by Christopher Stewardson
Warning: this piece contains spoilers for Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: The Return
Posters for 1995’s Godzilla vs. Destoroyah proclaimed that “Godzilla dies”, a promise kept when the monster melts down at the film’s climax, accompanied by Akira Ifukube’s stirring melodies. Toho had put Godzilla temporarily to rest, closing their “Vs” run of Godzilla entries and making way for the character’s ill-fated American reimagining three years later.
Toho’s Godzilla films in the first half of the ‘90s were financially successful and remain beloved by a
generation who saw them in cinemas as children. Older fans, however, were not as enamored, noting a
frustrating sense of monotony as the series continued. Thankfully, 1995 offered another kaiju film to meet
and surpass expectations. Gamera: Guardian of the Universe was the first in Shusuke Kaneko’s Gamera
trilogy, inventively rebooting Gamera on screen for the first time in fifteen years and impacting the entire
special effects industry landscape in the process. The scripts of the ‘90s Godzillas, and Destoroyah in
particular, are often cluttered and disjointed; Guardian of the Universe, meanwhile, is focused and pacey,
exhibiting a creative conviction matched by Shinji Higuchi’s striking special effects. Indeed, Godzilla vs.
Destoroyah and Gamera: Guardian of the Universe feel as though they come from different worlds.
On television, the first new Japanese Ultraman programme in sixteen years debuted in 1996 via Ultraman Tiga. Like Guardian of the Universe, Ultraman Tiga similarly asserted a confident reworking of the Ultraman character and the series’ history, visually carried across impressive framing and composition styles still seen in the latest crop of Ultraman series today.
After the disastrous American Godzilla (1998), Toho resurrected their monster in 1999 via Godzilla 2000: Millennium. Despite possessing many of the same creative staff members as the ‘90s Vs films, including director Takao Okawara, there’s a palpable difference between Godzilla 2000 and its predecessors. Where Godzilla vs Destoroyah is lethargic, Godzilla 2000 seizes its audience immediately; where Godzilla vs. Destoroyah relies on the formal style of the Vs series, Godzilla 2000 asserts new and dynamic compositions. Along with other factors, these visual and aesthetic gaps were bridged and influenced in the wider media landscape by the creative directions embodied by Kaneko’s Gamera trilogy, the new generation of Ultraman programmes, and the special effects developments across Toho’s own late-’90s Mothra trilogy (1996-98). Indeed, Kenji Suzuki’s impressive effects direction for Rebirth of Mothra 3 (1998) is of particular note, as it was he who would take the SPFX reins for Godzilla 2000.
More significantly, the narratives of both Guardian of the Universe and Ultraman Tiga examine the spirituality of their title characters; the former is reimagined as a sacred creation of a lost civilisation, leaning into the more unique and distinct qualities of kaiju in the process, while the latter takes the idea of the “Land of Light” (a name often used for Nebula M78, the home world of the Ultra beings in the original run of programmes) more literally, depicting Ultraman Tiga as a being of light who came to Earth thousands of years ago to nurture and observe humanity. Godzilla 2000: Millennium is similar in that the impossibility of Godzilla, the incomprehensible mystery of the monster – a notion hinted at and suggested in earlier entries – is overtly reasserted here, delivered in ways that depart from the Vs films.
Although the ‘90s Godzillas had attempted to eschew the friendly, knowable Godzilla of the Champion Festival era (1969-75) in line with fan demand, echoes ultimately remained. Indeed, in an article written for Takarajima 30 in February 1994, Risaku Kiridoshi described how, despite ostensibly returning Godzilla to a chaotic, destructive being, the ‘90s films ultimately refrain from showing loss of life in ways that may have challenged audience attachment to, or sympathy with, the character. As Kiridoshi argues, Godzilla was not truly burdened with being “evil” again. And though it is difficult to argue that Godzilla 2000 entirely escapes the trappings Kiridoshi describes (a rendition of Akira Ifukube’s main title theme for the original Godzilla plays as the monster wades into Tokyo, stirring a sense of nostalgic familiarity in the viewer), Godzilla was nevertheless returned to a far less knowable position. Here, Godzilla is very overtly likened to natural disasters via the Godzilla Prediction Network, a scrappy group of scientists who carefully track the monster’s movements. Indeed, when Godzilla first appears in the film, holding a crushed boat in its maw, it comes ashore like an extension of the sea itself. All throughout the film, as the Godzilla Prediction Network struggles against the government’s more aggressive pursuits, Godzilla is rendered an impending disaster to be averted; less a grandiose, science-fiction monster, and more an accepted if feared reality.
The reality of Godzilla in this film, in which the monster looms as an ever-present possibility, is a reminder of what the beast is at its core: the Bomb made flesh. Godzilla exists as an ever-present reminder of one of the worst series of atrocities ever committed – the creation and use of the atomic bomb – and of its continued threat to the entire planet. To this end, I thought a lot about episode eight of Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) when revisiting Godzilla 2000, specifically how David Lynch realises the idea that upon the detonation of the very first atomic bomb, something unfathomably cruel and malevolent was forever unleashed upon this world. Lynch signals that a point of no return was breached as he places the snarling face of the demonic Bob (Frank Silva) within the rising mushroom cloud. It is not simply that the terror of the Bomb is here now, forever, but so is the singular inhumanity of the Euro-American scientists who decided to make such a weapon.
