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man-creates-dinosaurs · 7 years ago

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GODZILLA - A QUESTION OF ORIGINS: AN ESSAY ON GODZILLA’S PLACE IN PALEO-FICTION

Earlier this month Toho Studios and Polygon Pictures unveiled to the world the latest incarnation of Godzilla via a 2-meter tall statue erected in the lobby of the Cinecitta’ Theater in Kawasaki. While this new version of Godzilla, which will appear in the forthcoming anime film GODZILLA: PLANET OF THE MONSTERS (Nov. 17, Dir. Kōbun Shizuno & Hiroyuki Seshita), has an overall familiar silhouette, it is also in many ways radically different from anything that has come before it. With a forest green complexion, skin which looks like twisted roots and leaf-shaped dorsal fins, this new Godzilla has a rather arboreal look to him.

A subsequent press release from Toho published on Sci-Fi Japan provided further confirmation regarding Godzilla’s Swamp Thing-like new look by noting that this incarnation of Godzilla will be a “plant-based” life form. Needless to say this statement was fairly vague and raised numerous questions as to what exactly is meant by “plant-based.” Will Godzilla actually be a plant or part plant? Will he be an animal with a symbiotic relationship to plants? Maybe it just means he’s a vegetarian? It’s still too early to say but this has not stopped many Godzilla fans from reacting with consternation and condemnation (at least on this side of the Pacific, I have no idea what Japanese Gojira fans are making of all this). Much of this outrage stems from the fact that most fans take as gospel the idea that Godzilla’s origin is that of an extant dinosaur whose exposure to radiation from atomic bomb tests in the Pacific in the 1950s mutated the creature into the familiar kaijū known around the world today.

But is this actually the case?

It should be stated upfront that Godzilla’s creator, Toho Studios producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, is on record as saying that he originally conceived of Godzilla as “a dinosaur sleeping in the Southern Hemisphere [that] had been awakened and transformed into a giant by the [atomic] bomb.” However, Tanaka gave his statement to The Washington Post in 1984, many years after the fact and while promoting the then new film THE RETURN OF GODZILLA (1984, Dir. Koji Hashimoto) which, as we will see, was the first in a series of Godzilla movies which began placing greater emphasis on Godzilla’s connection to dinosaurs. Furthermore, digging into the production of the original Godzilla film from 1954 reveals that there was in fact no consensus early on regarding what exactly Godzilla should be. Special-effects director Eiji Tsuburaya campaigned for Godzilla to be a giant octopus while early concept art by cartoonist Kazuyoshi Abe depicted a monster more allegorical then biological in appearance, as it resembled an anthropomorphic living-mushroom cloud. It wasn’t until Toho art director Akira Watanabe took a pass at the design that Godzilla’s now familiar dinosaurian look began to emerge. However this essay is not interested in events which transpired behind the scenes but rather those which ended up in front of the cameras. In other words, the question being asked here is if the commonly upheld assertion that Godzilla is a ‘radioactive dinosaur’ can actually be found in the 31-films which make up Godzilla’s current cinematic legacy. To this end, the following essay will look at those films in the franchise which both explicitly and implicitly deal with the subject of Godzilla’s origin in order to find out what is and is not actually said about the King of the Monsters and where he comes from.

As a final note before proceeding it should be observed that because the role of science in science-fiction films is often to merely lend a veneer of scientific veracity to the events on screen via the use of technical sounding jargon it should not be expected that the paleontological claims made by various characters in the Godzilla films are in any way accurate or a reflection of what actual paleontologists have ever thought was true about dinosaurs. Nevertheless, there are moments in the franchise where actual paleontology – both cutting edge and hopelessly out-of-date – has been invoked, balanced out by scenes of utter pseudoscience. Because of this fact, this essay will endeavor to highlight which ideas are true, which are blatantly false and which fall somewhere in between. What this essay will not attempt to do however is use the tenants of contemporary paleontology to try and explain Godzilla’s origin – mostly because I am not a paleontologist. Readers who are interested in that kind of speculation have a number of essays on this very topic written by actual paleontologists including Kenneth Carpenter, Darren Naish, and Mark Witton which they should consult. Now on to the films…

