(AKA Gojira, The Return of Godzilla)
Directed by Koji Hashimoto
Special Effects by Teruyoshi Nakano
Cinematography Katsumi Hara
Edited by Yoshitami Kuroiwa
Music by Reijiro Koroku
Screenplay by Shuichi Nagahara (from a story by Tomoyuki Tanaka)
Produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka
Starring
Kenpachiro Satsuma as Godzilla
Yosuke Natsuki as Professor Makoto Hayashida
Keiju Kobayashi as Prime Minister Seiki Mitamura
Ken Tanaka as Goro Maki
Yasuko Sawaguchi as Naoko Okumura
Shin Takuma as Hiroshi Okumura
…
“You have your fear, which might become reality, and you have Godzilla, which is reality.”
-dialogue from Godzilla: King of the Monsters (1956)
...
Review by William D. Tucker.
In 1984, Godzilla re-emerged from the molten depths of the earth to terrorize the people of Japan as he had done back in ‘54.
(Oh, all those movies that happened between ‘54 and ‘84-didn’t happen. They’ve been elided out of existence. De-canonized. Sorta like what Disney did with all those Expanded Universe Star Wars novels. But Toho did it first. )
Godzilla, hungry after his decades-long hibernation, attacks a Soviet nuclear submarine and a Japanese nuclear power plant. Somehow, through the mystery and majesty of Kaiju Science, the King of All Monsters is able to suck that nuclear energy through his meaty paws right into his thunderous heart.
The Prime Minister of Japan decides to take an “all-options” yes/and approach:
yes, deploy the military to slow the beast down, even though history suggests that conventional methods of life-destroying aggression can’t kill Godzilla;
and put the elite egghead scientists on the case.
Back in ‘54, an eccentric scientist innovated a lethal answer to the question posed by Godzilla’s rampage, “Are we at Doomsday’s Threshold?”
In ‘54, the answer was, “Yes . . . but this far and no further.”
Science provided the solution in the form of a superweapon called the ‘oxygen destroyer’ that sent Godzilla back to the primal oblivion, but the fear that the Monster of Monsters could one day re-manifest took root in human hearts and minds ever since.
Is it that fear which opens a titanic gateway which allows Godzilla to return to our world?
Now, the Prime Minister of Japan must fend off belligerent overtures from the United States and Soviet governments about launching pre-emptive strikes with nuclear missiles in order to kill Godzilla before he turns his baleful gaze upon the Land of the Free-Home of the Brave and/or-yes/and decides to tear down the Iron Curtain and bring on the final dialectic prophesied by Hegel and Marx. Imperialist Capitalism and Totalitarian Communism both stand to be obliterated by a towering apocalypse beast.
So . . . let it work, right?
Well . . . here’s the deal. If the Japanese government does nothing to stop Godzilla, then, as much hella fun as it would be to see the Kaiju Supreme put his foot all the way up the ass of both the Kremlin party bosses and the Worshipers of Mammon/Moloch/Thatcher/Reagan, millions of people could be slaughtered by both the monster’s rampage and the futile fusillades unleashed by various impotent military assets. Only rigorous thoughts and actions can save humanity from mass slaughter, not slackery capitulation.
Perhaps, Dear Reader, you are thinking, “William, you sick and twisted fuck-how can you even entertain the notion of rooting for Godzilla!? That mindless beast of destruction! Where’s your compassion? Where’s your humanism? How dare you indulge such gruesome notions! Humanity is basically decent and humanity shall prevail and you are the worst person who ever was!”
Okay, okay, that’s fair. I take your point. I don’t actually disagree with any of that.
Except . . . Professor Hayashida-the leader of the egghead elites in this movie-shares my own inner conflicts. You see, he is duty-bound to use his scientific expertise to try to find a world-saving solution to the problem of Godzilla-and yet he also admires the Atomic Avatar as a unique life form upon the Earth. Professor Hayashida even says that in times of strife, when nature is unsettled, Godzilla manifests as a living embodiment of Nature’s Wrath. Godzilla is not to be taken lightly. Godzilla may in fact be Nature’s judgment upon Humanity.
So you see . . . the conflict inside me
between
the William-That-Wants-To-Cheer-With-Sick-Joy-As-Godzilla-Wrecks-All-Of-the-Shit
and
the William-That-Wants-To-Keep-On-Living-In-A-World-Of-Air-Conditioning . . .
. . .well, Hayashida embodies that inner turmoil.