In turn, the parallels drawn in Godzilla 2000 between the monster and natural disasters serve to emphasise a similar idea: like the inevitable movement of the tides, everything Godzilla embodies is ever-present. Forever with us now. A matter of when, not if. Godzilla here is like a ghost that cannot be exorcised. It can be tracked, studied, and (foolishly) fought, but it ultimately remains because the epoch-making violence that animated its existence has never been resolved.
Of course, I do not mean to suggest that Godzilla is exactly like Bob in Twin Peaks. Bob’s monstrosity is human; it arrives and strikes in human form. And it is irredeemably awful. Godzilla is obviously not human, and though terrifying, the monster is as much the Bomb’s victim as it is the Bomb personified. Victim and aggressor locked in a state of eternal tension. In The Return, when we see Lynch’s depiction of the July 1945 Trinity test, Bob’s hellish face seems to relish its release upon the world. Godzilla, meanwhile, never asked to exist. That is part of its tragedy.
Nevertheless, Godzilla’s tragedy does not diminish the horror and hubris it embodies. It was an act of intense violence and malevolence – the repeated use of atomic weapons – that spawned Godzilla both as a film series and character. Godzilla always holds room to reflect the cruelty each of us has the potential to inflict, and indeed the character Shinoda (Takehiro Murata) conveys this when he laments that Godzilla exists inside each one of us.
But in another sense, maybe Godzilla and Bob share certain characteristics. Both are real and not real. In the original Twin Peaks (1990-91), we are presented with what appears to be a “real”, existent place in the form of the Black Lodge, a dimension into which Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlin) actually steps, leaving the possibility that Bob may have something real about him. But we also know that all “his” acts are not his at all; they are Leland Palmer’s (Ray Wise). For all the hints of the supernatural, Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is destroyed by her father and the real-life structures of power, abuse, and control which surrounded her. When Agent Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer) suggests that “maybe Bob is just the evil that men do”, it’s an earnest yet hopeless attempt to grapple with the reality that people can and do possess the capability and willingness to enact terrible cruelty.
Is Godzilla similar? What I mean is that Godzilla is, in part, corporeal and physical but also something more. Japan’s Self Defense Force (JSDF) can throw their latest weapons at Godzilla and we see physical harm to its body. All the urban destruction we witness is similarly real and tangible, emphasised by the tactile nature of the special effects used to depict it. But then Godzilla is never just a mere giant creature. Godzilla is never “just” anything. Godzilla is always something more: a being beyond us. Even at its most legible and knowable during the Champion Festival era, there remains a sense that Godzilla is beyond that which is in front of us. We might call it a spark of the divine, as Gamera series director Noriaki Yuasa once intimated when discussing the distinctions of kaiju. But however we try to articulate it, there is something mysterious about Godzilla, something unknowable but felt, and this is fundamental to the character. Real and not real. There and not really there. I believe this is conveyed in Godzilla 2000 whenever Godzilla is on screen, in its gait, its eyes, or its moments of pause. The evil that men do made flesh.
As Godzilla 2000 unfolds, an ancient alien being is accidentally awoken from its undersea dormancy when scientific curiosity probes too far. The alien seeks to colonise Earth, eventually reaching into the internet itself to scour our knowledge and information. The being then conveys its plans for domination using human languages, within which already exist histories of articulating and justifying horrific cruelty. The being’s words of conquest are frightfully familiar for a reason. However, the being is ultimately incinerated by Godzilla when it tries to devour the monster and steal its genetic template. Whether in language, form, intent, or embodiment, these twin horrors are directly or indirectly tied to human action.
In a sense, the alien, Orga, is reminiscent of the title creature from 1971’s Godzilla vs. Hedorah. In that film, the menacing Hedorah grows out of toxic pollution and poison sludge. Whilst Hedorah’s extraterrestrial origins are only suggested rather than confirmed, both Orga and Hedorah are nevertheless external beings that progress to catastrophic heights because of pre-existing human structures that facilitate their development. And though Godzilla is certainly depicted in a more legible manner in Godzilla vs. Hedorah, both it and Godzilla 2000 convey ideas about the monster’s reactions to humanity. In 1971, after the JSDF fails in an attempt to stop Hedorah, Godzilla offers a judgemental shake of its head; in 1999, Godzilla obliterates Shinjuku after the arrogant government official, Katagiri (Hiroshi Abe), stands up against the monster. If taken together, we have judgement and verdict.
Godzilla exists in each one of us, as Shinoda says, because we contain the capacity for the kind of cruelty to which the monster’s existence is a testament. The capacity of some humans for this cruelty, like the scientists of the Manhattan Project, wrought the atomic bomb on this world, a weapon of genocidal scale ultimately designed to sustain American military hegemony. In Lynch’s rendition, Bob’s face contorted horribly in the radioactive cloud of Trinity as the world-threatening violence unfolded, something monstrous and dangerous unleashed forever. Godzilla may have “died” in Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, but the beast cannot truly die because the horrors it embodies have never ceased or been resolved. Whether within these films or as a film series, Godzilla’s shadow is forever cast. A case of when, not if. Godzilla 2000: Millennium carries these dreadful feelings with conviction.
Chris Stewardson (IG: chris_stewardson) Christopher Stewardson researches and writes about mid-20th century genre cinema, predominantly from Japan and America. He is the author of a critical companion to GHIDORAH, THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER (1964), published with Liverpool University Press. His other writing can be found in Fangoria, Little White Lies, the Film Masters blog, and in blu-ray liner notes for Eureka Entertainment.
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