Vs King Kong, Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., godzilla: monster planet, Godzilla vs. Gigan, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, Godzilla: Final Wars, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, Godzilla: The Showa Era Films, Godzilla vs. Biollante

Created by

Tomoyuki Tanaka, Akira Watanabe

First Film

Godzilla

Latest Film

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

First Episode Air Date

November 17, 2023

Cast

Akira Takarada, Momoko Kôchi, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shimura, Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell

TV Show(s)

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

Video Game(s)

Godzilla, Super Godzilla, Godzilla (1990), Godzilla: Unleashed, Godzilla: Monster War, Godzilla: Battle Legends, Godzilla: Save The Earth, Godzilla: Monster of Monsters!, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee

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