Godzilla (1954)

In GODZILLA (1954, Dir. Ishiro Honda) Japanese fishing trawlers begin mysterious disappearing off the coast of Japan. When some of the survivors wash up on the nearby Odo Island journalist Hagiwara (Sachio Sakai) goes to investigate. He learns that the locals blame the disasters on a mythical monster called Gojira/Godzilla and that night, during a storm, Hagiwara briefly spies the beast. In response to Hagiwara’s report the Japanese government dispatches a team of scientists to investigate including paleontologist Dr. Kyohei Yamane (Takashi Shimura). Once on Odo Island, Dr. Yamane observes huge saurian footprints crisscrossing the terrain and discovers a living trilobite – a kind of extinct marine arthropod – in one of them. He also notes that the footprints are highly radioactive. Dr. Yamane isn’t on the island long when Godzilla reappears – this time in broad daylight – peeking over a nearby cliff before disappearing back into the sea. Based on his discoveries and observations Dr. Yamane returns to Tokyo where he delivers the following statement to government officials…

“About 2-million years ago, this brontosaurus and these other dinosaurs roamed the earth during a period the experts called Jurassic. During the following geological period, the Cretaceous, a creature somewhere between the marine reptiles and the evolving terrestrial animals was born. I am convinced there was such an intermediate creature. [Brings up photo of Godzilla to audible gasps from the audience] This creature, according to Odo Island folklore, is called Godzilla. As we look at this photo of Godzilla’s head from a hill on Odo Island, we can estimate that this creature stands approximately 50-meters tall. So then, how can we explain the presence of such a creature during the present day? It probably survived by eating deep sea organisms occupying a specific niche. However, recent experimental nuclear detonations may have drastically altered its natural habitat. I would even speculate that a hydrogen bomb explosion may have removed it from its surroundings.”

Dr. Yamane continues to elaborate upon his theory, showing off the trilobite he recovered from Godzilla’s footprint and explaining that the sand extracted from its shell is the same as that found in Jurassic era fossil deposits. This same sand also contained traces of “Strontium-90” a radioactive isotope “generated only from an atomic bomb.”

While Dr. Yamane’s never overtly declares that Godzilla is a ‘radioactive dinosaur’ his references to “brontosaurus and… other dinosaurs” – words accompanied by slides showing acclaimed paleoartist Rudolph F. Zallinger’s paintings of dinosaurs – strongly suggests the idea. More specifically, Dr. Yamane appears to believe that Godzilla represents a transitional form between terrestrial dinosaurs and marine reptiles (i.e. plesiosaurs, pliosaurs, ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs); a notion which is phylogenetically erroneous though perhaps not quite as egregious as the blatantly false assertion that non-avian dinosaurs were roaming the earth as recently as 2-million years ago.

Godzilla: The Shōwa Era (1955-1975)

As the Godzilla series progressed, emphasis on the question of Godzilla’s origin was gradually sidelined. Dr. Yamane returns in the franchise’s second film, GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN (1955, Dir. Motoyoshi Oda), just long enough to confirm the Japanese government’s fears that a second Godzilla has been discovered following the death of the first one in the 1954 film. To make matters worse a second kaijū, Anguirus, has also appeared and been identified by another scientist, Dr. Tadokoro (Masao Shimizu), as a type of Ankylosaurus.

What is interesting to note here is that while the Japanese films chose to deemphasize Godzilla’s possible dinosaurian origins, the American localizations of these same films insisted on actually putting more emphasis on such ideas via additional dialogue added either through dubbing or the insertion of new scenes. For example, in Warner Brother’s reworking of GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN, re-titled GIGANTIS THE FIRE MONSTER for US audiences, Dr. Yamane and Dr. Tadokoro’s brief bout of exposition is expanded into a nearly 7-minute long spiel featuring some of the most outrageous pseudoscience ever committed to screen in a 50s B-monster movie… or possibly anywhere else. Highlights include Dr. Yamane declaring that dinosaurs “were born out of fiery matter, their very existence was based upon the element of fire. They breathed fire, they survived in fire, fire was part of their organic makeup” and Dr. Tadokoro reading, allegedly out of paleontological textbook, an excerpt which reports that “somewhere, although it is not known when, these creatures may come alive after years of hibernation due to radioactive fallout.”

