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Gojira vs. Godzilla, the Birth of the King of Monsters by Jim Towns
TECH SECRETS
Gojira vs. Godzilla, the Birth of the King of Monsters by Jim Towns 31 May, 2019
This week marks the release of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and it made me want to revisit the original film, as a way of remembering where this watershed character came from: Ishiro Honda’s 1954 masterpiece, Gojira.
Gojira was partially inspired by the 1933 American film King Kong, and also by a film called The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms which had come out the year before-- but MOSTLY Gojira was inspired by the destruction of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs at the end of World War 2.
Gojira is not only a vastly superior version of what Western audiences commonly know as Godzilla... it’s really an entirely different film.