The Return of Godzilla

The Return of Godzilla (1984)
Toho Studios
Director: Hashimoto Kōji, Nakano Teruyoshi (special effects)
Also known as: Just plain Godzilla in Japan; Godzilla 1985 (the US re-edit with added Raymond Burr).

Guess who’s back, back again. After nine years in hibernation, and in defiance of the decline in Japanese cinema attendance, Godzilla was relaunched with great fanfare and with a 1980s makeover. This wasn’t billed as the first new Godzilla film in nine years, but as marking the 30th anniversary of the 1954 original, with the filmmakers wanting to move away from the levity of the more recent movies and back to the darker tone of Godzilla’s first appearance.

In that spirit, The Return of Godzilla breaks entirely with the many threads of the Shōwa era series – the team player and cosmic voyager of Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965), the dreamland children’s hero of All Monsters Attack (1969), the tag-team wrestler of Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974) – and begins its own, new continuity that proceeds directly (with a 30 year hiatus) from Godzilla (1954)...

While out sailing, Maki Gorō, a journalist, runs across a fishing ship that’s been attacked by Godzilla. On board, he discovers a lot of corpses – they’ve been drained of blood and look like they’ve been mummified – and the last survivor, a junior scientist called Okumura Hiroshi. The crew have been killed by a sea-louse the size of a Labrador, which has presumably been parasitising Godzilla and has mutated because of exposure to his radioactive blood. The fascinating suggestion that Godzilla could have gigantic parasites is never touched on again (although the earlier bits of Shin Godzilla (2016) will edge into similar territory).

Godzilla is known about, but not widely. Photos exist of a previous incident (they’re plainly stills from Godzilla), although no one’s entirely sure whether or not this is the same individual creature. (Which implies that this new continuity not only ignores all the films from 1955 to 1975, but also rewrites the ending of the original film so that Godzilla isn’t killed with the Oxygen Destroyer. Yet later films in the Heisei era series will reference the Oxygen Destroyer, so perhaps it’s just that the details of Dr Serizawa’s terrifyingly powerful weapon were suppressed and none of the politicians even knows that the original Godzilla was killed.) The government initially suppresses news of Godzilla’s return to avoid mass panic but is obliged to reveal the truth after he destroys a Soviet nuclear submarine, to prevent an escalation of hostilities between the USSR and the USA.

After his story is squashed by his editor, Gorō meets up with Hiroshi’s sister Naoko and sneaks her into the police hospital to see her brother. This is actually just so that Gorō can get some press photos; Naoko isn’t too pleased about that. Yet somehow, Gorō and Naoko end up working together in the science institute's biophysics department alongside Hiroshi and his mentor, Professor Hayashida. (I’d make a snide remark here about the science institute’s HR department, but I’ve seen enough American movies from the 80s that were just as cavalier about throwing their protagonists together.) Hayashida is the source of the photos of Godzilla’s 1954 attack and is keen to find out more about the kaiju.

Godzilla comes ashore to attack a nuclear power plant and we get our first good look at him. He looks a bit like he did in Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966) but with a bit more animalistic menace. He has large eyes with large red irises, a nose that’s so flat you can hardly see it, a mouth that’s narrower than it was in 1966 but isn’t exactly muzzle-shaped, and a mouthful of teeth that includes some prominent canines. He pulls the power plant’s reactor core straight out through a chimney stack and absorbs the radiation directly from it. His spines flash while he does this, as if he's powering up. He's then distracted by a flock of migrating birds and heads back out to sea.

When he hears about this, Hayashida correctly theorises that Godzilla is influenced by the same magnetic fields as those birds. Somehow it follows that Godzilla could be drawn away from Japan with the modulated sound of migrating birds. Meanwhile, the American and Russian ambassadors to Japan both lobby the Prime Minister for permission to use a limited nuclear attack against Godzilla. The Prime Minister refuses on the grounds that they wouldn't have the stomach to do something similar on their own soil. Besides, no one really knows what the effects of such a strike would be and whether they could be contained. Instead, the JSDF deploys the Super X, which is an experimental flying fortress they’ve been working on in secret. (No one ever mentions that this would seem to severely bend the rules of Japan’s postwar commitment to disarmament except for strictly defensive purposes. Logically, the JSDF must have been working on this thing long before anyone knew Godzilla was back in town – what exactly were they expecting to need it for?)