Universal’s 1963 Americanization of KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (1962, Dir. Ishiro Honda) fared no better. New scenes where added featuring United Nations reporter Eric Carter (Michael Keith) interviewing Dr. Arnold Johnson (Harry Holcombe), head of the Museum of Natural History in New York, who uses a copy of writer Darlene Geis and artist R.F. Peterson’s children’s science book Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals (1959) to explain that Godzilla is a hybrid between a Stegosaurus (a late Jurassic era, Ornithischian, herbivorous quadruped) and Tyrannosaurus Rex (a late Cretaceous era, Saurischian, carnivorous theropod). The mind reels.

Godzilla: The Heisei Era (1984-1995)

While the question of Godzilla’s origin quickly faded into the background during the Shōwa era, Toho’s second series of Godzilla films would revive the issue, placing new emphasis on the question and ultimately delivering what is to date the most detailed account of Godzilla’s dinosaurian beginnings.

In THE RETURN OF GODZILLA (1985, Dir. Koji Hashimoto), Godzilla’s sudden return after a nearly 30-year absence throws the Cold War powers of the United States and Russia into a tailspin with Japan serving as a reluctant middleman. Brash, young reporter Goro Maki (Ken Tanaka) has the inside scoop but is barred by the Japanese government from publishing his report due to concerns that the revelation that Godzilla is alive and well may cause an international panic. Maki then visits biologist Prof. Makoto Hayashida (Yosuke Natsuki) to learn more about Godzilla. Like Dr. Yamane, Prof. Hayashida never openly declares that Godzilla is a ‘radioactive dinosaur’ but the insinuation is clearly there. Prof. Hayashida’s lab is full of miniature fossil skeleton models of various extinct species and a coffee table in the room is covered with books on dinosaurs. When Maki asks the professor if he thinks Godzilla is a biological animal, Maki says yes but clarifies that due to his exposure to radiation Godzilla has been transformed into a “living nuclear weapon.” Prof. Hayashida then passes Maki a copy of David Lambert’s book Dinosaurs (1978) while intoning that he has also come to believe that Godzilla is “immortal” – the implication here being that Godzilla is not only an extant dinosaur but one which possibly has been around for millions of years.

This idea is further bolstered by Prof. Hayashida’s eventual plan to defeat Godzilla. Noting that Godzilla appears to follow the same migratory routes as modern birds, which are the evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs, Prof. Hayashida theorizes that Godzilla has a similar “homing” instinct to birds and that if they can find a way to manipulate this then they can effectively trick Godzilla into going where they tell him to, including having him walk straight into the mouth of an active volcano – which is exactly what they do!

Of course, Godzilla doesn’t stay there and eventually escapes for a sequel, GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE (1989, Dir. Kazuki Ohmori), which doesn’t feature any paleontological content. However, its sequel, GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH (1991, Dir. Kazuki Ohmori), does being the first and so far only film in the franchise to reveal the origin of Godzilla on screen.

The plot of GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH involves time-travelers from the year 2204 who come back to warn the Japanese that in the near future Godzilla will destroy the country of Japan entirely. In order to prevent this the time-travelers propose going back to the year 1944 and locating the extant dinosaur that would become Godzilla and moving it to another island in the South Pacific where it won’t be exposed to radiation from atomic bomb tests - thus negating Godzilla’s entire existence. The only problem however is that the time-travelers don’t know what island the dinosaur is on, which is why they have come to the year 1992 to find science-fiction writer Kenichiro Terasawa (Kosuke Toyohara) who is currently writing a book about Godzilla’s origin with the help of a scientist named Prof. Mazaki (Katsuhiko Sasaki) who has previously published a monograph in which he argues against the scientific consensus that dinosaurs went extinct 66-million years ago. Based on eyewitness accounts from surviving Japanese soldiers stationed on Lagos Island during the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, Terasawa has concluded that a living dinosaur was present on the island and theorizes that this same dinosaur was subsequently mutated into Godzilla. Terasawa, Prof. Mazaki, and several other characters, join the time-travelers and journeys back to 1944. There on Lagos Island they witness the dinosaur, which Terasawa unoriginally dubs Godzillasaurus, fight off an American military platoon thereby saving the Japanese troops stationed on the island.

