This appeared in the editorial section of yesterday's New York Times...

"Godzilla vs. the Giant Scissors: Cutting the Antiwar Heart Out of a Classic"
Brent Staples, NY Times, May 1, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/opinion/01sun3.html

Film directors who once stood helpless while studios recut their movies can now console themselves with "directors' cuts" put out on DVD. This option was not available to the influential Japanese director Ishiro Honda, whose 1954 classic "Godzilla" - known in Japan as "Gojira" - made a household name of the towering reptile who stomped a miniature Tokyo into the ground while raking the landscape with his fiery thermonuclear breath.

A fire-breathing reptile is pretty much the same in any language. But the butchered version of the film that swept the world after release in the United States was stripped of the political subtext - and the anti-American, antinuclear messages - that had saturated the original. The uncut version of the film is due out on home video early next year, and should push serious Godzilla fans to rethink the 50-year evolution of the series. It should also show them that they were hoodwinked by the denatured Americanized version that dominated many of their childhoods in the late 20th century. At the same time, Godzilla fans are on the edge of their seats about a new film that should be released in the United States soon.

The original "Gojira" was never intended as a conventional monster-on-the-loose movie. Nor did it resemble the farcical rubber-suit wrestling matches or the domesticated movies (with Godzilla cast as a mammoth household pet) that the series degenerated into during the 1960's and 70's.

As the historian William Tsutsui reminded us in last year's cult classic, "Godzilla on My Mind," the 1954 movie was a dark, poetic production that dealt openly with Japanese misgivings about the nuclear menace, environmental degradation and the traumatic experience associated with World War II.

The nuclear annihilations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still fresh in mind when the famous Toho Company embarked on the "Gojira" project in 1954. But Japanese fear of nuclear catastrophe was given fresh impetus in the spring of that year, when the United States detonated a huge hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll in the central Pacific. Japanese fishermen aboard a trawler were exposed to nuclear fallout. Japanese consumers panicked and declined to eat fish after irradiated tuna was found to have slipped into the nation's food supply.

In the film, the H-bomb blast awakens and irradiates a dinosaur that has somehow escaped extinction. The reptile strides ashore and begins his trademark devastation of the Tokyo landscape. The nuclear antecedents were not at all lost on Honda, a World War II veteran who passed through the bombed-out city of Hiroshima and witnessed the damage firsthand. Honda later said that he envisioned the fiery breath of Godzilla as a way of "making radiation visible," and of showing the world that nuclear power could never be tamed.

He also told an interviewer: "Believe it or not, we naïvely hoped that the end of Godzilla was going to coincide with the end of nuclear testing."

That was clearly a tall order for a monster movie. But Honda's message never had a chance because most of the world never received it. The American company that bought the rights to distribute the film in this country cut a large chunk from Honda's original film and rearranged the plot. The biggest change involved splicing in Raymond Burr, who played an American reporter chronicling the devastation for the press. Dialogue that dealt heavily with human suffering, the morality of all-out war - and the temptation to play God with weapons of mass destruction - was left on the American cutting room floor.

The exclusion of the antinuclear theme in the American version is hardly surprising. Hollywood had little stomach for anti-American rhetoric during the McCarthyite 1950's. But the American production of "Godzilla" that starred Matthew Broderick a half-century later showed that Hollywood did not understand the monster, either.

The sleek, animated "American" Godzilla somehow managed to be less scary than the Japanese actor in the latex suit. Part of the problem is that the American Godzilla relied on stealth and cunning instead of the brute force displayed by the original. Some fans felt like walking out when the American Godzilla, confronted by a military threat, turned and ran. The essence of Godzilla is that he keeps stomping relentlessly forward, no matter what you throw his way.

It is fitting, then, that the American Godzilla is K.O.'ed by the real thing in the 28th and perhaps final installment, "Godzilla Final Wars," which should make it into general release in America sometime soon. It's also fitting that the original Godzilla movie, which was dismembered a half-century ago in America, is finally being shown in its full and uncut form.

great article.

I've never seen the original japanese version of the film. So I'm very much looking forward to this release.

Let's hope that all of the Godzilla movies will see themselves on DVD.

A good article (though nothing new). And nothing really about the DVD, as I suspected, it looks like they did their research by checking DVD forums, and turn our speculations into facts, we read the the facts, and the vicious circle begins again.

