We've got a Godzilla for sale.

Thinkin' about Godzilla. 

I don't believe I've ever seen a full Godzilla movie. By the time I came along they had gotten pretty silly. The original 1954 Toho movie was pretty damn dark -- Godzilla's ruin of Tokyo would have revived some horrible memories for audiences who had lived through the real thing, with Allied firebombing less than ten years earlier. The Operation Meetinghouse bombing of March 9 through 10, 1945, "is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history," according to Dr. Wikipedia. And yet people packed the theaters in Tokyo to see Godzilla (or, as he was known then, Gojira) destroy the city all over again. 

I've written before how seeing the destruction of midtown Manhattan in The Avengers in 2012 was hardly entertaining to me, having been in midtown on September 11 while my wife was downtown. I wondered about all the non-player characters in all the buildings who were getting obliterated or crippled for life. Previous superhero movies had been all about preventing horrific damage to innocents; this one felt like it was reveling in it, and less than 11 years after the terrorist attacks. 

But no one else seemed to be bothered, so I guess I'm just a little delicate little lotus flower, too good for this world. I haven't bothered with any other superhero movies since the first Guardians of the Galaxy. Don't even mention the word Transformers to me.  

For high-body-count entertainment, though, Godzilla is king of the destroyers. When the children of the original Japanese audiences got older, Toho found that they loved Godzilla, and so movies got geared to younger viewers and it showed. Sure, cities and irreplaceable landmarks and presumably thousands of people got killed, but it was fun! There was even a promotion to design a robot for 1973's Godzilla vs, Megalon. The winning entry was Jet Jaguar! And you can't blame the kid who won for the name, because Jet Jaguar was the name the studio gave the robot. 

Come on, people now, smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

I've never even seen the entire Mystery Science Theater episode that covered that picture. 

Some of my friends were big fans of the Godzilla and Godzilla-adjacent movies, which typically ran on ABC's famous 4:30 Movie, films for post-school kids cut in half and run over two days. ABC seemed to program for boys -- it would always be kaiju movies or the Planet of the Apes or low-budget horror films or the 1966 Batman movie or the like. I don't think I had the patience for movies in those days. I could sit through hours of TV, don't get me wrong, but in 30-minute segments, please. 

These days ol' Lizard Eye is back and bigger than ever. (A friend of mine in college always wanted to make a Godzilla movie where the Big G would go up against a bunch of hillbillies who called him "ol' Lizard Eye.") I'm told that in the new films from Legendary Pictures, the good humans want to find a way to coexist with all the giant monsters. Seems like a pretty tall order to me. Every time one of the damn things sneezes, a billion dollars of infrastructure goes up in flames. This is why we can't have nice things! 

I will say this for Godzilla -- he inspired a pretty great song by Blue Öyster Cult. With a riff reminiscent of Godzilla's scream, a thumping drum footstep, and verse hammered out in iambic tetrameter, it's irresistible. 

I just don't find fun in death and destruction. But there will always be those who love the Big G, and good for them. Just don't get stepped on.