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Toho
Very few cinematic characters can boast of maintaining relevance for seven decades, and “Godzilla” is one of them. Since its inception in the 1954 kaiju classic, Godzilla, fondly referred to as the King of the Monsters, has been a colossal influence on pop culture. But does the title of ‘king’ truly fit? Is Godzilla really a king, or should it be referred to as the Queen of the Monsters?
The gender of Godzilla is a topic worthy of discussion. For most English-speaking viewers, Godzilla is often referred to as a male. However, the reality is not that simple. Godzilla, for instance, has offspring, which raises questions about its gender. In the 1967 film “Son of Godzilla,” the monster’s child, Minilla, was introduced, but the film did not clearly explain the child’s origin.
Did Godzilla lay an egg? Was there a female Godzilla involved? Similarly, Baby Godzilla from “Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II” during the Heisei period of the franchise was adopted. It was, in fact, a dinosaur that was transformed by humans and was not Godzilla’s biological child. These instances in the franchise pose more questions than answers.
With this in mind, we will delve into the history of the “Godzilla” franchise and attempt to answer this question. Spoiler alert: it’s not as straightforward as it seems. So buckle up; we’re about to dive deep into the details.
Initially, Godzilla was not assigned a specific gender
Toho
“Godzilla,” also known as “Gojira,” was a Japanese production directed by Ishiro Honda. The movie was primarily a response to the catastrophic atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. As a Japanese creation, Godzilla’s gender identity didn’t initially come into play due to the ease of avoiding gender in the Japanese language.
In the original Japanese films, Godzilla and other monsters are not labeled with gender-specific pronouns like “he” or “she.” Instead, gender-neutral pronouns equivalent to “it” are used. This introduces the first complication. So, how did the “he” pronoun, leading us to label the kaiju as the King of Monsters, come about? The answer to that lies primarily in the US.
In the English-dubbed versions of the “Godzilla” films, the character is explicitly described as a male. But why is that? Jeffrey Angles, who translated both “Godzilla” and “Godzilla Raids Again,” the first two films of the Showa era of the franchise for the University of Minnesota Press, gives us the answer. He explained the gendering that occurred in English translations in an interview with MovieWeb:
“This particular kaiju doesn’t have any gender, at least in the book, in neither ‘Godzilla’ nor ‘Godzilla Raids Again.’ It’s very, very easy in the Japanese language to avoid gender altogether. This entire book didn’t mention Godzilla’s gender. But in English, it’s hard to avoid. Sometimes I filled in the name Godzilla, sometimes I use the word ‘monster’ to avoid gender, but using those words over and over again would be strange and repetitive, so we need pronouns somewhere in there. And so I thought long and hard about it, and I eventually decided to use ‘he,’ which I think is maybe a potentially controversial decision.”
Toho’s Godzilla was assigned a gender due to English translations
Warner Bros.
Angles’ experience largely translates to the writing of an English dub script. This helps explain why Godzilla became known as a “he” in the early Showa era films. However, Angles also revealed that Toho, the Japanese company that manages the “Godzilla” franchise, doesn’t necessarily support giving the monster a gender:
“Some people feel very viscerally, like the people at Toho studios feel very strongly that Godzilla is an ‘it’ and not a ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘they.’ I kind of give my rationale for that choice in the afterward — [‘Godzilla’ and ‘Godzilla Raids Again’ novelization author Shigeru] Kayama thought about Godzilla as a stand-in for the nuclear bomb, and it was men in America who were developing the hydrogen bombs that frightened Japan so much in 1954. So maybe it’s perhaps not inappropriate to call Godzilla ‘he.'”
Warner Bros. and Legendary concurred with this logic when they created the MonsterVerse, which began in 2014 with director Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla.” The MonsterVerse Godzilla is definitively a “he” and has always been referred to as such on screen. Director Michael Dougherty, who directed “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” was asked directly about the gender question in a 2019 interview with Yahoo. His answer was rather straightforward:
“It’s a he, he’s called King of the Monsters.”
The Toho’s perspective that Godzilla is not a “he” or a “she” but more of a “they” is backed by certain films in the franchise. “Godzilla 2000” and others hint that Godzilla reproduces asexually, laying an egg at some point to continue the lineage. That’s how the franchise continued after the original 1954 “Godzilla” killed off the beast with the Oxygen Destroyer.
There’s also the concept that Godzilla kind of transcends gender by being a literal god of sorts. The 2016’s dark reinvention of the franchise “Shin Godzilla” tagline was, “A God incarnate. A city doomed.” This is also something to consider. It’s not as simple as “boy” or “girl.”
1998’s American Godzilla is a peculiar exception
Sony Pictures
The answer to the question we initially posed is that there is no definitive gender that can be assigned to Godzilla. It depends on the movie we’re discussing, the person we’re discussing it with, and the language the film is being watched in. Mostly, the male gendering has stuck due to the popularity of the English translations, but plenty has been presented over the years to complicate matters (
Credit: www.slashfilm.com
