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In the final moments of Godzilla, a brilliant and tormented physicist awkwardly dons diving gear and plunges to the bottom of Tokyo Bay, cradling in his arms a miniature doomsday weapon housed in a metal-and-glass cylinder. Standing on the ocean floor, the scientist pauses a moment and comes face to face with death in the form of a iso-foot-tall prehistoric monstrosity. Soft requiem strains are heard as man and creature float weightlessly in the depths, two innocent victims of the nuclear age, their fates intertwined.
It's a peaceful moment, but it cannot last. Bound by duty and destiny, the scientist detonates the device and in seconds the sea becomes a bubbling cauldron. Godzilla, the seemingly indestructible creature that reduced Tokyo to a smoldering ruin, helplessly gasps for breath, surfacing with a final death cry before disintegrating into nothingness. And the man, guilt-ridden for unleashing a force as destructive as the atomic bomb, chooses to die alongside Godzilla rather than risk letting his Oxygen Destroyer fall into the hands of war-makers. As the movie ends, the immediate threat of mass destruction has been lifted, but there is no rejoicing; instead, a feeling of profound tragedy and deep sorrow. "I can't believe Godzilla is the only survivor of its species," intones an old scientist. "If we continue testing H-bombs, another Godzilla will one day appear again, somewhere in the world."
In summer 2004, fifty years after its debut, Godzilla played in cinemas all across the United States for the first time. Not the heavily reedited cult classic starring Raymond Burr but the original, Japanese-language picture that first unspooled in Tokyo on November 3, 1954, and has rarely been seen outside Japan in the five decades since then. The critics called it a revelation, and instead of complaining about bad dubbing and tacky special effects (Godzilla's two enduring claims to infamy), they praised the film's thinly veiled depiction of a nuclear holocaust, its documentary-style realism, its overpowering sadness, and of course its monster-mash entertainment value. A reviewer for Slate.com said it best: "Godzilla is the most emotionally resonant fake monster movie ever made."
Godzilla, that city-smashing, vaguely mammalian-looking mutant reptile with the white-hot radiation breath and that trademark high-pitched roar, is a worldwide pop icon and Japan's most...