One of the most curious aspects about this whole scenario regarding Godzilla’s origin is the way in which the surviving Japanese soldiers come to revere and worship Godzilla as Japan’s savior. Early on in the film we see Terasawa interviewing a veteran named Masukichi Ikehata (Koichi Ueda) who has just managed to get himself kicked out of a natural history museum for walking around with banners and a megaphone declaring that…

“A long time ago, I saw a real-life dinosaur. You don’t know what it was like, but I certainly do! That dinosaur is always watching us from somewhere. And if we ever become helpless and desperate… Right when we’re about to be broken, the dinosaur will always come. A warning to the humans who desecrate the dinosaur. The dinosaur are sacred. Hear the voice of the dinosaur. I encountered it on the doomed battlefront of the War.”

Less extreme is wealthy business tycoon Yasuaki Shindo (Yoshio Tsuchiya), who was also stationed on Lagos Island in ’44 and witnessed the dinosaur, an incident which has led to an apparent life-long obsession with dinosaurs to the point that Shindo’s corporate office is filled with model dinosaurs and a huge dinosaur mural hangs on the wall behind his desk.

Takayuki Tatsumi, who is a real-world professor of literary theory and American literature at Keio University, writes that such devotion as displayed by Ikehata and Shindo recalls the practices of Ōishigori Shintoism which was a splinter sect of the Japanese national religion of Shinto which is an animistic faith that teaches the worship of nature as an embodiment of the divine. Ōishigori Shintoism, pioneered by Meiji era clairvoyant Ōishigori Masumi (b. 1832 – d. 1913) – who feared that Shinto was falling behind the rival religions of Christianity and Buddhism as well as then cutting-edge scientific thought such as Darwin’s Theory of Evolution – conversely taught that the Japanese were not the evolutionary descendants of early hominids but rather arose from dragons born of stone pebbles filled with chi by the gods. According to Ōishigori these “dragons” – the ones mentioned in Shinto texts like the Kojiki and Nihon-Nihongi – were actually extant dinosaurs. Furthermore not all the dinosaurs had evolved into humans. Rather some had remained hidden deep in the sea where they lived on as Dragon Gods. Either way, what Ōishigori was ultimately advocating was a worldview in which the Japanese are both the descendants of dinosaurs and worship dinosaurs as living-gods.

Having explicitly established Godzilla’s status as a living dinosaur, the fifth film in the Heisei series sees this information put to use. A scientific expedition lead by Prof. Ohmae (Yûsuke Kawazu) to Adona Island in the Bering Sea – which is described by one character as a “nuclear junkyard” – leads to the discovery of the mutant pteranodon Rodan and the recovery of a gigantic unhatched prehistoric egg. Prof. Ohmae initially believes the egg is Rodan’s, but is proven wrong when it eventually hatches revealing an infant Godzillasaurus. By studying this creature the scientists at the United Nations Godzilla Countermeasures Center (UNGCC) learn that Godzilla’s species has two brains; one located in the skull and another at the base of the spine. Using this knowledge they plan to attack Godzilla’s second brain with hopes paralyzing the monster.

