Godzilla 2014 American Monster Comparison

Giant Monsters On the East and West

Godzilla 2014 is a remake that takes the same basic idea as the original but applies it differently for a different audience and era. The original movie, which I will be referring to by it's Japanese name Gojira, is a 1954 film about a giant monster that wreaks havoc after it was spawned from the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Japan near the end of World War II. The 2014 American remake, known as Godzilla retains the giant monster element of the original, changes the setting from Japan in the 1950s to modern day America, while updating many of the main plot points. These are both movies that tell the same basic story, but which does it better? Since both movies are about a giant monster, let’s see how that compares. In the original, the monster is a giant, mutated, prehistoric monster that comes from the ocean and lays waste to Tokyo.

In the remake, the monster retains most of the same characteristics such as resembling a tyrannosaurus rex with dorsal fins on it’s back. But the design has been slightly modernized giving the monster a sleeker more realistic design. The monsters do differ on how the special effects were done. The original used a man in a sculpted suit and used miniature sets to emulate the city being destroyed. In the 2014 remake the monster and the shots of the city being destroyed are all entirely computer generated images. Which is definitely the modern way to it, but loses the charm of the original's simple