Editorials
Looking Back on the Evolution of Godzilla Through the Decades
I’ve been a Godzilla fan for as long as I can remember, with my childhood fascination with the radioactive reptile likely stemming from the 1998 animated series which served as a sequel to the first American remake. From there, I soon begged my parents to feed me with whatever Godzilla-related media they could find. As a teenager, I became a little more selective in my enjoyment of movies featuring the King of the Monsters, gravitating towards the horror aspects of the original and a handful of its successors. As a grown man, however, I have no shame in admitting that I frequently rewatch the cheesiest of these flicks while rooting for the monsters as if they were professional wrestlers in rubber suits.
That’s why I don’t say it lightly when I claim that I’m not aware of any other movie monster (or franchise, for that matter) as versatile as this one. I mean, a brutal throwback to the original film (in Godzilla Minus One) is currently co-existing with a physical incarnation of the planet’s immune system (in Legendary’s Monarch: A Legacy of Monsters), and that’s why I think this is the perfect time to look back on the many faces of Godzilla and dive into how a fire-breathing dinosaur can mean so many things to so many different people.
Everyone and their mother is aware that Ishirō Honda’s 1954 Godzilla was more than a simple creature, with the film exploring the aftermath of the atomic bomb and the social climate of post-war Japan. After all, details like the titular monster’s keloid-scar-inspired skin texture and the inclusion of imagery meant to harken back to the fire-bombing of Tokyo remind the viewer that this movie was produced less than a decade after the end of World War II. But how could such a horrific monster movie spawn worldwide toy-lines and one of the most prolific franchises of all time?
Well, the runaway success of the original Godzilla (and its infamous American re-edit) quickly led to a sequel. And while Godzilla Raids Again didn’t necessarily turn the giant dinosaur into a hero, it did create another kaiju for him to fight, giving audiences a chance to root for their favorite monster in a decidedly less controversial adventure. That was all it took for Godzilla to become an institution, with future sequels expanding his rogue’s gallery and turning him into a more marketable King of the Monsters by becoming the lesser evil among his foes.
Here comes a new challenger!
As time went on and the character became more popular overseas, we saw a gradual shift in the depiction of Godzilla as popular culture turned him into something akin to a Japanese national hero. It was only in the Heisei era that we’d begin to see more nuanced takes on the monster, like in 1984’s reboot The Return of Godzilla. Marketed as a return to form for the franchise, Return is a direct sequel to Honda’s original film, making the radioactive dinosaur a proper villain as he wreaks nuclear havoc in the midst of the Cold War.
This reinvention would be more popular than many of the kid-friendly sequels of the latter-day Shōwa era, but Toho would soon make Godzilla a protagonist again in a series of sequels that combined the joy of multiple monstrous antagonists with the reboot’s darker edge. This new continuity culminated in 1995’s Godzilla vs Destoroyah, which saw our radioactive anti-hero undergo a nuclear meltdown which endangered the entire planet – all the while fighting against his deadliest foe yet.
Funnily enough, when it came time to finally produce the long-gestating American reboot of the character, Hollywood decided to go back to basics and tell a surprisingly simple kaiju story where Godzilla would be the only threat. However, instead of engaging with the monster’s controversial atomic history, Roland Emmerich’s 1997 remake depicts the creature as more of a confused animal (literally a radiated iguana) than a vengeful force of nature – with the final moments even making us sympathize with a being that had no fault in its creation.
Meanwhile, Toho would once again experiment with multiple conflicting takes their biggest IP, with the ensuing Millennium Era featuring the character as everything from a monster-fighting hero to a stand-in for natural disasters in the span of five short years. I’d argue that the most notable (and spooky) of these incarnations was Godzilla: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, where Mothra and a new, friendly version of Ghidorah team up to face a villainous Godzilla possessed by the spirits of those killed by the Japanese during the Pacific theater of World War II.