The Super X looks like a UFO with turbine engines in its underside. In a standoff against Godzilla in central Tokyo, it fires cadmium missiles into Godzilla's mouth, the logic being that cadmium is used to seal nuclear reactors so this should basically stop his heart. The plan works, too – we hear Godzilla's heartbeat slowing (which again reminds this viewer of Ebirah, Horror of the Deep) and he collapses sideways into a tower block. The Super X also fires conventional rockets and pale blue laser beams. In their initial response to the incursion, the JSDF also attack Godzilla with maser tanks that fire red laser-like beams. (So even though we’ve all agreed that in this continuity, Japan hasn’t suffered any kaiju attacks since the big one in 1954, they’ve still developed maser tanks?! What do the JSDF think they’re doing?)

While he was heading into Japan, Godzilla tipped over a Soviet ship parked in Tokyo Bay, and the damage he did set off an automated nuclear launch sequence. The ship’s political officer gets into the control room but is killed by an exploding console before he can stop the launch. The missile is fired from an orbital platform; we're shown that America has these too. The US comes to the rescue by firing its own missile to destroy the rogue nuke in the air above Tokyo. The resulting explosion causes a thick red mist to descend on the spot where Godzilla is lying, then dissipate. (Hopefully it hasn't just irradiated everyone in the area.) It also knocks out the Super X’s engines with an EMP blast. In the aftermath of this catastrophe, Godzilla is resuscitated by several lightning strikes (yet again, shades of Ebirah!) and resumes his rampage.

Ultimately, Professor Hayashida successfully uses recorded bird sounds to lure Godzilla to a volcano on an island. When he gets there, explosives are detonated around the caldera to cause a controlled eruption and Godzilla falls straight in. It’s a very emotional moment – the Prime Minister cries and everything.

The film ends with an appalling pop ballad (apparently titled "Godzilla: Love Theme"), sung in English by Dutch trio The Star Sisters, that includes the lyrics "Take care now Godzilla, my old friend".

This is a solid attempt to update the atomic metaphor of Godzilla for the late Cold War era. (The music is certainly very 80s.) It falls victim to an issue that has plagued Godzilla movies since King Kong vs Godzilla (1962), that of American bit part actors giving wooden performances in minor roles. Because this film requires Russian characters but perhaps understandably couldn’t cast real Russians, it presents the double horror of Americans acting badly and delivering lines in excruciatingly poor Russian. The helmsman on the Russian submarine is surprisingly good, while the first officer is stand-out bad – couldn't the director have swapped the actors?

The Return of Godzilla takes care not to favour the American or Russian characters – for the economically strong but militarily exposed Japan of the 1980s, both of them could be a threat. (Notwithstanding that, then and still now, the US armed forces maintain a large post-occupation presence in Japan.) In the script, the diplomatic representatives of both nations are far too quick to advocate using nuclear weapons on Japanese soil against Godzilla, which the Japanese Prime Minister firmly rejects. This might call to mind the middle section of Mothra (1961), in which a fictional Cold War superpower offers to take care of Japan’s kaiju problem by, in effect, using Japan as a testing ground for experimental atomic weaponry. By contrast, in the American version – Godzilla 1985 (1985) – the scene of a damaged computer accidentally triggering a nuclear missile launch is re-edited and re-dubbed so that those diabolical Russians are shown deliberately launching the missile. The American edit’s producer has claimed this was a joke on his part and in no way a reflection of politically reactionary tendencies among senior executives in the US film industry, although I think we might fairly roll our eyes at that.

The fact that the rogue missile and the counter-missile that destroys it are both launched from orbital weapons platforms looks like a reference to contemporary world news, although it’s an extrapolation or two beyond that. US President Ronald Reagan had publicly announced his proposal for a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in 1983 – critics and the press soon took to calling it the “Star Wars” programme. The SDI was intended to end the deadlock of the nuclear arms race between the Western and Eastern Cold War blocs with a combination of lasers and kinetic projectiles, deployed in orbit as well as on the ground, that would shoot down missiles launched from the Soviet Union before they could reach their targets. Nothing much came of the project and it was abandoned in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It’s been suggested in the decades since that Russia had similar plans in the 1970s and 80s that failed either because of their cost or because the Soviet space programme simply wasn’t able to follow through on them. Neither superpower placed actual nuclear missiles in space (that we know of, anyway...), in accordance with the United Nations General Assembly’s unanimous 1963 prohibition on the orbital deployment of weapons of mass destruction, and the Outer Space Treaty that formalised that prohibition in 1967.

