Saturday Morning Cartoons: GODZILLA

By JONATHAN M. CHAFFIN

If you were a kid in the 70’s and 80’s, you know the Hanna Barbera logo... it was the last sign-off for multiple television shows every Saturday morning when you snuck down-stairs, grabbed a bowl of Frankenberry cereal (or Nintendo cereal), and waited for the “grownup shows” to stop and Saturday Morning Cartoons to start.  The sound of the H-B logo takes me back to snuggling in the sleeping bag (blue, with flowers and a red interior) my granny made for me.   

Hanna Barbera is famous for coining the “Four meddling _______ & a _______” format of adventure show: Scooby Doo (4 kids & a dog), Captain Caveman (four musicians & a caveman), Jabberjaw (four  kids & a shark doing a Three Stooges impression), and countless others. I watched and loved all of those shows back in the day.  

Let’s talk about their 1978 effort, four irritating scientists & Godzilla plus a horrible “Scrappy Doo” version of Godzilla. Statement of bias; I don’t much like this show.  If you liked the show, I’m glad. I have some guilty cartoon and cinematic pleasures of my own.

Why am I writing about it?  I LOVE Godzilla.  And I love my 6 year old, and SHE loves this show.  So I’m going assume it’s doing its job by entertaining kids.  If you have kids and want to introduce them to Kaiju, this is a great way.

Like their other shows, GODZILLA is fairly described as “semi-animated,” a production technique that allows a show to be animated in about half the produced frames. Only the body parts that need to be moving are animated, and there is lot of reuse of animation. Most television cartoons of this era use the technique, but it is particularly noticeable (if not egregious) in this show. 

Gadzuki, everybody.

This series is pretty much summarized by the phrase “Godzilla Ex Machina.”  The plot of each episode is “Crew of the Calico gets in trouble, calls Godzilla like a giant doberman with firebreath, and the day is saved.”  Also, Gadzuki, the Scrappy Doo to Godzilla’s…Godzilla, bumbles around, gets stuck and causes problems and generally Jar-Jars up the place.  Fie upon thee, Gadzuki.  I hate you worse than Minya.

This Godzilla cartoon (there have been others) was an anchor show for a rotating host of other Hanna Barbara action cartoons aired from 1978-81 in various combinations.  There are 26 half hour episodes.  Well, really, there is about one proto-episode, and they switched the monster and the lesson learned 26 times. History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man.[1]

It IS fun to see the cartoon Kaiju battles, and that payoff is pretty clearly where the animation budget (such as it was) was spent.  (About $3 grand an episode, the internet tells me).   A super cut of the Kajui monster battles would be pretty great, although sometimes they change scale from scene to scene. And, sometimes, their powers are interestingly modified. 

Something you’ll read a lot about if you research this show is that Godzilla breathes fire instead of destructive atomic energy. I’m fascinated by this choice.  By changing Godzilla’s breath weapon from atomic furnace to fire, Big G is effectively turned into a wingless fire-breathing dragon.  The whole overtones of the original movie relating to  the terror of the destruction of the atomic bomb are changed if Godzilla isn’t an atomic monster.  Perhaps the decision was a graphic choice; red flames instead of blue glowing radiation, but it is one that is curiously prevalent in a lot of American depictions of Godzilla. 

Regardless, giving Godzilla fire breath and having him run to heel and assist like Puff the Magic Dragon is a fundamentally different message from “unstoppable atonic monster of our own creation protects his territory from the menace of mankind.”  I might be reading too much into a Saturday morning cartoon, but hey, that’s what I’m here for.  Also, Godzilla has laser beam eyes, or heat vision, or something.  For…reasons.

Worth watching a few episodes if you are a Godzilla completist, but really, there are a lot of shows that do the formula better.  

For the die hard lovers of the show, or the (probably more numerous) college kids who fell in love with Sea Lab 2021 and Venture Brothers style modern send ups of 1970’s adventure shows, Cartoon Network created a short called “Godzilla vs. the Y2K Bug" using footage from the show.  It’s a one trick pony, so I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s kinda fun. 


[1]  The first concert I ever attended on my own in a dive bar was a Blue Oyster Cult concert.  The song “Godzilla” blew my mind, and I really wanted to put it in this review. Check it out. It’s way better than this cartoon.  It should be the soundtrack for the super cut of kaiju battles I mentioned.  Internet, you should make that. 

