We Call It Godzilla: Starting Point
Ten years ago, what seemed like an ordinary Hollywood blockbuster ended in a most inexplicable way, and the blog you are reading will examine the sixty years of history that allowed it to happen. The blockbuster in question, 2014’s Godzilla , follows the pattern of many an action-disaster movie: a force appears that threatens to destroy the world, with an everyman protagonist caught in its path. The way the narrative usually works is that the protagonist and their family and/or community survive through any combination of ingenuity, perseverance, or luck, signaling the ultimate endurance of humanity in the face of destruction. A variation on this formula was seen in the previous year’s giant monster blockbuster, Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim , in which the nations of the world used giant robots to repel an extraterrestrial giant monster invasion. In the case of Godzilla , the antagonistic force is a pair of giant monsters with the power to cause massive electromagnetic disturb