I'm very interested in seeing the original version of Godzilla, as I always liked watching the movies as a kid and now would like something a little darker. Here's hoping the DVD is released soon.

A great edition has been available in Region 4 for months.

I'd like to get a disc with restored copies of both versions.

The R4 disc has both versions of the film in one set. They actually look rather good as well.

The thing is, they've tried to recapture the political messages in later Godzilla movies, but they always fail. In the last two decades most of their attempts have been environmentally-related.

Please. Ive seen the uncut Gojira both on DVD and in the rerelease last year at a theater. It was not filled with anti-US sentiment and the plot doesn't change. Except for a few lines, they didn't harp on the nuclear bombs and the danger of radiation was kept in the US version. Sure they cut some footage, but there was nothing cut that somehow changed the whole movie. Other than telling the story from Ray Burr's point of view the story is the same. The reporter is obviously biased against the US version.

BTW, who watches a Godzilla/Gojira movie for serious drama? I and 99.99% of the viewers just want to see a big monster trash Japan.

I think the American Godzilla couldn't be clearer about the dangers of nuclear proliferation, despite the New York Times' opinion.

When you say "American Godzilla", are you referring to the 1956 Godzilla King of the Monsters or the 1998 Godzilla?

same here.
Agree for the most part.
I'm not going to poo poo the 1956 Godzilla King of the Monsters. That movie was instrumental in the worldwide introduction of Godzilla. The way the Raymond Burr footage was inserted into the 1954 movie was well done IMO. The 1954 movie is the more potent of the two however. Not that there are any big revelations in the unedited version that are missing in the 1956 one. A line here, a sequence there. The 1956 movie shows the devastation of Tokyo at the beginning and the suffering and dying citizens. This scene has a much greater impact after you have seen Godzilla's rampage (especially the crying girl seeing her dead parent). The mother clutching her two children in the streets on the night of Godzilla's destruction. That scene is in the 1956 movie, but you don't know what the mother is saying (something to the effect of "Just a few more minutes and we'll be with your father"). Dr. Serizawa's inner torment of his discovery is more evident in the original, IMO. Dr. Yamane's statement/warning at the end foreshadowing the appearance of another Godzilla is not in the 1956 version and is pivotal. I'm sure there is more but it's been awhile since I've seen the 1954 movie.
As are most of the critics that reviewed the movie when Rialto released it last year. They're all wrong?
With this movie you can do both.

I loved Raymon Burr in the 1954 movie, I did not know he was added. Burr gave the movie a "War of the Worlds" type feel to it.

Good point.

In fact, more people die from nuclear exposure than cigarettes, traffic accidents, drunk driving, shootings, and I could go on.

The American Godzilla was Hollywood-ization of the FEAR of nuclear power. And it was BS.

Hopefully they don't screw up the DVD. I hope in time they rerelease all the originals. Godzilla vs Gigan!

I was referring to the 1998 Godzilla. Sorry.

Nuclear power deserves to be feared. And any movie starring Jean Reno, Mathew Broderick and Hank Azaria that also has a knee-jerking fat slob of an ignorant, power-hungry, truth-suppressing Mayor named "Ebert" (Michael Lerner) calling the shots deserves a special Oscar for sheer gumption against catty critics.


Michael Lerner

Hank Azaria

Jean Reno

Mathew Broderick

I liked the orig version of Gojira that I saw last year from Rialto and would get it on R1 whenever it comes out. I liked the 98 version too for what it is. I wish they would go back and redo it with a nice anamorphic WS to replace the shite copy thats out now.

Ahem... There is only one Region 1 DVD of the 1998 Godzilla and it's widescreen anamorphic. It also has a superb picture:

http://imdb.com/title/tt0120685/dvd

no problema
Well, maybe. The 1998 debacle had more in common with U.S. sci fi movies of the 50s featuring giant spiders and lizards. It's really more of a remake of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms than of Godzilla.

What sets the 1954/1956 Godzilla apart from the rest is that it represents the bomb. It also represents the consequences of the bomb as much more problematic. Godzilla was an irresistable force that was only felled by an equally destructive device.

I'm keeping an eye out for this myself...

I took a trip to see it in the theater last year.