GODZILLA 1954 REVIEW & ANALYSIS
- Robin Syversen
- Aug 23
- 9 min read
Updated: Aug 24
Godzilla: First-Time Reaction by a Japanese Film Researcher
Director: Ishirô Honda
Cast: Takashi Shimura, Akihiko Hirata, Akira Takarada, Momoko Kôchi, Haruo Nakajima
Related Films: Mothra vs. Godzilla, Sansho the Bailiff, Seven Samurai, The Burmese Harp
Studio: Toho
Year: 1954
Verdict: 3.5/6
Contents:
Introducing Godzilla 1954 | Paying the Original Kaiju Its Due
Yes, I confess: I never saw Godzilla until recently, yet I've had the nerve to call myself a Japanese film researcher. It's been snarling at me for decades, increasingly vexed by my neglect of its groundbreaking footprint in the Japanese cinematic landscape.
Well, I am finally paying Godzilla its due respect, and disrespect. Yes, I absolutely get what all the fuss is about. Though it took more than a few cues from King Kong (1933), it also upped the standard of its niche and launched the kaiju eiga craze.
It wasn't the first Japanese attempt at monster movies, but it was the first in the postwar era. It was also the first to fuse modern-city destruction, an explicit nuclear allegory, and large-scale "suitmation" over miniatures, crystallizing the kaiju genre.
There is no denying it deserves its place in film history. Yet, I can't help feeling it doesn't stand the test of time as well as other Japanese classics of that same year, like Sound of the Mountain (Mikio Naruse), Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi), or Seven Samurai.
That is, of course, the fate of most "special-effects films": their shortcomings will always be evident and then outdone by subsequent generations. In Godzilla's case, however, due to the timing of its release and its nuclear-fueled story, it's as interesting as it ever was.
But before diving into my first-time reaction and analysis, let's do a quick recap of the story.
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Godzilla Original Plot in a Nutshell
When fishing boats start vanishing off the coast of Japan, islanders start whispering about mythical monsters. To investigate the matter, a reconnaissance team is sent to Odo Island with paleontologist Dr. Yamane, only to be blindsided by a towering creature from the sea.
Before long, it's established that the creature had been hibernating for centuries and was jolted awake by postwar nuclear tests. Meanwhile, back in Tokyo, officials debate air raids over depth charges.
Only Yamane argues that the thing—soon dubbed Godzilla—should be studied, not killed. His concerns fall on deaf ears, however, and instead the military throws up a coastal electric fence and deploys artillery, which barely slows Godzilla down.
When the monster returns for a second brawl, it takes the scenic route through its newfound realm of fragile human constructs and marches straight through Tokyo, leaving destruction and chaos in its wake.
During the nocturnal havoc, the city is set on fire, hospitals overflow, and morning brings quiet ruin. Alongside the terror, a love triangle brings melodrama to the mix, fueled by Yamane's daughter Emiko, her fiancé Ogata, and her former betrothed, Dr. Serizawa.
Serizawa is an isolated scientist who's developed a device he calls the Oxygen Destroyer, a weapon that strips oxygen from water and disintegrates living tissue. Horrified by its potential for military use, he swears Emiko to secrecy.
However, after witnessing Tokyo's destruction, she breaks the promise. Together with Ogata, she pleads with Serizawa to use the device once, then destroy his research. As such, they end up aboard a ship, trying to lure Godzilla into Tokyo Bay.
First-Time Reaction | Godzilla Seen with Modern Eyes
The idea was novel, but the execution of the opening scene is about the worst thing in the entire film. Talk about a terrible start. The acting by the seamen on the first ship to go down is so cranked up it borders on parody.
Seven Samurai from the same year had its overzealous moments too, but as far as overacting in Japanese classics go, Godzilla takes the cake. Fortunately, the film quickly reins it in and trades bluster for nice camerawork and effective narrative buildup.
In other words, the shortcomings get swallowed by mounting suspense. The first village devastation lands nicely. The miniatures give the story's impact weight, and the mountainside reveal of Godzilla is precisely judged: brief, suggestive, and powerful.
