Overview of the Godzilla Franchise - 

I could have possibly picked a harder subject to start with but it would have been difficult. The Godzilla Franchise is…expansive, its IP has 38 Films, at least five TV series, 63 video game appearances, eight board games, and several comic-book runs. That’s only counting its direct media but it also has widespread influence on many properties and mediums beyond what you would think its reach would be. With that said there is simply no reasonable way to summarize the franchise, I could do a weekly post about Godzilla for a year and not run the well dry.

38 is a lot of movies and understandably that number of films seems monolithic. Fortunately, they’ve already been broken into chunks referred to as eras that all have different tones to them and will appeal to different demographics. Leading into that I feel the need to flesh out the information about the studios and major universes. In the Godzilla Day post, I referenced the two major sources of Godzilla Films, Toho and Legendary.

Toho is the Japanese company that originally produced Godzilla and over time has also become the primary distributor of Japanese media overseas. They are responsible for the top nine highest-grossing films in Japan and for Godzilla they have released 29 live-action films and 3 animated movies. For these 32 films, four official eras serve as markers for the kind of Godzilla you’re dealing with; The Showa (1954-1975), The Heisei (1984-1995), The Millenium (1999-2004), and The Reiwa (2016-Current) era. The eras get their name from the Emperor who was seated at the time; except the Millennium era which has the same emperor as Heisei but has a distinct style from each other. These eras serve as continuities for the films in them serving as Cinematic Universes for that collection. 

An interesting piece of trivia about the franchise is that even though it is broken into these separate eras all of them use the original 1954 Godzilla as the first film in the timeline. As was mentioned previously all of the eras have their distinct style and signature theme. The Showa era is notable for softening Godzilla over time from a force of destruction and villain to a virtuous character and eventually essentially a superhero. The Heisei era is my personal favorite, it presents Godzilla in a more serious light and has a story that links all the films together. It also focuses on the “science” of Godzilla and the moral ethics of genetics are frequently discussed. The Millenium era is interesting because, excepting one pair of films, they are all standalone sequels to the 1954 Godzilla. This makes the era an anthology presenting Godzilla in different ways. Until recently this was the era most familiar to people as it was more widely available than the previous ones, which is a little unfortunate as most of them are firmly in the wacky B-Movie territory. After the final movie of this era, Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) Toho announced that Godzilla would be taking a 10-year hiatus from the silver screen. This was a dark time to be a Godzilla fan but the light at the end of the tunnel was very bright. 

All of this background information brings us to more or less the current day with the Reiwa Era and Legendary's MonsterVerse. In an unexpected turn, Godzilla’s return to the movies was actually with an American film. Godzilla (2014) was the start of a renaissance for the Big G. While there was a previous effort to bring Godzilla to the US in 1998 it was more of a Godzilla in-name-only situation and was very poorly received. Funnily enough, the monster from that 1998 version did appear in a later Toho film referred to by the name “Zilla” with a line about how it had been mistaken as Godzilla in America. The 2014 version was a critical and commercial success, enough so that Legendary was able to execute on the Monsterverse a play on the wildly successful Marvel Cinematic universe of course. While the Monsterverse hasn’t reached quite those heights it has released 4 films already and the fifth has been announced.

 Toho did indeed let Godzilla rest for over ten years, but with the success of the American Godzilla there was a feeling of “If not now, when?”. As such Shin Godzilla was announced in December 2014, just seven months after the release of Legendary’s Godzilla. and released in 2016. In my personal opinion, Shin Godzilla is among the very best of the franchise and the best of the modern Godzillas. It has some truly stunning visuals and the plot is well-paced while still almost feeling realistic. The story is framed from the POV of Japanese government officials attempting to cut through bureaucratic red tape and respond to the emergence of Godzilla. The film takes a large influence from the original 1954 Godzilla returning to presenting the eponymous monster as a metaphorical force of nature. While I may be a touch biased, this return to “basics” delivers a film that is both entertaining and engaging.