commercial boat mysteriously vanishes in the waters of Tokyo Bay. The rescue vessel sent to investigate is lost as well, but this time there are survivors. These unlucky few last only long enough to speak haltingly of an instantaneous, all-enveloping fire erupting from the depths. There is such a tremendous and enigmatic loss of life that all shipping in the area shuts down.
On his way to an assignment in Cairo, newshound Steve Martin (Burr) stops off in Tokyo to visit with a friend and inadvertently hits the journalistic jackpot. His friend works for the Japanese government, which gives Martin special access to all the hot spots involved in the shipping story. They travel to a remote island near the attacks to see whether any of the indigenous people have seen anything firsthand. Soon they become their eyewitnesses themselves.
In the night, the winds crank up, slashing through tiled roofs and the brittle branches of trees, and rain erupts. Villagers asleep on the floors of simple homes awake uneasily, for the earth reverberates loudly, solemnly, terrifyingly like a dry, deep bell. These are the footsteps of the giant the villagers know by legend--Godzilla.
Martin is witness to the realization of the islander's legends, which speak of a giant monster, destruction and chaos incarnate. The myths of other cultures may be adroitly tamed by ethnologists and psychologists, but this one, Godzilla, reptilian, fire-breathing, 20 stories tall, is alive and swaggering toward Tokyo.
The two faces of Godzilla
This is the hybrid version of Godzilla, the crisp Japanese original leavened with additional, American footage. Although the awkward task of superimposing an inorganic plot over the well-conceived original seems doomed in theory, the results are acceptable. The scenes and dialogue are mostly well thought out and well plotted, and they connect reasonably well. The only disconnect is Burr himself, whose corn-fed looks and parlor-chair delivery alienate him not only from the chaotic, refugee-strewn original but his own American-made supplement.
What is most fascinating, and what cannot be much obscured by the Americanization of the film, is the two-sided nature of Godzilla and his psychological dynamic with a post H-bomb Japan. This recently humbled nation of the new millennium, armed with a democratic constitution but bereft of a strong military, impotently struggles to defend itself from a Janus-menace that embodies the ancestral, the native, and the modern invader.
Godzilla is a force of ancient, elemental, Japanese strength--sea, fire, earthquake--punishing the new, westernized Tokyo. He is also the omnipotent foreign invader who levels Japanese civilization with nuclear-fired power. Godzilla's dual nature reflects post-war Japan's ambiguous mood toward its history and its future. This is most concisely conveyed by the dilemma of a brilliant Japanese chemist who has invented a terrible new weapon. It can destroy Godzilla, but he doesn't want the world to know of its existence, for fear of Armageddon. He struggles to weigh the consequences of the war they now fight against the wars they might.
All this means that Godzilla is not just a B-grade flick about a 20-story-tall monster, but a film of some significant stature.
