Ishirō Honda
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Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
Directed by Michael Dougherty
influenced by Destroy All Monsters (1968), Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964), Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964), Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975), All Monsters Attack (1969)
Plot Music
Diehards will recognize elements of the quaint 1968 Toho studios import “Destroy All Monsters” underneath the digitized flash.
In fact, the best thing that can be said about it is that director Michael Dougherty (“Krampus”), working from a script he wrote with Zach Shields (though the Japanese writers of “Destroy All Monsters” deserve at least a head nod), doesn’t skimp on the monsters.
Ever since my youth, when I first caught him in the 1968 all-star creature romp Destroy All Monsters , the three-headed Ghidorah always struck me as the most dynamic of all Toho grotesqueries.
The plot is mostly faithful to the original Toho movies and there are nice little nods to the likes of Destroy All Monsters , Mothra and other films for die-hard fans, including reprises of the Godzilla and Mothra themes in the music cues.
Fans have been clamouring for a modernized all-out brawl featuring their favourite Godzilla creatures in the vein of Destroy All Monsters for years, and with King of the Monsters that is certainly what they’ve been promising.
Had he been able to make his Destroy All Monsters with a studio budget behind it, I imagine I would have enjoyed this a ton more, as he clearly wants to go there!
Lavant also appears as a sort of milky-eyed Mandarin leprechaun who -- accompanied by Akira Ifukube's theme music from " Godzilla " (1954) -- emerges from a sewer to kidnap a supermodel (Eva Mendes) and to chew flowers stolen from graves marked with headstones that read -- in a brilliant sight gag -- "Visitez Mon Site" (French for "Visit My Website").
When the radioactive beast first reveals itself, it looks like an overgrown polliwog, hunched over and almost slithering on its belly (an unpleasant reminder of Emmerich and Devlin’s 1998 Godzilla).
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
Directed by Adam Wingard
influenced by Destroy All Monsters (1968), Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965), King Kong Escapes (1967)
Plot
We learn that she’s been studying Kong on his home base of Skull Island for 10 years, recalling the setup for 1968’s awesome Destroy All Monsters , which found Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and the gang reduced to guinea pigs before breaking loose for a climactic Royal Rumble that may be the best sequence in any Godzilla movie ever.
The night before I watched Godzilla vs. Kong , I rewatched one of my favorite Shōwa era Godzilla movies, Invasion of Astro-Monster , to whet my appetite for the action to come.
Godzilla vs. Kong includes other callbacks to Toho's giant monster films, including the sight of Kong airlifted by helicopters as in King Kong Escapes.
Pacific Rim (2013)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
influenced by Destroy All Monsters (1968), Godzilla (1954), King Kong Escapes (1967)
Visuals Plot
The film nods to such 1960s guys-in-foamy-suit epics from Toho Studios as “Destroy All Monsters.”
Pacific Rim (a flat title, though a good setup for the inevitable porn version) doesn’t even have the charm of such Toho beanbags as Destroy All Monsters, War of the Gargantuas, or the underappreciated King Kong Escapes — in which Kong battles “MechaKong,” the creation of the dastardly Dr. Who (not the TARDIS one).
Fervent aficionados of these pictures, of whom there are very many, can probably quote whole swatches of silly dialogue from Mothra vs. Godzilla or the multi-behemoth Destroy All Monsters .
I don't know about you, but not counting the Mothra twins or the sparkly space alien women in Destroy All Monsters -- the greatest kaiju film of all time -- I barely remember the people from any installment of what I can easily admit is my favorite genre of schlock.
The 1954 Godzilla spawned a couple dozen Japanese sequels and a teeming bestiary of dinosaur types (Rodan, Mothra, Gamera and their prehistoric pals), plus the sea monsters here.
