The Return Of Godzilla

Note: At no point in the film do they explain how Godzilla is alive to return in the first place. The 1954 film ended with Godzilla being reduced to a skeleton by the Oxygen Destroyer. Did he just get better?

The Return of Godzilla

Toho had been trying to resurrect Godzilla for some time before the 1984 version of Gojira was released. The Rebirth of Godzilla was in development in 1977, intended as a straight remake of the 1954 film, and Henry G. Saperstein worked with Toho a year later on Godzilla vs the Devil though neither project got any further than merely talking about it. But the opportunity to mark the thirtieth anniversary was too good to miss and so Godzilla returned to the screens in a blaze of publicity in December 1984. And the good news is that the film ignored the events of the many 1960s and 70s sequels and returned Godzilla to his roots as a virtually unstoppable force of nature.

this isn't 1954 any more: godzilla marches into tokyo, causes destruction, sure... but he's no longer towering above the city. now mankind has built enormous grey skyscrapers that loom over godzilla like metallic palm trees. late 20th century japan has seemingly moved past the nuclear trauma of world war 2. godzilla is constantly dis-empowered in this film: scientists can predict his behavior, futuristic machines can easily disable him, and the true threat really isn't a giant dinosaur destroying a metropolis, but rather the geopolitics of the cold war being in such a state where godzilla's presence would trigger a total nuclear attack from both america & russia.

After Terror of Mechagodzilla in 1975, Toho tried launching a number of projects starring your now-heroic visage, but none took off. One such project was Godzilla vs. The Devil, which sounded pretty promising. Alas. Terror was considered one of the first flops for your series and the apex of your 1970s corny-hero phase. It ended you for almost a decade.

The Americanized Godzilla 1985 was a VHS rental staple for me, one I likely rented more often than any other film. It was wonderful to see Raymond Burr, his face now adorned in a magnificent graying beard, reprise his role from 1954's Godzilla: King Of The Monsters. Burr's character is named Steve Martin, which became a bit of an issue in the decades following that original film, so in 1985 he is typically referred to as Mr. Martin, or by his first name alone, in order to avoid confusion with the well known star. Burr's presence was a comforting bookend to a series that, for all I knew as a kid, ended with this entry. It added special sentimental value to see the man who had witnessed Godzilla's first rampage return to see his ''last''. It was also a much newer film than any other in the franchise, which was evident to me even at the time. This combination of closure and timing, along with a noticeably amplified budget, made it a unique Godzilla viewing experience that kept me going back to it in the video store.

The film is an intentional return to the more serious approach of the 1954 original, which alone is acknowledged to exist in this universe, while all other intervening entries are ignored. There is only one monster at the center of the film, and this Godzilla likewise reassumes the role of monumental bringer of doom. In his initial 1954 appearance, the monster embodied the then fresh horror of the detonation of atomic weapons upon Japanese soil. Here, in the heart of the Cold War decade of the 1980's, he is the unwelcome reminder that those same kinds of weapons are now multiplied in both number and destructive magnitude, and our capacity to use them is at best veiled, not abated. Unseen in thirty years, he reappears to tear away any false sense of security or complacency that humans may have acquired merely from the passage of time. He is the blooming of the seed of worry. Armageddon was only sleeping, and it has awakened.

Several attempts were made to continue the Godzilla franchise after Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975), including an attempt at making an American Godzilla film in 3D, but nothing materialized until Toho?s The Return of Godzilla in 1984. Toho decided to make The Return of Godzilla a direct sequel to Godzilla (1954). This allowed the studio to easily shift Godzilla away from the anthropomorphized hero he had become in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and return him to a metaphor for real-world horrors.

The Return of Godzilla stars Ken Tanaka, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Yosuke Natsuki, and Keiju Kobayashi, with Kenpachiro Satsuma as Godzilla. The film serves as both a sequel to the original 1954 film and a reboot of the franchise that ignores the events of every Shōwa era film aside from the original Godzilla, placing itself in line with the darker tone and themes of the original film and returning Godzilla to his destructive, antagonistic roots. The film was released theatrically in Japan on December 15, 1984. The following year, in the United States, New World Pictures released Godzilla 1985, a heavily re-edited American adaptation of the film which includes additional footage, and features Raymond Burr reprising his role from the 1956 film Godzilla, King of the Monsters!.

The Japanese Prime Minister, Mitamura, is informed of the attack and the potential return of Godzilla; he orders that Godzilla's involvement be kept secret. Maki's report is not published by his newspaper as a "national security matter" over concerns about mass panic and is told to interview bio-physicist Hayashida instead. Maki finds Naoko, Okamura's sister working as a lab assistant to Hayashida and informs her that her brother is safe, against the government's orders. She rushes to the hospital.

The return of the T-spec marks the middle range of the GT-R lineup. It resurrects two paint shades, Millennium Jade and Midnight Purple III. The former is a nod to the rarest GT-R of all time, the R34 GT-R V-Spec II Nür while the latter is a modern version of what was found on the R34 GT-R V-Spec. Both of these colors were last offered on the 2021 GT-R T-spec model. A dark Mori Green upholstery color returns as well. 041b061a72