After the middling reception of 2004’s Final Wars (a throwback to the costumed wrestling days of 1970s Godzilla flicks), Toho would retire Godzilla for over a decade, with the character only really making a resurgence in 2014 with his second American Reboot. In Gareth Edwards’ re-imagining, which is now the definitive version of the monster in Legendary’s Monsterverse, Godzilla is described as a radiation-consuming embodiment of earth’s natural balance, a neutral guardian of sorts that doesn’t necessarily involve himself in human affairs (despite apparently having been worshipped by the people of Atlantis, as we saw in the 2019 sequel).
A worthy addition to the franchise.
The success of this reboot led Toho to reconsider Godzilla’s retirement, with the studio recruiting Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno and his co-writer Shinji Higuchi to re-imagine the character for modern-day audiences. The result of this bizarre experiment was my personal favorite incarnation of the monster in 2016’s Shin Godzilla, where the constantly-evolving antagonist became an allegory for the dangers of Nuclear power in the wake of 2011’s Fukushima disaster. And while I’ve already written about the merits of this Lovecraftian reboot, I also think that the film’s final lines about the monster being something that we must learn to live with rather than destroy also apply to franchise moviemaking as a whole.
Since then, Toho has also partnered with animation studios in two separate anime projects – one of them a trilogy of feature-length specials re-characterizing the monster as god-like threat that reshapes the earth itself into its image and the other a 13-episode series that incorporates hard sci-fi into the monster’s origins. While neither of these were massive hits, it’s nice to know that creators can still come up with novel spins on Godzilla nearly 70 years down the line.
However, it’s important for Toho not to lose sight of the monster’s gloomy origins, and that’s why Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One appears to be a retro treat for fans of serious monster movies. And while I haven’t yet had the pleasure of checking it out, I think there’s something special about a Godzilla flick going back in time to the context that originally inspired the character. Plus, it looks like it would make for one hell of a double-feature with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer!
At the end of the day, the best part about getting into Godzilla movies is that there’s something in this franchise for everyone. From serious ruminations on the consequences of nuclear war to family-friendly creature features, the series has no problem with re-inventing itself for new audiences. And when your favorite movie monster can effortlessly glide between genres and themes in order to keep itself relevant, I think it’s safe to say that the future looks bright for Godzilla fans.
‘Shin Godzilla’
Auteur Filmmaking is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days in reference to big name directors like Quentin Tarantino and even Wes Anderson, but the truth is that film is a collective medium, and no one person can be responsible for every single aspect of a particular production. However, the smaller a film’s budget, the bigger the individual impact of every creative decision behind it – and the easier it becomes to identify a genuine auteur.
This isn’t necessarily a judgement of value, as blockbuster filmmaking comes with its own challenges and a good movie remains a miracle regardless of how big the crew is, but I’ve always been more interested in soulful b-movies produced by handfuls of passionate artists than blockbusters backed by creative armies.
That’s why I love exploring low-budget franchises that never left the hands of their original creators, as you really get to know the artists involved with these flicks and can accompany their evolution over a period of time. With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to join me in this multi-part series as we look into a vampire saga helmed by one of the most fascinating auteurs of the 1990s. Naturally, I’m referring to Ted Nicolaou’s criminally underrated Subspecies!
The Birth of an Unlikely Horror Franchise
A proud graduate of the University of Texas’ Film program, Nicolaou got his start in the industry as a sound technician working on Tobe Hooper’s original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. From there, the filmmaker would go on to work for notorious indie producer Charles Band, the founder of both Empire Pictures and Full Moon Productions. According to Nicolaou, Band would usually contact him with an offer to direct a feature after more prominent filmmakers, such as the late, great Stuart Gordon, had already refused, meaning that his projects tended to have lower budgets and more inexperienced crew members.
The plans for Subspecies began almost immediately after the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, with screenwriter David Pabian turning in an initial draft of the film after a Romanian producer contacted Band and explained that Romanian tax incentives could cover the cost of film production there so long as Full Moon took care of the post-production process. Since Stuart Gordon was unwilling to travel to Romania, Ted Nicolaou ended up taking over the picture.