JONATHAN M. CHAFFIN is an Atlanta-based graphic designer and art director and a lifetime fan of horror stories and film. His current project is www.HorrorInClay.com where he uses artifacts and ephemera to tell stories... he also produces horror-themed tiki mugs and barware like the Horror In Clay Cthulhu Tiki Mug. In addition, Jonathan occasionally does voice-over and podcasting work and appears on panels at sci-fi fantasy and pop culture conventions on a variety of topics. You can follow him @CthulhuMug on twitter or by friending HorrorInClay on Facebook and G+

MONSTER SERIAL: Godzilla, Faces of a Legend

By PETER H. GILMORE

Godzilla achieved his 60th anniversary this past November and his name is known around the globe. Over the course of 30 films he has gone from the dark, lumbering embodiment of the hydrogen bomb to being a child-friendly defender of the Earth, even if he can’t help leveling a city or two in the process. How you relate to him often depends upon which film initiated you into the fandom of the King of the Monsters.

In 1954, Toho was inspired by the recent re-release of the 1933 KING KONG as well as the previous year’s THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS by Ray Harryhausen to want to enter into the profitable world of oversized animals raising havoc. But the Japanese filmmakers had a more serious premise since their own nation had been shattered by two nuclear bombs dropped on them by the United States’ militia. The horror of those ultimate weapons could safely be expressed through the allegory of a vast, prehistoric creature roused to punish mankind, whose nuclear detonations had disturbed this great beast. He was called Gojira, supposedly a combination of the Japanese words for gorilla (gorira) and whale (kujira).
 

GOJIRA, 1954.

When this film was adapted for the US market with some of its message diluted and Raymond Burr added, his name was transliterated as Godzilla, bringing in almost a sense of blasphemy with the reference to the divine for such a hideous creature. And, to the best of their abilities, director Ishiro Honda and SPFX genius Eiji Tsuburaya conjured forth a dark terror who arose from Tokyo Bay to incinerate that city, irradiating the survivors who would later perish from this nuclear poisoning. Their use of a man in a suit as well as puppets worked well to embody a design meant to be a combination of T-Rex, Stegosaurus and Iguanodon.

The Gojira puppet.

The film was a box office success, leading to a sequel less than a year later wherein Godzilla fought with a giant form of ankylosaur named Anguirus. The rubber suits in this are cruder and made slimmer so that the actors could wrestle, unlike the original suit in which the actor could barely walk. This set the pattern of monster vs. monster that persisted for all but two subsequent films. Seven years later, stimulated by the success of the imported British giant monster film GORGO, a third film was produced and Toho licensed RKO’s King Kong to battle their nuclear flame-throwing reptile. The original Kong was only about 50 feet tall, though his height tends to vary between 18 and 60 feet as he’s depicted. Gojira was sized at 50 meters tall (164 feet) for most of his films, so Toho simply bumped-up Kong so he’d be a worthy competitor. This film also took a turn towards the comic away from the horror-orientation of the first two. From now through the 15th film, Godzilla would become ever more child friendly, in both behavior and looks, as he fought invading space monsters brought to Earth by kitschy aliens. He thus went from a visage of terror, to a large-eyed cutesy monster that was cheered-on by children around the world until the end of this first “Showa” series in 1975.

GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE, 1989.

In 1984, THE RETURN OF GODZILLA revived the character as a serious threat to our species in a film meant as a commentary on the US and Soviet obsession with expanding nuclear arsenals. This incarnation was again fierce and frightening and now 80 meters tall. In 1989, GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE critiqued genetic engineering and had Godzilla in combat with a peculiar creature that came from the fusion of Godzilla’s cells with the DNA of a rose along with the spirit of the deceased daughter of the scientist who made this horror. Godzilla’s look and size (100 meters) became stabilized for this second “Heisei” series in the following 6 films, with mostly minor tweaks. He fought revised versions of old adversaries: Mothra (with her evil cousin Battra), the golden dragon King Ghidorah, and a robotic replica Mechagodzilla There were two additional new foes: Space Godzilla—who had crystal protruding from his shoulders and as a dorsal array, and Destoroyah—a multi-formed aggregate conflation of a prehistoric crustacean with elements of the Oxygen Destroyer weapon that dissolved Godzilla in his very first film. In this 1995 film came the most dramatic change as Godzilla had suffered from a hyper-dose of radiation causing his internal nuclear organs to go haywire, threatening either a vast explosion or meltdown, both on a scale that would decimate the planet. Fiery red patches, lit from within, cover his body and he seems to be in constant agony. He does at last melt-down, poisoning Tokyo after the humans had assisted in vanquishing his enemy. A younger Godzilla co-starred, and after being slaughtered by Destoroyah, he is revived by the excess radiation, absorbed to bring forth a resurrected Godzilla.

