Godzilla: King of the Monsters

My dad introduced me to Godzilla when I was quite young. He bought me several of the dubbed VHS tapes, and the earliest film I can remember seeing was Godzilla vs the Sea Monster. Thus began a lifelong obsession. I spent hours online on various Godzilla websites, printing out images on our dot-matrix Brother printer, and colored them in. I loved going to Hollywood Video, a second-rate movie rental store, and browsing their Godzilla offerings, all dubbed. In this way, I watched lots of the films that otherwise wouldn't have been watchable. What few movies did show on TV, however, I quickly recorded on my own VHS tapes.

As the years passed, I took whatever opportunities to watch Godzilla in theaters. I loved the 2014 American reboot, and seeing Shin Godzilla in theaters was exhilirating.

In the midst of the pandemic, in late 2020, I decided I had enough time on my hands to start rewatching ALL the Godzilla films, which I'd had copies of on a hard drive. I had recently acquired a copy of David Kalat's A Critical History and Filmography of Toho's Godzilla Series, and would read a chapter before watching the film. Afterward, I'd listen to the pertinent episode of the Kaijusaurus podcast. Over the course of almost two years, I watched every single Godzilla film in order, as well as several gems I wouldn't have considered had Kalat not referenced them in his series rundown. This was the first time I'd seen most of these films in Japanese, and it was a great experience to watch and review them all. You can click above to see each of the 50 films I watched, and see what I rated them on Letterboxd and how I reviewed them.

With Godzilla Minus One and the latest run of anime films and series, I feel that my time with Godzilla has come to an end. There isn't much more water you can draw from this rock, and I don't enjoy the direction these new entries are going in. But I don't have to - the series will always have a special place in my heart, and with fifty films to choose from, there will always be something appealing for me.