Godzilla 1954 Full Length Reaction
Added 2025-05-27 13:00:06 +0000 UTCComments
In the US release, Raymond Burr was not Emiko's love interest; that was still the naval officer Ogata. Scenes of Burr were spliced in to provide English language dialogue and exposition. This allowed the US studio to minimize the amount of Japanese dialogue they had to dub into English. In the 1990's when I learned that the original had a longer run time than the US version, I thought the original might have horrific scenes of death and destruction they couldn't show in the US. It turns out the deleted scenes just had a lot of dialogue they didn't want to dub into English; they just let Burr provide sufficient exposition. And although the Japanese language original did address the nuclear weapons more, the bombs were discussed in the US version--they released Godzilla and allowed him to spread radioactivity in the waters around Tokyo. In the US version they had Ogata voice this dilemma to Dr. Serizawa who was hesitant to use his oxygen destroyer (perhaps to echo America's dilemma in dropping the two atomic weapons on Japan): "Then you have a responsibility no man has ever faced. You have your fear [of the oxygen destroyer being misused] which might become reality. And you have Godzilla, which is reality." BTW the actor playing the older scientist who wants to study Godzilla was the leader of the samurai in "The Seven Samurai." Cool!
Georgius Agricola
2025-06-10 21:14:04 +0000 UTCTo answer some of your technical questions: 1) in a lot of the shots of Godzilla it's a guy in a rubber suit stomping on model buildings and such. 2) The way they get those layered shots (if I recall) is to shoot each part separately and then composite them together usually by filming each one with a blank space so you can cut them together. 3) A lot of the imagery of devastation would be very familiar to its Japanese audience, especially in the wake of the fire bombing of Tokyo and the Atomic Bomb attacks. If you look back at documentaries of the time you can see some almost 1:1 recreations. And with this coming out in 1954 it would be less than 10 years since the end of the war. The version released in the US was recut with lots of shots of Raymond Burr put into the movie (I think he plays Emiko's love interest) and it removes the anti-nuke message. My memory isn't what it used to be and I got some of this from Wikipedia. Criterion's streaming service should have some good bonus features if you want to take a deep dive. Big G is really fascinating especially in this entry and makes a cool double feature with the latest one "Godzille Minus 1" as another serious take on the monster.
Chris Morgan
2025-06-03 15:43:00 +0000 UTCI liked "Godzilla Against Mecha Godzilla" just a little more than "Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla." Seen them all too.
Dan Holder
2025-05-28 21:58:42 +0000 UTChere is my list of the best Godzilla movies, as someone that has seen all of them, I would list Godzilla(1954) Mothra vs. Godzilla(1964), Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster(1964), Invasion of Astro-Monster, Destroy All Monsters, Godzilla vs MechGodzilla, Terror of MechaGodzilla, all of the Heisei( 1984-1995), “Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack”Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla , Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., Shin Godzilla, and Godzilla Minus One as the best Godzilla movies and would make a great Godzilla marathon. I would also recommend that you watch “ The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” which inspired Godzilla and features the amazing work of Ray Harryhausen.
MrDannySteele
2025-05-28 01:36:10 +0000 UTCShin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus One are both worth your time as capital-F "Films", like this one.
Dave_Dot_Executable
2025-05-27 16:17:57 +0000 UTC