GODZILLA, 1998.

The US took a crack at a Godzilla film in 1998 under Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. Though Patrick Tatopoulos designed for them a detailed, slim, 60 meter tall saurian monster influenced by then current ideas about prehistoric animals, their script had it running away from the military and later laying eggs which hatched into raptor-like young in Madison Square Garden. This monster didn’t even have the usual nuclear fire breath. Both this beast, later called Zilla by Toho, and its young were dispatched by missiles fired by US jets. All other Godzillas found such weaponry to be but a minor inconvenience. Despite doing well financially, the only sequel was a cartoon series broadcast on Saturday mornings for American television. Many young people thus were first exposed to this creature as being Godzilla. Thankfully the creature in this—the sole-survivor of the egg clutch who imprinted on the biologist from the film as a daddy figure—mostly behaved far more like Godzilla, fighting an array of giant monsters both new and at times reminiscent of Toho favorites. And he did have his fire-breath back.

GODZILLA: FINAL WARS, 2004.

In 2000, Toho launched a new film to bring attention back to their creation and for the first time made Godzilla green—with huge, spikey magenta back plates. He was returned to his original height, which allowed for more detailed miniature structures to be his playthings. GODZILLA 2000 had this new, fiercer manifestation fight another alien intruder, Orga, who looked a bit like the Rancor from RETURN OF THE JEDI. This look lasted for two films, then when Shusuke Kaneko came on board in 2001 he gave Godzilla a supernatural twist—he was filled with the angry souls of those who died in WW2 in the Pacific theatre of combat. This  60 meter Godzilla had blank white eyes and his look went back to the original film, as did his charcoal gray body color. His rage helped him exterminate several of his old enemies (Baragon, Mothra, King Ghidorah) now cast as guardians of the land. The next two films centered around Godzilla battling another version of Mechagodzilla, called Kiryu, who was constructed around the bones of the original Godzilla. His look was a toned-down version of the 2000 design, though properly tinted in gray tones. The final film of this series (GODZILLA: FINAL WARS, from 2004) was a campy return to the 70s movies with references to The Matrix films, as tacky alien invaders control the many monsters of Earth to obliterate humanity. Here, a very athletic Godzilla is freed from a glacial prison to dispatch the other monsters and again save the planet.

GODZILLA, 2014.

Ten years later LEGENDARY PICTURES revived the dormant series under director Gareth Edwards with GODZILLA (2014), wherein a design wrought according to biological principles had the largest Godzilla of all at 106 meters. His body has a bear-like heft with a face that combines ursine and aquiline aspects. The state of the art CGI brought him to breathing, slavering, roaring life as he fought the MUTOs, a bonded pair of fellow prehistoric, radiation-hungry creatures with bizarre anatomy. These creatures have stapler-remover shaped jaws, clustered sense organs instead of eyes, and strangely configured multiple hooked limbs, the male having one pair of wings. Here Godzilla is defined as the last survivor of a prehistoric radiation devouring species who was the apex predator of his ancient ecosystem. When humans inadvertently cause the revival of a parasitic species from his time, Godzilla rises from his home in the abyssal trenches to right nature’s balance by eliminating the MUTOs. He is not yet mankind’s adversary, but woe unto us should he take notice of our upsetting the balance of his planet. This film made over a half-billion dollars in its theatrical run, pleasing both LEGENDARY and Toho as well as most fans of the entire series. With its sequel set to be released in 2018, Toho has decided to keep the interest going by promising us the beginning of their fourth series to be premiered in 2016 to the global market.

That stalwart Godzilla is alive and well at 60 with two series to be in progress simultaneously. He’s once again come ‘round to sounding the cautionary tone that made GOJIRA (1954) so effective. His new face looks upon us with a stern visage meant as a warning that we must be in harmony, rather than conflict, with nature. I suspect this always timely concept will keep Godzilla as a vital archetype for many decades to come.

Magus Gilmore has represented the Church of Satan since “The Satanic Panic” of the 1980s, being interviewed on numerous television and radio programs dealing with the topic of Satanism, including appearances on The History Channel, BBC, The Sci-Fi Channel, Point of Inquiry, and Bob Larson’s Christian radio show. His audio, video, and print interviews are numerous and continue to grow, making him the most interviewed Satanist in history. In 2001 he was appointed High Priest of the Church of Satan by Magistra Blanche Barton. Gilmore studied music composition at New York University where he earned B.S. and M.A. degrees. His solo album Threnody for Humanity presents orchestral-styled electronic music composed and performed by Gilmore. His book The Satanic Scriptures was published in 2007 and is currently available in a number of translations.