As far as the cast goes, The Return of Godzilla makes a fairly clean break from the past. Among the lead players, we might recognise Natsuki Yōsuke – who played Detective Shindo, the policeman assigned to guard Princess Salno, in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) – although it’s been 20 years. Here he takes on the role of Professor Hayashida. Rumour has it this was the part Hirata Akihiko would have played, if he’d only been well enough to accept and lived long enough to do it. A couple of stalwart Shōwa-era actors make cameo appearances in the political negotiation and briefing scenes. Koizumi Hiroshi is instantly recognisable as the scientist who explains the blow-up-the-volcano plan to Parliament. (He was Dr Chūjō in Mothra and Professor Miura in Mothra vs Godzilla (1964).) Otherwise, there aren’t a lot of familiar faces to distract us. And this is fitting, because our attention should instead be focused on one of the movie's new faces.

Sawaguchi Yasuko has a somewhat thankless task playing Naoko, the only speaking female role in the movie. She serves a pivotal plot function as the link from Maki to Okumura to Hayashida's lab, and beyond that she's relegated to being Maki's love interest. But this was Sawaguchi's big break as an actor. 1984 was the first year Toho Studios ran the "Toho Cinderella Audition" talent contest to find and sign up a new star actress, and Sawaguchi was the first winner.

The Return of Godzilla was Sawaguchi's second film - her actual debut was in Keiji Monogatari 3 (1984), which Google Translate tells me means “Detective Story 3” but which IMDb tells me is known in Anglo markets as "Karate Cop III: Song of the Sea". I think I can safely say The Return of Godzilla was the bigger deal of the two. I hesitate to describe it as a “prestige production”, but I think the fact that Toho used this film as a vehicle for their new star suggests they thought it might benefit her career, or she might benefit it, or maybe a bit of both. Sawaguchi went on to take leading roles in Princess from the Moon (1987) and Yamato Takeru (1994), both summer blockbusters from Toho based on popular folk tales. If IMDb is any reliable indicator, she's enjoyed the greatest acting success of any of the "Toho Cinderella Audition" winners, with a lengthy filmography that includes the star role in a current TV series that's been running for more than 20 years.

This isn’t the last time the "Toho Cinderella Audition" will play a part in the fortunes of the Godzilla franchise, by the way. But more on that in the next post.

I haven’t said much about the production values of the last few films, beyond the occasional bit of sniping and mention of the increasing reuse of old effects shots. Perhaps there wasn’t that much more to be said. But The Return of Godzilla marks a sea change in the nature – and by extension, the quality – of the “kaiju vs miniature” effects. The reason is straightforward: Japan’s urban skylines had changed quite a bit since 1954 (or even since 1975), with some skyscrapers that would dwarf the 1954 Godzilla were he to show his face in mid-80s Tokyo. In order for him to appear as physically imposing as he did to cinemagoers in the 50s, Toho decided that their returning Godzilla should be scaled up accordingly. But in reality, the Godzilla costume still had to be roughly as tall as the actor inside it, so the model buildings had to be made on a proportionally smaller scale. The miniature cityscape we see here looks good, but it can’t match the level of detail we got in the 60s films, particularly when we’re looking for debris in the scenes of destruction. Probably the clearest example is the moment when Godzilla collapses against a skyscraper, which just doesn’t break apart in the way a building of that size and heft should. These slab-like edifices that are meant to be larger feel a lot lighter than they used to.

Although The Return of Godzilla comes after what’s popularly known as the Shōwa Godzilla series and is generally considered the opening instalment of the Heisei series, it isn’t actually a film of the Heisei era. Hirohito, the Emperor Shōwa, died in January 1989 – four years after its release, a little more than a year after he was first diagnosed with duodenal cancer and eleven months before the release of this movie’s long deferred sequel.