The idea that Godzilla would have two brains may seem odd but is actually based on a real-life theory about dinosaurs developed by acclaimed and controversial 19th-Century Yale paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh who observed that many of the biggest dinosaurs – specifically sauropods and stegosaurus – had an unusually large medullar cavity in the sacropelvic region of their bodies. Because the heads of these giant dinosaurs seemed so absurdly small for their massive bodies Marsh concluded that this sacral cavity must have housed a second brain which worked to control the back half of their bodies while the one in their skulls controlled the front half. Marsh’s double-brain hypothesis was eventually overturned and paleontologists now believe that such cavities housed rich stores of glycogen rather than extra grey matter. Nevertheless the myth of the two-brained dinosaurs persists to this day popping up as recently as 2013 when it was invoked by scientist Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day) in the film PACIFIC RIM (Dir. Guillermo del Toro).

Godzilla (1998)

The origin of the Godzilla which appears in 1998’s GODZILLA (Dir. Roland Emmerich) is a matter of some controversy. After a destroyed Japanese fishing boat washes ashore in Panama with a series of huge saurian footprints leading away from it, the US military assembles a team of scientists to assess the situation and determine what kind of creature might be responsible. Among the team is paleontologist Dr. Elsie Chapman (Vicki Lewis) who early on deduces that they are dealing with an extant “Theropoda Allosaurus;” a theory which is met with skepticism by her teammates Dr. Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) and Dr. Mendel Craven (Malcolm Danare). In Stephen Molstad’s adult novelization of the film, Dr. Craven, in particular, raises a number of objections to Dr. Chapman’s contention that Godzilla is a living dinosaur including the issues of how it would have survived the K-T mass extinction, why no one has seen it before now, that it is hailing from the wrong part of the globe (Allosaurus fossils are found in the American West, not the South Pacific), and the fact that theropod dinosaurs are not generally believed to have been amphibious.

However despite these serious objections neither Dr. Craven nor Dr. Tatopoulos are ever actually capable of refuting Dr. Chapman’s contentions and it does not appear that Dr. Chapman herself ever abandons them. In fact, it would appear that both of her colleagues may have later actually come to agree with her. Evidence of this is found in Molstad’s novelization where we learn that Dr. Craven eventually authored a book about Godzilla called Cretaceous-period Park; a title which suggests a belief that Godzilla is a relic dinosaur. Furthermore in the pilot episode of the animated GODZILLA: THE SERIES (1998-2000, 40 Episodes), Dr. Tatopoulous discovers a baby Godzilla in the sewers of New York. The infant imprints on him (like a bird) and comes to believe he’s its parent. When his colleagues learn about this second Godzilla they initially want it destroyed leading Dr. Tatopoulous to plead with them to allow the creature to live, at one point saying to Dr. Chapman: “You’re a paleontologist. Why would you destroy your only living specimen?”

The alternative theory as to this Godzilla’s origin is that it is a mutated version of a contemporary reptile; either a marine iguana or a member of the Varanidae family which includes both monitor lizards and Komodo Dragons. The opening credit sequence of the 1998 film alludes to such an origin via its juxtaposition of images of South Pacific reptiles and atomic bomb detonations. Additionally this is the pet theory of Dr. Tatopoulos, having come to him, according to Molstead, in the form of a recurring nightmare. In H.B. Gilmour’s junior novelization of the film this theory is all but validated by the book’s opening page which describes a scene set in “June 1968” in which the eggs of a “six-foot-long reptile” living on an island in the Pacific are exposed to the fallout from an atomic bomb test. [1]

Godzilla: The Millennium Series (1999-2004)

Toho’s third series of Godzilla films would once again sideline the issue of Godzilla’s origin, be it prehistoric or otherwise. The movie which proves the exception to this rule however is 2001’s GODZILLA, MOTHRA, KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTER’S ALL-OUT ATTACK (Dir. Shusuke Kaneko) which is notable for not only tackling this issue but in doing so also effectively appearing to tear down and dismiss everything which had previously been established about what Godzilla is and where he comes from.