Review: GODZILLA is a bore

Gareth Edwards' GODZILLA is a frustrating experience. It manages to improve in every conceivable way on the 1998 attempt to Americanize the King of the Monsters, but that's pretty a low bar by anyone's standards. Today's blockbuster must be oh-so-serious, and the pageantry of tragedy on display in GODZILLA not only drains the film of life, but might even elevate it to accidental camp status. There's probably a drinking game to be made from the film. Take a shot whenever a character stares blankly into the distance toward impending doom. Take two if that character is a child.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays ... well, I don't remember his character's name. Save for the big guy himself, I don't remember anyone's name in the film. It doesn't really matter because the characters are just constructs that exist to get you from beat to beat. Taylor-Johnson plays the kind of role usually reserved these days for Channing Tatum: A young, no-nonsense military officer with more muscle definition than personality. Here, Taylor-Johnson is a Naval officer, but that's mostly an irrelevant designation because he's an expert in almost everything. His military occupational specialty is demolitions, but he later proves to be an accomplished HALO jumper, marksman, diver and survivalist. It's that last skill that proves to be the most useful, because the character tends to be the sole survivor of every Kaiju encounter in the film.

Taylor-Johnson enters the film as his character returns from a lengthy overseas deployment. Almost immediately, he's called away from his family to tend to his mad scientist father in Japan, played by Bryan Cranston. If BREAKING BAD (or even MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE) have you expecting a blistering performance from Cranston, you might want to lower your expectations a bit. His role is a stock character with stock dialogue, and neither the script nor a regrettable wig selection give him anything to work with. It's a glorified cameo appearance, and his character exists mostly has a MacGuffin to separate Taylor-Johnson from his wife (whose name I also don't remember, but she's played by Elizabeth Olson.)

A prologue establishes that a nuclear accident 15 years earlier in Japan killed Taylor-Johnson's mother (played by Juliette Binoche) and drove his father to the edge of madness. Cranston is convinced that there's something more to the accident than the world was told, but even he doesn't seem to really know what was kept secret. It's a little unclear on what he was expecting to discover, but it probably wasn't a giant grasshopper feeding off the plant's reactor. Luckily for us (and unluckily for Cranston and Taylor-Johnson) their investigation brings them back to the site just minutes before the film's first monster hatches.

The rest of the film is disaster imagery designed to conjure memories of everything from 9/11 to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Families are separated and reunited, the badguys vanquished and none it means a whole hell of a lot because the film lacks anything resembling a point of view. The script presents numerous opportunities to express itself with something more than bombast. What role does industry play in protecting the environment? When are government conspiracies justified? Is all the film's talk of ecology a veiled message about climate change? We'll never know, because GODZILLA has no opinion on any of the topics at hand.

There are good ideas in the movie, though. I was pleasantly surprised that the title monster was not the film's villain, and it was delightful to see U.S. Naval vessels following Godzilla around the Pacific as if he were the team mascot. The monster's backstory (which I won't spoil here) was also novel, and it was difficult not to get a little excited when Godzilla finally cuts loose in the movie's final minutes. After two hours of carnage and a body count exponentially higher than that of MAN OF STEEL's, I don't really understand how the world decided Godzilla was a "hero." Perhaps it was the always on-point television news coverage depicted in GODZILLA, which appeared to have all been coordinated by the same producer. A shot of a dissenting Fox News anchor accusing Godzilla of violating U.S. sovereignty might have added a touch of humor to an otherwise grey and lifeless film. But, the movie would have need a perspective for a stunt like that.

Much like Michael Bay's first TRANSFORMERS (which I despise, for the record) GODZILLA fails because the characters are cyphers. Taylor-Johnson and Olsen share all of two scenes in the film, yet we're supposed be emotionally invested in their relationship. Considering the film invests hardly anything in either of them, it's just too much to expect the audience to suspend their disbelief to the levels needed to carry GODZILLA along.

If all of this sounds harsh, that's not my intent. Unlike the 1998 GODZILLA feature, this is not a film to be hated. It's probably too much to expect great human drama from a Kaiju film, and I'm unsure who is expecting too much from GODZILLA: Me, or Gareth Edwards? This isn't a product that was shit out over a weekend script-planning session by studio executives. The film is clearly a labor of love by the director, but don't be surprised if you can't share in his enthusiasm.