But Harryhausen (who passed away in May) was a hands-on FX artist whose incredible stop-motion creations can be seen in such fantasy staples as Jason and the Argonauts and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, while Honda (who died in 1993) helped spearhead an entire cottage industry when he wrote and directed 1954's Gojira (aka Godzilla) and subsequently was involved with many of Toho Company's monster mashes.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)
Directed by Adam Wingard
influenced by Godzilla (1954)
Plot Themes
I don’t like to compare movies against each other but, given the two films share a gigantic atomic lizard, we must evaluate The New Empire through the lens of Godzilla Minus One. The former film is part of Warner Bros. Monsterverse cinematic universe, which includes 2014’s Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and Godzilla vs. Kong. All of these movies are more or less the same movie that excels when they let the big monsters fight and fail when any human graces the screen.
Both Godzilla and Kong are characters that have existed for the better part of a century, with dozens of films under their combined belts. For the most part, these franchises can be broken down into two categories. One is films that attempt to explore deeper issues or themes under the guise of a monster movie, like 1933’s King Kong, 1954’s Godzilla, or last year’s Godzilla Minus One.
The Fantastic 4: First Steps (2025)
Directed by Matt Shakman
influenced by Godzilla (1954)
Visuals Music
…has more than a whiff of Godzilla about it, and not in a good way.
A soaring score by Michael Giacchino that has nods to greater goings before, from Jupiter Ascending to Godzilla.
Edwards has already stated that he would like to make a sequel in the vein of the classic Destroy all Monsters, which would minimize the disinteresting human exposition and expand the kaiju-related action to truly epic proportions.
But fear of annihilation from atomically mutated creatures in films like “Rodan” (1956) or primordial monsters in “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1954) has morphed into something much bigger.
When Hulk starts flinging around tanks and punching out helicopters, the film resembles a lot of anonymous Japanese giant-monster pictures from the ‘60s—especially the one that in the United States was called Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965), which featured a boy getting zapped by radiation and turning into a long-haired green giant.
…eiga (giant monster) genre that started with Godzilla in 1954, preceded in the West by King Kong (1933); alien invasion movies that lead to the devastation of parts of the globe; travelogue films featuring photo-journalists; and it has a touch of romance to boot.
Sequestered within a region of Mexico known as the "infected zone" and kept out of the United States by a giant fence along the border, the aliens, which resemble 10-story octopi who walk on their tentacles, continue to breed within their contained area and clash frequently with humans, who use military weaponry on them (like they did in King Kong or Godzilla).
Gareth Edwards' 2014 "Godzilla" takes its cues from that great sequence, and from the 1954 original's Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki inspired tracking shot past a row of bloodied hospital patients, and the camcordered immediacy of " Cloverfield ," and the gas station sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," and the Do Lung Bridge sequence of " Apocalypse Now ," in which American soldiers' enemies were portrayed as faraway shadows, shooting flares and yelling obscenities.
His name is Joe Brody (a nod to Chief Brody from Jaws?), and the first half of Godzilla is a series of glimpses that allude to a mythical backstory and build anticipation.
Of all possible outcomes for the new American-made Godzilla , one that I wasn't prepared for at all was that, at the macro level, it would have exactly the same structural problems that the last Godzilla film, 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars did.
This is not smart cinema, and it’s not trying to be; rather than a reinvention, it’s like a de-invention, back to the time of Destroy All Monsters.
He is a bad man, obviously, even if his ideas for training dinosaurs for war would make for a possibly entertaining update of Destroy All Monsters.
Creature feature collaborations are almost always fun watches with films like Destroy All Monsters and the old Universal monster mash-ups feeding our imaginations and childhood desires.
The 35th feature outing for the Marvel Cinematic Universe takes the franchise into territory occupied by long-running stalwarts like Perry Mason and Godzilla.
The Thing from Another World (1951)
Directed by Christian Nyby
influenced Godzilla (1954)
Characters
Shimura insists that Gojira should be studied, not killed, but he's not just a clueless egghead like, say, Robert Cornthwaite in The Thing from Another World.
Working with a fraction of the budget that Hollywood CGI spectacles get, they have created scenes of frighteningly realistic destruction, with a beast that has evolved far from his “man in a suit” origins of Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya’s 1954 original “Godzilla.”
"Shin Godzilla" reassures fans that their version of Godzilla is, unlike the equally tremendous 2014 American "Godzilla," the "true" Godzilla by including and expanding on themes from "Gojira" composer Akira Ifukube's iconic score.