I came across an article at Japan Focus on Godzilla by Yuki Tanaka, a research professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute. It is called, Godzilla and the Bravo Shot: Who Created and Killed the Monster? It was posted March 20.*
In his article, Tanaka describes the origins of the Godzilla character and his connections to the hydrogen bomb.
He also discusses the making of the Japanese original, the Americanization (with Raymond Burr) and the 1998 American production.
Some of Tanaka's points I have to take issue with. There are two glaring ones that immediately pop right out.
The first, Tanaka wrote:
Unlike The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, the original film Godzilla does not demonstrate the victory of science over nature.
Apparently, Tanaka must've stepped away from the screen whenever scenes of the oxygen destroyer (invented by Dr. Serizawa) from the 1954 Godzilla were shown. Obviously, the invention of the oxygen destroyer and its use against Godzilla was a victory of science over nature (or, rather, a gigantic mutated bit of nature).
The other glaring item was this reference to the 1998 American Godzilla:
Unlike the Japanese Godzilla, the American Godzilla is simply a giant dinosaur that eats huge quantities of fish and lays many eggs while its babies attack and cannibalize human beings.
A giant dinosaur? This is funny as Tanaka leads the paragraph just previous to the above with:
The second American Godzilla film, simply entitled Godzilla and produced in 1998, is the story of an iguana that was irradiated by a French nuclear test at Muraroa Atoll and somehow appears in New York as Godzilla.
Which is it? A "giant dinosaur" or an "iguana"?
There are many more statements in the Tanaka article that fans "in the know" would take issue with. I invite them to comment here once they read the full article. I detected no comment feature at the article.
To read Tanaka's full article, go here.
*This is a 1995 article, but reposted March 20 per Google.