In the film, the ghost of folklorist Prof. Hirotoshi Isayama (Hideyo Amamoto) prophesies Godzilla’s return. He also explains that Godzilla is the embodiment of “the souls of countless people who fell victim to the Pacific War” and who have returned to attack Japan “because people have forgotten… Forgotten the agony of those killed in the war… Forgotten their cries…”

In making the claim that Godzilla is the personification of the restless spirits of those who died during WWII, Prof. Isayama is essentially positing that Godzilla, rather than being a biological entity, is a supernatural one, specifically an onryō, or vengeful spirit, like those seen in such Japanese horror movies as RING (1998, Dir. Hideo Nakata), PULSE (2001, Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa) and JU-ON: THE GRUDGE (2002, Dir. Takashi Shimizu). While such an interpretation may appear to be totally out of left field, it actually reflects a widespread interpretation of Godzilla which became popular among real-world Japanese folklorists – such as Akasaka Norio and Nagayama Yasuo – and film critics – like Yomota Inuhiko – in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Such an interpretation would also appear to be about as far removed from the understanding of Godzilla as ‘mutant dinosaur’ as one can get.

However, as mentioned earlier in conjunction with GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH (1991), such a theory also raises the specter of Ōishigori Shintoism again and the idea that the Japanese are somehow both spiritually and evolutionarily related to dinosaurs. How else do you explain why the souls of dead Japanese soldiers would manifest in the form of a huge dinosaurian monster like Godzilla?

Godzilla (2014)

Much like its depiction of the monster itself, the second American-made Godzilla film, GODZILLA (2014, Dir. Gareth Edwards), does a good job of obfuscating the issue of Godzilla’s origin. Despite having presumably spent their entire careers studying this creature and others like it, biologists Dr. Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Dr. Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins) are only willing to say that Godzilla is “an ancient alpha predator… Millions of years older than mankind, from a time when the earth was ten times more radioactive than it is today.” It is unclear exactly what geological time period the scientists are referring to here. Earth has frequently been bombarded by cosmic radiation throughout its 4.5 billion-year history leading to periods when the planet was indeed “more radioactive than it is today” (though only 10x more seems to be low-balling it). This could mean that Godzilla came about as far back as 2.5 billion to 3 billion-years ago – which seems unlikely since the only known life on the planet at this point was photosynthetic bacteria – or as recently as 1.7 million-years ago when our hominid ancestor Paranthropus Robustus was walking the plains of Africa.

However, the movie’s official prequel comic, Godzilla: Awakening written by the film’s scriptwriter Max Borenstein alongside his brother Greg, has a much younger Serizawa claim that Godzilla and his fellow Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms (or MUTOs) originate from the Permian Period which ended roughly 252.2 million-years ago. If so this would disqualify Godzilla from being a dinosaur since dinosaurs did not appear until after the Permian Mass Extinction, known colloquially as the Great Dying, which was the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history resulting in the end of nearly 90% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial species. It would also contradict Dr. Serizawa and Dr. Graham’s later contentions that such creatures thrived in an intensely radioactive environment since there is no evidence to suggest that the earth was particularly radioactive during this time.

While Monarch’s scientists may be unsure of what Godzilla is, protagonist Ford Brody’s son Sam knows a dinosaur when he sees one and proudly identifies Godzilla as such when he first spies the creature on television. Likewise in Greg Cox’s novelization of the film, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) finds himself thinking that Godzilla resembles “some unknown species of dinosaur” despite the fact that it is “at least thirty times larger than even a Tyrannosaurus rex.”

Shin Godzilla (2016)

The most recent live-action Godzilla movie from Toho Studios, SHIN GODZILLA (2016, Dir. Hideaki Anno & Shinji Higuchi), spends the most screen time since the Heisei era elaborating upon Godzilla’s hypothetical biology and offering up an explanation for everything including his dorsal fins which are theorized to help regulate body temperature; a popular theory also proposed about Stegosaurus’ iconic back plates. The film also explores Godzilla’s origin via data discovered in an envelope found by the Japanese Coast Guard in an abandoned yacht drifting in Tokyo Bay at the beginning of the movie

Eventually the yacht is identified as having belonged to Prof. Goro Maki (Kihachi Okamoto), who is presumed to have committed suicide prior to the start of the film. A quick glance at Prof. Maki’s CV shows that he specialized in Integrative Biology and additional information discovered by the film’s protagonists reveals that following his wife’s death in an unspecified nuclear accident (possibly the Fukushima Daiichi disaster?), Maki abandoned his job as a Japanese college professor and went to work for the United States Department of Energy. There Prof. Maki focused his research on the effects of nuclear waste dumped by the US on the South Pacific Ocean floor. He eventually discovered that the waste was being fed upon by a certain marine organism which had mutated into the creature that would eventually become Godzilla. Prof. Maki’s report was subsequently suppressed by the US government.

