Godzilla: A Changing Metaphor for Climate Change Catastrophe

Godzilla, or Gojira, which is his original Japanese name, has always been a metaphor for the power of the Earth. He was first and most frequently a depiction of nuclear disaster come to life.  In 2023, Minus 1 Gojira’s iconic atomic breath is depicted as a literal nuclear blast complete with a mushroom cloud. He is the embodiment of unstoppable destruction, always with the message that he is our creation. Gojira is the direct result of man interfering with nature (‘nature points out the folly of man’, as the song goes). 

Godzilla As A Nuclear Threat

As Gojira was a product of post-nuclear Japan, his creation was one way they processed the effects of the bombs dropped on them less than 10 years before. In most Japanese productions, Gojira’s role is to show us the horrors of nuclear catastrophe through a monster created by nuclear material, who then comes to wreak havoc on humanity.

The most terrifying depictions of Gojira (1954, Shin, and Minus 1 are excellent examples) are those where he sets out to intentionally destroy human civilization. In those stories, he is often described as angry at what was done to him, and wanting to take vengeance against humanity.

A New Perspective

However, Legendary’s Gojira, first seen in 2014, departs from this depiction. Legendary produced what was just the US’s second Gojira on a movie screen. The first US attempt in 1998 was poorly received and never had a movie follow-up. Over the 10 years that Legendary has created their unique universe around Gojira, they have given him a very different backstory. 

Instead of being a mutated creation of nuclear testing, storage, or contamination, he is an ancient creature whose species thrived millions of years ago when atmospheric radiation was at higher levels than it is now. 

Legendary Gojira’s History

This Gojira is the only surviving member of his species and is known to be millions of years old. He was awoken in the 1950s by nuclear testing and came to the surface looking for radiation to feed on. Terrified humans attempted to kill him by hitting him point-blank with a nuclear bomb, not knowing that they were just giving him the meal he came up for.

He was assumed dead when he departed after the blast but came back in 2014 to kill two destructive kaiju in the US (kaiju is Japanese for ‘strange beast’, the name used for giant movie monsters). After they are destroyed, he is hailed as a hero by humans who witnessed and aided his fight against the other kaiju. 

A Protector of Nature

This Gojira is revealed in later movies and books to be a ‘protector of nature’ who comes to the surface when there is an imbalance in the natural world. Whether man-made or produced by another kaiju, Gojira comes ashore to restore balance. As he is 350 – 390 feet tall (we see him ‘evolve’ between movies), this means mass destruction for humans and human infrastructure. Just his presence creates a calamity, but as he’s there to fix an imbalance, this means further destruction. He uses his atomic breath either on the human or kaiju problem, and if it’s another kaiju, there will likely be a physical confrontation that can level cities. 

As a protector of nature, he does not hate humans. He’s mostly ambivalent* about them unless they create a major disturbance, or attack him. Otherwise, he lets them be, as they’re part of the natural world.

*In 2014 Godzilla, Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 2019, and the show Monarch Legacy of Monsters, we see Goji make direct eye contact with specific humans, and in the movies, he seems to show understanding and appreciation for the aid they gave him.

In graphic novels and movie novelizations, we learn that Gojira is highly intelligent and can sense disturbances worldwide. This sense is heightened when a fellow kaiju dies and imbues Goji with her life essence. He gains a deeper connection with the surface of the earth, which is her domain. As a partly aquatic creature, Gojira already had a strong connection with all life and ecosystems in the oceans.

 By 2019, Legendary Gojira had become a literal depiction of the earth. Unlike its Japanese counterpart which depicts a mutated aspect of nature coming to wreak havoc on its creator.

Shifting Fears

Why the considerable change? Like many sci-fi and horror monsters, Legendary Gojira is a depiction of our current fears. The cold war has been over for decades in the US, and the threat of nuclear annihilation, while still present, doesn’t occupy our collective consciousness as much as other threats. The biggest arguably being climate change. While the US has been relatively unscathed from the damage so far, that won’t last. And we know it. 

We [humans] have helped create an imbalance [in nature], and Godzilla moves in to right the balance. He is not our ‘hero,’ but represents something greater — he is saving us in the process of righting the balance.

Alex Garcia, Godzilla: The Art of Destruction pp. 118-119

I believe that the shift in the US depiction of Gojira directly reflects our concerns around climate change. In the first Legendary movie, we see Gojira cause a tsunami before he even comes ashore in Hawaii. He reminds us (no matter his backstory) that we are not in charge. There are forces outside our control – if we tip the balance, he will come and take care of the problem his way. Which means mass destruction and casualties. 

Keeping the Balance

Given his back story, we know that he’s not killing people and wrecking cities intentionally, as other versions of Gojira do. Here, he is simply righting a wrong, and making sure the problem won’t come back (atomic breath is really good for that).  And if we don’t like his destructive methods, we need to make sure we take care of the earth that sustains us… and him. 

This may sound horrible, but part of me loves the idea of a Legendary Goji – a part of the earth coming to give humanity a smack upside the head. Before things get really out of hand. As we don’t have a Gojira to remind us to take better care of the planet – which is probably a good thing – we will have to (to paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson) continue to heed the truths told in fiction, which are obscured by our ‘reality’.

Fun Facts

• Gojira is a hybrid Japanese word combining the words for ‘monkey’ and ‘whale’. One of the original looks considered for Gojira in 1954 was that of a hybrid animal. Another look considered and discarded was a creature with a mushroom cloud for a head.

• In most Godzilla movies (including Legendary’s), ‘Gojira’ is the name given to the monster by a fictitious indigenous culture (sometimes inhabiting Odo Island in the Pacific Ocean), and in their language means “God Incarnate”.

• Gojira can live on land and in the water. Legendary even gave Goji visible gills for the first time (Shin Godzilla had gills in earlier stages of its development, but not visible in its final form).

• Indigenous cultures from North America and Scandinavia view otters – animals who live on land and in the water – as sacred, god-like, or shaman-like, for their dualistic aquatic/terrestrial lifestyles.

• In 2019’s King of the Monsters, we learn about an ancient civilization that worshipped Gojira and left behind part of a city that contained a temple to him. Their fate is unknown, and the city’s remnants are found by Monarch when they track Gojira to his underwater resting place in an attempt to revive him.

• Not all Japanese Gojira movies follow the nuclear monster format. A trilogy of anime movies in the 2010s features Gojira as “Godzilla Earth“, a creature who becomes so large (over 1000 feet tall) and dominant that humans are forced to flee Earth. When they return many millennia later, they find that the entire planet has become part of the Godzilla genome, and reflects the biology of the enormous monster.