However, while the financial incentives meant that this Romanian-American co-production could look and feel much more expensive than it really was, with Nicolaou scouting for locations in advance and selecting real castle ruins to be featured in the movie, the director was soon faced with an incredibly difficult shooting process. In interviews, Nicolaou would later describe the experience as something of a nightmare, with language barriers and the generalized distrust of capitalist outsiders sabotaging many of the team’s plans for the film.
In fact, the script, which had already been altered by Band, ultimately had portions of it rewritten by both Jack Canson and Nicolaou himself in an attempt to adapt the story to their unique limitations.
Radu Is One of Horror’s Greatest Underrated Villains
In the finished film, which was released directly to video in 1991, we follow a pair of American anthropology students, Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and Lillian (Michelle McBride), as they reunite with their Romanian colleague Mara (Irina Movila) in her native land. The group intends to study the folklore surrounding the secluded town of Prejmer, but their research is cut short by the return of Radu Vladislas (Anders Hove) – the evil son of a vampire king (Angus Scrimm) who had previously established a truce with the region’s human residents. It’s now up to Radu’s human-loving half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) to protect the girls from a fate worse than death as the power-hungry vampire seeks to control a magical artifact known as the Bloodstone.
Right off the bat, you may have noticed that the film’s premise sounds decidedly old-fashioned when compared to other vampire movies from around the same time. While the 1990s saw the rise of cool-looking bloodsuckers with badass elements borrowed from Westerns, as well as the sexy aristocrats of Anne Rice’s stories, Subspecies has a lot more in common with Nosferatu and the Hammer Horror series than any of its contemporaries.
This is both a blessing and a curse, as the film falls victim to overly familiar genre tropes while also standing out as a rare example of a ’90s vampire flick that isn’t afraid to flex its muscles as a Creature Feature. In fact, I’d argue that the presence of age-old clichés is a small price to pay when confronted with one of the most compelling vampire antagonists in all of cinema.
Named after Vlad the Impaler’s real-life brother, Anders Hove’s Radu is such a fascinating character and the main reason why Subspecies is still worth watching 35 years later. From his animalistic mannerisms to the joy he feels in simply existing as a chaotic creature of the night, and that’s not even mentioning the iconic makeup that almost certainly inspired the undead from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Radu is a hypnotic presence harkening back to a time when audiences didn’t mind purely evil villains that couldn’t be redeemed through tragic backstories or sex appeal.
Gothic Atmosphere on an Indie Budget
Of course, the film’s Romanian setting and authentic art direction do a lot of the heavy lifting whenever Radu isn’t around. From the masked festivals of the village to the visually interesting selection of local extras, Subspecies’ multicultural elements help it to stand out when compared to similar flicks from the ’90s.
That being said, Nicolaou’s unique eye for special effects and exciting action sequences – as well as Vlad Paunescu’s excellent cinematography – make the movie a delight for fans of expressionist cinema and old-timey gothic horror. While the crew is obviously dealing with limited resources, many of the flick’s blemishes (such as the odd stop-motion demons that serve Radu) end up feeling more like charming idiosyncrasies than actual flaws.
I’d argue that the only real issue here is pacing, as there are long stretches of film where the protagonists are simply bumbling around without realizing what’s really going on around them. Thankfully, the gorgeous visuals and surprisingly effective soundtrack usually make up for this. Besides, how can you dislike a movie where shotgun shells are loaded with rosary beads and our lead vampires duke it out in a dramatic swordfight that would feel out of place during the golden age of Hollywood?
Your overall enjoyment of Subspecies will mostly depend on whether or not you find low-budget corner-cutting and janky practical effects charming rather than distracting, but I know I’ll keep coming back to this Full Moon feature again and again in the future.
That being said, while this first movie is worth revisiting by its own merits as the birth of an indie horror icon, I’d like to invite you to join us as we look into the cult sequel Bloodstone: Subspecies II soon.
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