Ryfle's "Whitewashing Godzilla"

Above, Godzilla in 1954 was a by-product of the
H-bomb. The new Godzilla is a by-product of what?

Steve Ryfle (Japan's Favorite Mon-Star) wrote an article for World Cinema Paradise on the new Legendary Pictures/Warner Bros. (i.e., American) Godzilla.

Here, he takes America (instead of the movie's writers, where it rightfully belongs) to task for being "incapable of making an honest Godzilla."

What's Ryfle's problem with the movie? It is something that has also bothered me, but not to the extent where I felt compelled to write an article on. Namely, the movie states that the H-bomb detonations of the 1950s in the South Pacific weren't tests, the intent of the detonations were to kill Godzilla. Thereby taking away the true meaning of Godzilla's origin as conceived in Japan.

Ryfle makes a good point in asking why other nuclear nations detonated their bombs there as well. Did they have their own Godzillas to deal with? Good one!

Godzilla was conceived as a metaphor (or allegory) of the atomic bomb (or Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and as an anti-nuclear statement by the only nation to sustain a nuclear attack. The scenario by Legendary Pictures/ Warner Bros. does away with Godzilla's nuclear connection origin (I am going by what I've seen and read about the movie as I haven't seen it yet). It transfers the nuclear connection to the M.U.T.O.s.

On this, Ryfle wrote:

Perhaps it’s debatable whether Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. have an obligation to honor Godzilla’s origins after paying untold millions for rights to the character. But given Gojira‘s basis in actual events of the war and its aftermath, the brazen mendacity of the new film’s revisionism is rather astounding. It is not only an affront to the legacy of Honda’s Gojira, but it relies on the audience’s ignorance of and apathy toward history.

Welcome to the age of "low-information" voters, etc.

Where Ryfle loses me is when he gets into the revisionist contention that the a-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't necessary. This contention is currently in vogue by the Left in this country. It is being put forward by people who weren't there and did not take part in the decision-making process. It is curious that President Harry Truman, a Democrat, was so revered 40 years ago (along with the James Whitmore "Give 'Em Hell, Harry!"), but now the revisionists are practically making him a war criminal over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If Truman were around today, he'd give them hell!

Other than that, and some other passages that show Ryfle's leftie political bias (suffice to say, he is entitled to his opinions, so I needn't go into them here), I generally agree with his view that the new Godzilla "whitewashes" our nuclear history and takes away the true meaning of Godzilla. Perhaps the world that Godzilla takes place is in an alternate universe?

To read the full article, go here.