What is Godzilla?
From Wikizilla
So what is Godzilla you ask? To find the answer to this question you must go back to the beginning...
The Beginning
One dark night in 1954, Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka was on a plane thousands of feet above the waves of the Pacific Ocean. Toho's most recent idea for a movie had been shelved and he needed to come up with a new idea quickly. And as he stared down at the sea below him, an idea struck him: what if a giant monster rose from the depths to attack Tokyo!? With the great success of giant monster movies such as King Kong and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, such a movie was a stroke of genius. Soon, with the assistance of a team of now legendary men, including director Ishiro Honda, score master Akira Ifukube, and special effects man Eiji Tsuburaya, they began to make their movie. But the creature needed a name. Though it will forever be unknown exactly how the name came about and myths will circle it eternally, the Japanese words gorira (gorilla) and kujira (whale) were combined and the beast became known as Gojira, which in turn became, in the west, Godzilla.
The first film, Godzilla, came out in 1954. It was made in response to the two atomic bombings on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, voicing a fear of a repeat of these attacks. The film involved a giant monster, "Gojira", being awakened in the Pacific Ocean and attacking several Japanese ships and eventually, the city of Tokyo. The monster was killed by the fictional Oxygen Destroyer.
The film was re-edited and re-released in America as Godzilla, King of the Monsters!. This version sparked an awareness in the western world of Toho Studios, and consequently many other Godzilla films were made, usually featuring Godzilla battling a different Kaiju.
Since Then....
Godzilla has since been featured in many science fiction films, video games and comics. His appearance, origins, and pretty much everything about him varies, but basically, he is almost always a giant, irradiated dinosaur (Godzillasaurus) that was mutated as a result of the atomic bomb testing on Bikini Atoll.
Godzilla and other kaiju are known for being portrayed by men in suits (a process known as suitmation). The early effects were generally quite cheap, involving cartoons being used for laser beams, paintings for backgrounds, etc. However, the series generally received good reviews, and the Godzilla franchise has continued to the present day. In 1998, an American remake was made by TriStar Pictures, and was set in New York City. However, this film received generally poor reviews, due to the lack of similarities between the title creature of this film (known as Zilla) and the original Godzilla.