Though it is not stated in the film what kind of marine organism Prof. Maki believed had fed on the nuclear waste, a five page English language essay titled “Inventory of Radioactive Material Entering the Marine Environment” found in The Art of Shin Godzilla making-of book and attributed to Prof. Maki reveals that the scientist had concluded that the culprit was “most likely… a prehistoric marine reptile” either a Mosasaurs or an Ichthyosaurus. Like Dr. Yamane, Prof. Maki seems to have also believed that such a creature would represent a transitional form between Mesozoic marine reptiles and dinosaurs, or at least that is what one is left to conclude from the otherwise paleontological non-sequitur that is Prof. Maki’s declaration that “any ichthyosaur that is the size of a chicken or larger would be recognized as a dinosaur.”

Godzilla: Monster Planet (2017) and Beyond…

Due to the respective domestic and international box office success of GODZILLA (2014) and SHIN GODZILLA (2016) both Hollywood and Toho Studios in Japan have committed to producing a slate of new films in the Godzilla franchise. This includes at least two more films in what Legendary Pictures is calling the MonsterVerse cinematic universe that already includes GODZILLA (2014) and this year’s KONG: SKULL ISLAND (Dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts). It is unknown if these two new films, GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (2019, Dir. Michael Dougherty) and GODZILLA VS. KONG (2020, Dir. Adam Wingard), will attempt to elucidate the murky origin of the second American Godzilla but if KONG: SKULL ISLAND, which did a great deal to clarify various aspects of the MonsterVerse’s underlying mythology, is any indication they probably will.

However, as mentioned at the top of this essay, the next theatrical film which fans can look forward to will be the animated GODZILLA: PLANET OF THE MONSTERS from Toho and Polygon Pictures and which will debut in Japan this November before heading to Netflix for worldwide distribution either late this year or early next year. As noted this new film has raised the possibility of botanical-based King of the Monsters, an idea which strikes many fans as anathema. For this contingent of fans Godzilla is a dinosaur, both now and forever. What this essay has attempted show however is that while the idea that Godzilla is a mutant dinosaur, or some other kind of similar prehistoric reptile, is one which has been present throughout the franchise’s 60+ year history it is also not one which has been clear or consistent in its fundamental contentions.

Perhaps the key here is to think about the idea of Godzilla as dinosaur not in a strict scientific sense but rather in a symbolic one. As I often remind my students when doing my class on dinosaurs in popular-culture, much of the dinosaur’s power come from the fact that they are inherently liminal entities. This means that they exist simultaneously between two conflicting states of being. In the case of the dinosaurs their liminality arises from the fact that they are simultaneously both real and imaginary. They are real because we have their bones, we know they existed. But they are also imaginary because no human has ever seen one and so we must be content to use our imaginations to tell us what they were like. This fact transforms dinosaurs into a potent symbol. An empirically verifiable fantasy. In this way Godzilla, as dinosaur, lays claim to a status that other more purely fantastic creatures cannot. IMAGE: Godzilla, having laid waste to the cities of man, welcomes back his saurian brethren in artist Pete Von Sholly’s “The Return” (2014)

[1] It is also possible that both Dr. Chapman and Dr. Tatopoulous’ theories are incorrect or, perhaps, only partially correct. In the same pilot episode of GODZILLA: THE SERIES a subsequent scene featuring both scientists find Dr. Chapman noting that many of Godzilla’s behaviors fly in the face of conventional notions about “carnivorous dinosaurs,” while Dr. Tatopoulous concedes that Godzilla does not behave “like a lizard” either.

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