The Return of Godzilla was a haunting revival for Toho’s famous franchise. When released in December of 1984, the film interrupted Godzilla’s nine-year absence from Japanese cinema screens, severing continuity with the 14 prior sequels and picking up 30 years after Ishiro Honda’s 1954 original. It delivers a Godzilla for the Cold War 1980s.
All throughout the Godzilla series’ storied history, the character’s appearance regularly sheds a clarifying light on the state of the day — be it the state of the Japanese film industry, contemporary political conditions, both, and more. In its debut film, Godzilla is at once the Bomb made flesh and the war itself embodied. Godzilla is the ghost of a violent imperial project, a belligerent phantom stalking the post-war 1950s as Japan moves and shifts. 10 years later, the friendlier Godzilla of 1964’s Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster is, again, reflective of the times. The 1964 Tokyo Olympics communicated carefully constructed images of recovery, stability, and affluence — a message dispersed domestically and exported abroad. Godzilla, the nuclear demon, now saves the day. Japan, once the bitter enemy, is now a model of Western capitalist “progress” on the world stage.
Godzilla’s ability to shed such light can work deliberately (as in Godzilla) or abstractly (as in Ghidorah). The Return of Godzilla sees the monster’s revelatory capabilities in both forms. When it’s discovered that Godzilla has returned after 30 years, the Japanese government initially keeps it a secret. However, the monster destroys a Soviet nuclear submarine, inflaming tensions between the Soviet Union and the U.S. To prevent escalation, Japan reveals Godzilla’s existence. America and the Soviets both argue for nuclear weapons to be used against Godzilla, while Prime Minister Mitamura (a solemn Keiju Kobayashi) defiantly asserts Japan’s three non-nuclear principles. Those three principles, that Japan shall not possess, manufacture, or permit nuclear weapons, allow for Godzilla to once again prove himself as the ultimate post-war monster in what its mere appearance clarifies.
In the film, both the U.S. and USSR possess nuclear-armed satellites; the controls for the Soviet weapon are hidden aboard a ship docked in Tokyo Bay. When Godzilla comes ashore, the Russian missile is accidentally launched. As it approaches Japan, Godzilla is locked in combat against a flying battleship called the Super X, which comes close to finishing it off. Japan appeals to the U.S. to shoot down the Russian weapon, and so America launches its own missile. The Russian weapon is intercepted and explodes high above Tokyo. The ensuing radioactive storm revives the battered Godzilla, who then crushes the Super X beneath a skyscraper.
Despite Mitamura’s assertions of an independent path between the Soviet Union and the U.S., Japan ultimately falls back under the U.S. nuclear umbrella when the Americans shoot down the Soviet missile. The country’s post-war position is clarified and stressed, one legislated by the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty which, amongst its terms, allows a dangerous U.S. military presence in Japan. Furthermore, the Americans launch their missile from Kaneda Air Base in Okinawa. It is currently the largest U.S. air force base in East Asia, and one of several American installations in Okinawa, marking the ongoing history of colonial violence against which Okinawans have struggled — perpetrated by both Japan and America. In this film, Godzilla’s presence ultimately clarifies Japan’s post-war proximity to and collaboration with the U.S. and the power it wields, despite the rhetorical protestations of Mitamura. Still further, returning to Godzilla’s allegorical roots, as long as nuclear weapons are maintained and the threat of their use persists, then Godzilla — the idea as much as the actual character — will retain relevance. Cold War nuclear tensions literally and figuratively revive Godzilla — the monster and the series, respectively.
The film’s U.S. localization, released the following year as Godzilla 1985, has been reviled by critics, but is often effective as a companion piece to Koji Hashimoto’s Japanese theatrical version. Setting aside its clunky humor and overt Dr. Pepper product placement (though it’s worth mentioning that product placement was certainly not new for the series; just look for Bireley’s Soda throughout the Showa era), the script for Godzilla 1985 amplifies much of what was already present. The localization dialogue mentions the possibility of a nuclear exchange in Europe following the sinking of the Soviet submarine, giving sharper definition to the mention of a military buildup in the Japanese original.
The U.S. version also changes the story so that Russia deliberately launches its missile. Again, this alteration simply exaggerates what was already present. After all, the Russian submarine that Godzilla destroys opens fire on the monster first, despite the possibility that what appears on their radar could be an American vessel. In fact, the Japanese version has the submarine commander openly boast about his willingness to engage in nuclear conflict, while Godzilla 1985 cuts that line entirely. Ultimately, both versions depict Japan under attack and in need of U.S. military defense; Godzilla 1985 is simply more ideologically overt.
But what’s consistent in all versions of the film is that Godzilla is a tragic, haunting figure. Professor Hayashida (Yosuke Natsuki) explains how Godzilla killed his parents when the monster first attacked Japan. His research on the creature grew from a place of vengeance to one of reverence. Hayashida comes to recognize the monster as both a lost soul and a harbinger of doom, a being born of and stirred by scientific irresponsibility. Godzilla is not a mere creature, but something more; something intangible but felt. A sign of the end times.
None of Godzilla’s actions in the film are aggressively antagonistic. It marches forward, searching for food, lashing out only in self-defense —a lonely giant that did not ask to exist, much less return again and again. And as it marches on, its existence alone guarantees a reification of the post-war order, the precarious nature of nuclear armament, and the destruction of cities built by Japan’s recovery. When Godzilla picks up the Shinkansen bullet train, it destroys a symbol of that recovery.
At the film’s end, Godzilla is lured into the fires of Mount Mihara and perishes. Hayashida is contemplative; Mitamura is in tears. Indeed, as the latter watches Godzilla fall into Mount Mihara, he does so from the safety of a control room far away. Bathed in the glow of lava, he appears diminutive and isolated as he stands a few feet from the others in the room, the camera looking down at him. He is literally made small for having watched this creature die, his earlier assertions for an independent path between the U.S. and the Soviets rendered empty and banal by the actual conditions to which the country — and he — is bound. Godzilla lays those conditions bare.
40 years on from The Return of Godzilla, and 70 years on from the 1954 original, we keep coming back. The monster will continue to suggest the state of things, whether intentionally or otherwise, whether within these films or external to them. The most recent Japanese Godzilla film, 2023’s Godzilla Minus One, bathes in revisionist nationalism as it romanticizes the immediate post-war 1940s as a place where the war is a non-specific source of grief, where Japan’s wartime suffering is dehistoricized and detached from its imperial aggression, and where remilitarization is depicted as a noble act. It’s a Godzilla film at odds with the ideas of prior entries (like 2001’s Godzilla, Mothra, & King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack) and which evokes the present and historical denialism and revisionism of Japan’s governing LDP and wider conservative movements.
2016’s Shin Godzilla was, among many things, a response to the devastating 3-11 disaster, reflected in its visuals and narrative preoccupations. Like Minus One, the film similarly carries notions of remilitarization via its thorny references to Article 9 (of Japan’s post-war constitution) and the possibilities and limits of Japanese military action. And so, whether the ideas in these films are rendered intentionally or inadvertently, whether they are overt or abstract, what’s certain is that Godzilla will always reveal the state of things. It did in 1954, 1984, 2023, and it will for as long as Godzilla movies are made, be they produced with singular conviction (like Yoshimitsu Banno’s 1971 Godzilla vs. Hedorah), bland American blockbuster aesthetics (2021’s Godzilla x Kong), historical revisionism (Godzilla Minus One), political coherence (The Return of Godzilla), or haunted grief and memory (the original). Happy 40th, Return of Godzilla.
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