After that, things wobble a bit during the first urban attack. The derailed train looks too stagey, and the human gait of the suit snapped me out of the film universe and distracted me from the horror. Less would have been more in that instance.
Fortunately, from the second assault onwards, Godzilla delivers as advertised. The army's organized response gives the sequence backbone, and even when the miniatures peek through, I stayed grounded in the film's reality. Godzilla's atomic breath also reads well, especially for a 1954 production.
Granted, the effects fluctuate somewhat toward the end, but not enough to take away from the overall delivery. The spectacle keeps its grip, and the ambition of this monster-movie still feels audacious. What they tried to pull off remains impressive, even now.
The creature's measured trudging, paired with the score, brushes against monumentalism, or, borrowing JCA's own term, "cinimalism." But these touches are fleeting, since the film is, by Japanese standards of the time, pretty brisk.
Yet when Godzilla moves through Tokyo to that grim music, Kimigayo (Japan's national anthem) comes to mind. In that sense, the film touches older cultural currents than its surface allegory admits, aligning neatly with the brief ritual dance sequence.
Godzilla Analysis Part 1: Initial Thoughts from First Reaction
Watching Godzilla through a nuclear lens is unavoidable. The early confusion and disbelief, when people hear about a mysterious disaster with no clear cause, echoes the initial shock in Japan at the end of World War II.
While the islanders try to make sense of it all, a village elder mumbles about an ancient monstrosity, but no one takes him seriously. The following ridicule doubles as a quick jab at younger generations, shrugging off tradition.
Meanwhile, the only "repellent" the community can come up with is a ritual dance with tengu masks. Now, it might be a coincidence, but tengu often symbolizes arrogance and, in some contexts, foreign influence.
That said, even though it made me think about the foreign impact on Japan during and after the war, I didn't detect any other such signs, so I leave my speculation at the door.
Radioactivity makes the nuclear parallel blunt, however. Geiger counters tick in Godzilla's wake, and the paleontologist floats the obvious hypothesis: H-bomb tests jostled the creature from its sanctuary. Later, there's explicit mention of the wartime nuclear attacks, which pins the story to our 1954, not some alternate timeline.
Meanwhile, the city burns. Those wide shots of fire really recall the firebombings and ruthless devastation in Japan as much as Godzilla's atomic breath.
And then there's the development of a super-weapon that could turn Tokyo Bay into a graveyard. The Manhattan Project resonance isn't subtle. When the inventor balks at deploying it—and delivers an anti-nuclear plea—the film goes moral in plain language. It's on the nose for sure, but it's also coherent with everything the film has been setting up.
So, from rumor to ridicule to fallout to sermon, the line is clear. The allegory isn't coy, and it doesn't need to be. Godzilla uses pulp to process national trauma. If the message sometimes feels shoved in our faces, that's partly the point. The parallels are deliberate, steady, and, at key moments, uncomfortably direct.
So, do I, in 2025, take anything else away from the film? Considering the global nuclear rearmament, it feels like we haven't learned much. That atomic weapons still aren't abolished after all we know about their effects is a travesty.
It's almost as if we need a proper wake-up call: a revisited, howling message from the monster in the deep. Unfortunately, all we've gotten since 54 is a slew of sequels and remakes, one more mediocre than the other (with a few obvious exceptions).
Godzilla Analysis Part 2: Japanese and International Reactions
Most researchers and critics treat Gojira as a contemplation on nuclear trauma. The opening maritime disaster, the Diet squabbles, the hospital wards, and the citywide destruction of Tokyo function as a national reckoning built into spectacle.
Japanese film scholars have emphasized how Gojira was marketed and received at home in 1954: Kinema Junpo ads literally billed it as a "hydrogen-bomb giant monster film" (水爆大怪獣映画), framing audience expectations around nuclear anxiety.
Yet reception was mixed, and only later did the stable "anti-nuclear film" consensus harden. Torii Hiroshi argues that much of the now-familiar critical discourse—Gojira as an emblem of "postwar/nuclear Japan"—was actively constructed by fans, critics, and publishers during the 1970s–80s kaiju fandom boom, rather than being fully formed in 1954 (Japanese source).
