Godzilla Film Festival Thailand 2024 (ゴジラ フィルム フェスティバル タイランド 2024), a three-day mini Godzilla retrospective (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์ก็อดซิลล่า 2024), will take place at Paragon Cineplex in Bangkok between 30th August and 1st September. The event includes daily screenings of Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla (ゴジラ), the film that not only initiated the Godzilla franchise seventy years ago but also created Japan’s kaiju-eiga (monster movie) subgenre.
The plot of Godzilla was loosely adapted from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, though Godzilla’s ‘suitmation’ special effects are more primitive: a man in a suit crushing miniature buildings. Conveniently, Godzilla is a nocturnal creature, with the darkness helping to camouflage some of the more crude effects. The night scenes are highly atmospheric, and add to the film’s bleak, sombre tone. King Kong is another substantial influence, with Godzilla and Kong having equally tragic endings.
The plot of Godzilla was loosely adapted from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, though Godzilla’s ‘suitmation’ special effects are more primitive: a man in a suit crushing miniature buildings. Conveniently, Godzilla is a nocturnal creature, with the darkness helping to camouflage some of the more crude effects. The night scenes are highly atmospheric, and add to the film’s bleak, sombre tone. King Kong is another substantial influence, with Godzilla and Kong having equally tragic endings.
As in many other cryptozoological science-fiction films of the 1950s, Godzilla is a metaphor for the dangers of nuclear weapons, with the monster disturbed by atomic bomb tests in the Pacific Ocean. Godzilla is less sensationalist than its American equivalents, though, and ends with an explicit warning: “if we continue conducting nuclear tests, it’s possible that another Godzilla might appear somewhere in the world again”.
Godzilla was one of the very first films shown at Bangkok Screening Room in 2016, part of the venue’s inaugural programme of Asian and Hollywood classics. It was also shown at the 22nd Open Air Film Festival (เทศกาลหนังกลางแปลงศิลปากรครั้งที่ 22) earlier that year.
Godzilla was one of the very first films shown at Bangkok Screening Room in 2016, part of the venue’s inaugural programme of Asian and Hollywood classics. It was also shown at the 22nd Open Air Film Festival (เทศกาลหนังกลางแปลงศิลปากรครั้งที่ 22) earlier that year.