I mean, yes: I am a sick and twisted fuck. Professor Hayashida is not. He’s much more philosophically tormented. The good Professor is never seriously tempted to abandon his duty to humanity, but his character expresses this dual attraction/revulsion we feel when it comes to Godzilla-that strange charisma that overpowering figures of doom exert over the human imagination, and finds expression in the obliteration-scapes of ultraviolent dystopian films like Akira, where telekinetic powers smash a corrupt status quo or Mad Max: Fury Road wherein post-apocalyptic humans redefine themselves as heroes or oppressors in the absence of laws and states; or even the maniacal bullet-riddled outlaw excess of The Wild Bunch and Bonnie and Clyde where the protagonists choose hopeless paths of violent rebellion rather than submission to laws and norms; you see it in the shadowy chambara armageddon that climaxes The Sword of Doom as a killer for hire ascends into demonic status even as he descends into alcoholism and paranoia-
Indeed, there’s a dark allure to becoming a figure of terror. And with Godzilla, we are confronted with the exhilaration of proximity to a proper Apocalypse Monster. The perverse antici-pation of the End of All the Shit. This is the giddiness of a Doomsday Cultist, of a Jim Jones or a Shoko Asahara or a communist Red Brigade militant or a religious fundamentalist or a fanatical Red Scare demagogue cheering for a pre-emptive strike on Moscow. We are all fated to die. May as well buy it from the biggest death-dealer on the planet.
Smash Me, Big Papa G, smash me!
After all, Godzilla movies are known to revel in scenes of mass obliteration of cities and military equipment. In ‘54, this is presented as a black and white nightmare monster of cosmic violence trampling upon the city of Tokyo-widely read as a hulking, stalking allegory for the looming threat of global annihilation promised by the growing stockpiles of ICBMs and the brinksmanship played by blocs Communist and Capitalist upon the Earth.
Other Godzilla movies played these scenes of destruction as campy pro-wrastling spectacles involving other giant monsters, all grappling and roaring and stamping their feet and beating their chests to see who can be Number One Kaiju For All Times. Solemn or goofy, the monster destruction scenes are why people bought their tickets in Japan and around the world wherever these kaiju flicks find distribution.
Godzilla 1984 works in the grim spirit of Godzilla’54, presenting Godzilla’s rampage as a solemn march of annihilation. Godzilla is driven to feed on radiation, but he takes no joy in it. He has the dead-eyed stare of a junkie straight out of Naked Lunch or other transcendentally perverted William Burroughs novels. Godzilla is even allowed a kind of lip-curling sneer like he’s trying to performatively look cool and mean for the camera even while he obsessively pursues oblivion. You could see this bad boy as the lead in an all-kaiju revival of The Connection. In another pop culture dimension, Godzilla could’ve become the poster-beast for some high fashion irradiated mutation of ‘Heroin Chic.’ Maybe, like, ‘Uranium Chic?’ Could’ve been a thing, could’ve been a thing . . .
Wouldn’t that have been some shit? The squirmy allure of underfed super-models languidly draped all over the wastescape of kaiju-rubbled Tokyo? Could’ve been a thing . . .
A key scene in Godzilla’84 comes when the frame is filled with an image of Godzilla howling as he enters a volcano-which is perhaps a mythic gate-of-hell offering an exit for the tormented Apocalypse Kaiju from this Earth and into the Great Beyond. We pull back and we realize we are watching a huge ultratech telescreen-a frame-within-the-frame-being observed by the Prime Minister and his cabinet. The hopes and fears of a nation forever wounded by Hiroshima and Nagasaki are projected onto the ritual sacrifice of Godzilla-ultimately lured in this film back into the hellgate by superscientific means-a Beast of Doom, a Beast of Burden, a Kaiju Christ, who will, hopefully, carry our aggression, our militarism with it into the Void, and leave us with a renewed sense of our global humanity.
We get a close-up of the Prime Minster’s face as he openly weeps-have you ever seen a fucking politician so moved? Keiju Kobayashi’s quivering, ugly-crying face might be the most fantastical special effect in the entire Godzilla filmography.
We get an ennobling low-angle shot of Professor Hayashida as he stoically observes Godzilla’s exit-Gary Cooper’s got nothing on Yosuke Natsuki.
Hayashida’s conquered his apocalyptic fears of Nature’s Judgment-which is, perhaps, a cynical human construct that allows us to avoid responsibility for our existence upon the Earth. Yet Hayashida maintains a healthy skepticism about himself, his science, his world.
A sugary pop song bids farewell to Godzilla, our hard-boiled friend, our harshest sensei, but promises we’ll all meet again . . .
Will it be a cynical-cyclical repeat of obliterations past?
Or maybe, when next we meet, we’ll all drink each other under the table.
No nukes.
Just sake bombs.
And bad karaoke.
Maybe Sofia Coppola could direct the next one, eh?
Lost in Translation 2-people have wanted it for years, now, and Bill Murray is about as ancient as Godzilla by this point. Scarlet Johansson could play Mothra.
How about that?
Tragically realistic, not much happening aside from some mildly creepy Daddy Issues, boring really-but no one has to die. The hipsterish curated soundtrack album would get some play on college radio stations, even.
I’m sensing terrific synergy here, people.
Could be a thing . . .