A parallel line of analysis follows the film's sound and music. Beyond Ifukube Akira's now-iconic march, conservatory lectures and musicological notes analyze the "non-human" construction of Godzilla's motif (chromatic/12-tone moves, timbral strategies) and the sound design that fuses creature, technology, and environment.
As for Japanese criticism, it tends to keep the triangle of science, state power, and ethics front and center. As such, Serizawa's refusal and self-sacrifice are read as a parable of scientific responsibility inside a pacifist constitution.
Political-memory studies in Japan also interrogate how the film encodes victimhood and responsibility. University repositories and humanities journals examine Godzilla alongside debates about postwar identity, arguing that the film registers complex, sometimes ambivalent positions toward militarism, U.S. hegemony, and domestic modernization.
Godzilla Readings Abroad
Outside Japan, academic readings have long stressed nuclear allegory and Cold War politics, but, like Japanese scholars, recent work complicates earlier binaries. Chon Noriega's 1987 essay, Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When "Them!" Is U.S., for instance, framed Godzilla against American monster cinema and Cold War imaginaries.
More recently, William M. Tsutsui cautions that the franchise's politics are internally contradictory, mixing pacifism, pride in the Self-Defense Forces, and shifting national narratives over seven decades. Therefore, critics should avoid flattening Gojira into a single "anti-nuclear" message.
In other words, critics increasingly treat the original Godzilla (1954) as a living text whose meaning shifts with Japan's public culture. In the mid-1950s, it read as an anti-nuclear protest; in later decades, it reopened debates about science, the state, and responsibility; after Fukushima, it became a touchstone for disaster memory.
Building on this, recent humanities scholars call for full-fledged "kaiju studies," a framework that places Godzilla in dialogue with museum exhibits, anniversary retrospectives, and new films such as the American reboots or Godzilla Minus One.
The thrust is clear: Godzilla (1954) should not be seen as a closed artifact of its time, but as a generative node that continues to shape and be reshaped by Japan's cultural currents.
In a sense, the film appears as warped by politics and human atrocities as the monster it depicts. The world becomes increasingly nuclear, and so Godzilla's legacy stays current. Perhaps that is why it keeps returning, over and over, in new forms. As long as the nuclear arms race persists, so does Godzilla.
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Final Verdict | Godzilla 1954 Review
Having watched Godzilla (1954) for the first and second time over the summer of 2025, I'd say not just monster movies, but all disaster movies owe a great deal to the makers of Godzilla. They dared reach for destruction the likes of which the world had never seen on the silver screen, and the longevity of their monster speaks for itself.
Considering its influence and innovation, Godzilla's place in film history feels well-deserved and well-earned, yet it pales in comparison to other classics of its time.
Seven Samurai, for instance, is as riveting and engaging today as it ever was, while Godzilla is an interesting piece of film history that doesn't exactly hold up as well. Its themes will probably remain relevant forever, but on a technical level, it is more of a relic than something to entertain modern audiences.
Yes, it is a must-watch for die-hard fans of Japanese film history or monster movie buffs, but no, it doesn't keep us glued to the seats anymore. That would require stronger acting, deeper character arcs, better scripting, and more refined storytelling.
Granted, it is a monster movie, meaning that certain filmmaking aspects take a back seat to scares and effects. And that is okay, for Godzilla is not just any kaiju film; it's the Godfather of monster films, and its legacy is long since established.
I wouldn't recommend it to horror fans of our day, or even fans of Japanese films in general. This is a film for cinephiles, B-movie enthusiasts, and anyone wondering where the heck the kaiju genre actually started.
I doubt I'll watch it again, but nevertheless, I am glad that I finally did. If for nothing else, a piece of the Japanese film-history puzzle fell into place, and I recognize its importance. I just don't need to revisit it anytime soon, or any other Godzilla movies for that matter.
I tried giving Godzilla Minus One (2023) a chance, but couldn't even get halfway through it. Then, I much prefer this original, which at least has a unique charm and air about it. My recommendation is to check the trailer first, and if it resonates, then track this down.
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