Editing Godzilla (1954 film) (section)

==Themes==
In the film, Godzilla symbolizes [[nuclear holocaust]] from Japan's perspective and has since been culturally identified as a strong metaphor for nuclear weapons.<ref name="Brian">{{cite web |last=Merchant |first=Brian |author-link=Brian Merchant |date=August 25, 2013 |title=A Brief History of Godzilla, Our Never-Ending Nuclear Nightmare |url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/a-brief-history-of-godzilla-our-never-ending-nuclear-nightmare/ |work=[[Vice (magazine)|Vice]] |access-date=June 9, 2018 |archive-date=June 12, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180612143920/https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gd4e3/a-brief-history-of-godzilla-our-never-ending-nuclear-nightmare |url-status=live }}</ref> Producer [[Tomoyuki Tanaka]] stated, "The theme of the film, from the beginning, was the terror of the bomb. Mankind had created the bomb, and now nature was going to take revenge on mankind."<ref name="footprint"/> Director [[Ishirō Honda]] filmed Godzilla's Tokyo rampage to mirror the [[atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]] and stated, "If Godzilla had been a dinosaur or some other animal, he would have been killed by just one cannonball. But if he were equal to an atomic bomb, we wouldn't know what to do. So, I took the characteristics of an atomic bomb and applied them to Godzilla."<ref name="footprint"/>

On March 1, 1954, just a few months before the film was made, the Japanese fishing vessel ''[[Daigo Fukuryū Maru]]'' ("Lucky Dragon No. 5") had been showered with radioactive fallout from the U.S. military's 15-megaton "[[Castle Bravo]]" hydrogen bomb test at nearby [[Bikini Atoll]].{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=16}} The boat's catch was contaminated, spurring a panic in Japan about the safety of eating fish, and the crew was sickened, with one crew member eventually dying from radiation sickness.{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=16}} The event led to the emergence of a large and enduring [[anti-nuclear movement]] that gathered 30 million signatures on an anti-nuclear petition by August 1955 and eventually became institutionalized as the [[Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs]].{{sfn|Kapur|2018|p=16}} The film's opening scene of Godzilla destroying a Japanese vessel is a direct reference to these events and had a strong impact on Japanese viewers, with the recent event still fresh in the mind of the public.{{sfn|Ryfle|Godziszewski|2006|loc=00:02:08}}

Academics [[Anne Allison]], Thomas Schnellbächer, and Steve Ryfle have said that ''Godzilla'' contains political and cultural undertones that can be attributed to what the Japanese had experienced in [[World War II]] and that Japanese audiences were able to connect emotionally to the monster. They theorized that the viewers saw Godzilla as a victim and felt that the creature's backstory reminded them of their experiences in World War II. The academics have also claimed that as the atomic bomb testing that woke Godzilla was carried out by the United States, the film can in a way be seen to blame the United States for the problems and struggles that Japan experienced after World War II had ended. They also felt that the film could have served as a cultural coping method to help the people of Japan move on from the events of the war.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Millennial Monsters |last=Allison|first=Anne|publisher=University of California Press|date=June 30, 2006|isbn=9780520245655|pages=45–69}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Schnellbächer |first1=Thomas|title=Has the Empire Sunk Yet?: The Pacific in Japanese Science Fiction|journal=[[Science Fiction Studies]]|date=November 2002 |volume=29 |issue=3 |pages=382–396|doi=10.1525/sfs.29.3.0382 }}</ref><ref name="footprint">{{cite journal|last1=Ryfle|first1=Steve|title=Godzilla's Footprint|journal=Virginia Quarterly Review|date=Winter 2005 |volume=81 |issue=1 |pages=44–68}}</ref>

[[Brian Merchant]] from ''[[Motherboard (Vice)|Motherboard]]'' called the film "a bleak, powerful metaphor for nuclear power that still endures today," and on its themes, he stated: "It's an unflinchingly bleak, deceptively powerful film about coping with and taking responsibility for the incomprehensible, man-made tragedy. Specifically, nuclear tragedies. It's arguably the best window into post-war attitudes towards nuclear power we've got—as seen from the perspective of its greatest victims."<ref name="Brian"/> [[Terrence Rafferty]] from ''[[The New York Times]]'' said Godzilla was "an obvious gigantic, unsubtle, grimly purposeful metaphor for the atomic bomb" and felt the film was "extraordinarily solemn, full of earnest discussions".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/popcult/handouts/metaphor/godzilla/godzilla.html|title=The Monster That Morphed Into a Metaphor|first=Terrence|last=Rafferty|work=The New York Times|date=May 2, 2004|access-date=June 9, 2018|archive-date=September 8, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180908202705/https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/popcult/handouts/metaphor/godzilla/godzilla.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Mark Jacobson from the website of ''[[New York (magazine)|New York]]'' magazine said that Godzilla "transcends humanist prattle. Very few constructs have so perfectly embodied the overriding fears of a particular era. He is the symbol of a world gone wrong, a work of man that once created cannot be taken back or deleted. He rears up out of the sea as a creature of no particular belief system, apart from even the most elastic version of evolution and taxonomy, a reptilian [[Id (Freud)|id]] that lives inside the deepest recesses of the collective unconscious that cannot be reasoned with, a merciless undertaker who broaches no deals." Regarding the film, Jacobson stated, "Honda's first Godzilla... is in line with these inwardly turned post-war films and perhaps the most brutally unforgiving of them. Shame-ridden self-flagellation was in order, and who better to supply the rubber-suited psychic punishment than the [[Rorschach test|Rorschach]]-shaped big fella himself?"<ref>{{cite web|url=https://vulture.com/2014/05/godzilla-meaning-monster-metaphors.html|title=What Does Godzilla Mean? The Evolution of a Monster Metaphor|first=Mark|last=Jacobson|work=Vulture|date=May 16, 2014|access-date=June 9, 2018|archive-date=June 12, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180612145929/http://www.vulture.com/2014/05/godzilla-meaning-monster-metaphors.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Tim Martin from ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'' said that the original 1954 film was "a far cry from its [[B movie|B-movie]] successors. It was a sober allegory of a film with ambitions as large as its thrice-normal budget, designed to shock and horrify an adult audience. Its roster of frightening images—cities in flames, overstuffed hospitals, irradiated children—would have been all too familiar to cinema-goers for whom memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still less than a decade old, while its script posed deliberately inflammatory questions about the balance of postwar power and the development of nuclear energy." Martin also commented on how the film's themes were omitted in the American version by stating, "Its thematic preoccupation with nuclear energy proved even less acceptable to the American distributors who, after buying the film, began an extensive reshoot and re-cut for Western markets."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10788996/Godzilla-why-the-Japanese-original-is-no-joke.html|title=Godzilla: why the Japanese original is no joke|first=Tim|last=Martin|work=The Daily Telegraph|date=May 15, 2014|access-date=June 9, 2018|archive-date=June 14, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180614032134/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10788996/Godzilla-why-the-Japanese-original-is-no-joke.html|url-status=live}}</ref>