Godzilla

Godzilla (ゴジラ Gojira) is a daikaiju who first appeared in the 1954 Toho film, Godzilla.

The primary focus of his franchise, Godzilla is typically depicted as a giant prehistoric creature awakened or mutated by the advent of the nuclear age. For the early part of the Showa series of films, Godzilla was depicted as a villainous and destructive force of nature, punishing humankind for its use of nuclear weapons, which disturbed and burned him. Over the remainder of the series, Godzilla gradually developed into a heroic character, defending Japan by fending off other more malevolent creatures such as King Ghidorah, many of them extraterrestrial or controlled by extraterrestrials. When Toho revived the franchise in 1984 with The Return of Godzilla, ignoring every film in the series except the original, Godzilla became a menace to Japan and the world once more. The Heisei series saw Godzilla battle some of his foes from the Showa era, such as Mothra and Mechagodzilla, as well as new monsters like Biollante and Destoroyah. Despite his destructive tendencies, this Godzilla incidentally saved humanity from greater evils on occasion. The Heisei series was followed by the Millennium series, an anthology in which nearly every film took place in its own continuity, often connected in some way only to the original 1954 film. Godzilla was often the villain in these films, though in some he was instead an anti-hero similar to the Heisei series. 12 years after the end of the Millennium series, Toho rebooted the franchise again with Shin Godzilla, a completely standalone film in which Godzilla appeared for the first time in modern-day Japan. This Godzilla was a bizarre new species spawned by the dumping of nuclear waste in Tokyo Bay in the 1950's, with the capacity to adapt to any situation by spontaneously mutating his own DNA. Toho introduced a new continuity the following year with the GODZILLA anime trilogy, in which Godzilla successfully drove humanity from the Earth in the 21st century and reshaped the planet in his own image over the next 20,000 years. When refugees from the Aratrum returned to reclaim the planet, they were faced with a Godzilla that had continuously grown and evolved and reached a height of over 300 meters.

Outside of the 34 films produced by Toho, Godzilla has starred in two Hollywood adaptations, with two more to come. The first, GODZILLA, was produced by TriStar Pictures in 1998 and became controversial for its radical reinterpretation of the character, which was now an iguana mutated by nuclear testing rather than a prehistoric reptile. The TriStar Godzilla also lacked some of the character's signature traits, such as his atomic breath and invulnerability to military weapons, and gained the ability to asexually reproduce. The second Hollywood adaptation of the franchise, Godzilla, was produced in 2014 by Legendary Pictures, and featured a more traditional interpretation of the titular monster. This film marked the beginning of the MonsterVerse, a shared universe of giant monster films produced by Legendary and distributed by [https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Warner_Bros. Warner Bros.], focusing on Godzilla and King Kong. Godzilla is slated to appear in two more films in the MonsterVerse: Godzilla: King of the Monsters in May, and Godzilla vs. Kong in March of 2020.

Name
Godzilla's Japanese name, Gojira (ゴジラ), comes from a combination of the Japanese approximation of "gorilla" (ゴリラ Gorira), and kujira (クジラ), the Japanese word for "whale." The name is said to have been chosen to represent the size and strength of both animals.[36]  In an early script for the original 1954 Godzilla film, Godzilla's name was spelled in katakana as ゴヂラ, though it was still pronounced Gojira.[37]  In the original film, Godzilla's name is originally spelled in kanji as 呉爾羅 by the Odo Island natives, though these characters were chosen for sound only. This kanji spelling of Godzilla's name is also used in Shin Godzilla, where it is said to mean "Incarnation of God" in the dialect of Odo Island, and in GODZILLA: Monster Apocalypse, the official prequel novel to GODZILLA: Planet of the Monsters, where it is said to be the name of a mythological dragon from the island's folklore.[38]

Contrary to popular belief, the name English name "Godzilla" was not invented by the American distributors of the original film. Before Toho sold the film to U.S. distributors, the company's international division had originally marketed English-subtitled prints of the film under the title of Godzilla, which were shown briefly in Japanese-American theaters. Toho themselves had decided on "Godzilla" as the English transliteration of Gojira. According to the 2002 book Since Godzilla, the English name "Godzilla" produces connotations such as the words "God," "lizard," and "gorilla." The word "God" is applicable to Godzilla because his immense size and destructive power cause him to be seen as a god by some, "lizard" is applicable due to Godzilla's reptilian appearance and ties to the time of the dinosaurs, and "gorilla" is applicable due to Godzilla's creation having been inspired by the famous gorilla-like giant monster King Kong.[36]

Design
Specific details of Godzilla's appearance have changed between films over the years, but many defining details have endured. In the Japanese films, Godzilla is depicted as a gigantic, bipedal reptilian creature with rough, bumpy, usually charcoal gray scales with a keloid scar or tree bark-like texture, a fairly small head with prominent eyebrow-like ridges over the eyes, moderately long, humanoid arms with four fingers including an opposable thumb, thick, muscular legs, a long, powerful, segmented tail, and three rows of generally bone-white dorsal plates, usually shaped like maple leaves, though there are some designs whose traits may differ. Godzilla origins vary somewhat from film to film, but he is almost always described as a prehistoric creature, and his first attacks on Japan are linked to the beginning of the Atomic Age. In particular, mutation due to atomic radiation is presented as an explanation for his great size and strange powers. Godzilla's iconic design is often said to be composed of a mixture of traits from various species of dinosaurs. To be specific, he has the body and overall shape of a pre-1990's reconstruction of a Tyrannosaurus rex or Allosaurus, the long arms and "thumbs" of an Iguanodon, and the dorsal plates of a Stegosaurus.