A nuanced examination of prophetic science fiction films and series, ones whose cautionary tales about recklessly chasing scientific advances rings true in real life…
by: Nicola Brayan
If you asked me to name a classic science fiction monster horror film, praised for its practical effects and puppetry, that cautioned audiences against scientific advancement just for the sake of it, my first thought would be Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s 1993 movie heralded as one of the first mega-blockbusters. There’s another film that fits that description, though, and predates Spielberg’s film by four decades.
Ishirō Honda’s 1954 film Godzilla is remarkably different from the blockbuster action films that share its monster today. Beyond the obvious superficial differences — being shot in black and white, using an endearingly goofy puppet instead of a terrifying CGI beast — Honda’s Godzilla is starkly tonally different from its successors. It is almost propagandistic in the clarity and single-mindedness of the take-home moral of the story, and for good reason. Honda commenced production of this film less than a decade after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, leaving hundreds of thousands dead or diseased in an act that totally reshaped the twentieth century.
There is no chance that a viewing audience might miss the allegory Honda sets out to construct. Godzilla is a clear metaphor for the devastation of the A-bombs — he crashes through buildings as if they are made of paper, destroying indiscriminately, breathing fire and thunderously roaring — and his origin story is the canonical result of H-bomb testing. He is a prehistoric creature, the film’s resident paleontologist, Kyohei Yamane, explains, who resided underneath the sea bed for millennia until hydrogen bombs were dropped above him, waking him. After Godzilla’s defeat, the characters do not rejoice in their triumph, but somberly caution that “if nuclear testing continues, then someday, somewhere in the world…another Godzilla may appear.” The message could not be clearer: atomic warfare is devastating, and its advancement can only beget destruction.
Despite the clarity of this intended message, there is more nuance to Honda’s approach than my summary suggests. The problem of Godzilla is not just a military one, but is also political. While the most jarring demonstrations of his power are the buildings he crumples with a swipe of his tail, that is not the extent of the harm Godzilla causes. We see disaster relief offices overwhelmed by influxes of civilians whose livelihoods have been rendered untenable by him, generational fishermen who can no longer go out to sea per the government’s exclusion zones. Before Godzilla has emerged from the sea, politicians brawl over whether the true nature of the beast in the ocean should be revealed to the public, lest they lose control of the secrecy of the extent of their H-bomb testing. Godzilla does not cease to be a problem when he dwells beneath the surface of Tokyo Bay.
Honda also foregrounds scientists rather than military men in leading roles. While Godzilla is an incredibly clear metaphor for the unredeemable destruction of atomic warfare, Yamane is initially opposed to trying to kill him and is dismayed that destroying him seems to be the only course of action the government is considering. His interest in keeping Godzilla alive is not born of ignorance or greed, but rather of genuine scientific curiosity — this is an ancient creature, he argues, which they may never get the chance to study again. This is a sympathetic and intriguing cause. Just as Godzilla is a marvel that could hold the key to understanding Japan’s ancient wildlife, atomic fission was as remarkable a scientific advancement. Despite this, Yamane capitulates to the need to destroy Godzilla. Knowledge is important, but there are some costs which we cannot afford.
Similarly, fellow scientist Daisuke Serizawa offers a different stance of scientific concern. An intimidating veteran, he invents the device that is ultimately used to destroy Godzilla — an “oxygen destroyer’,” which, when detonated in an expanse of water, extracts oxygen from the water and any creatures that reside within it until they are just a pile of bones. He invents this device in total secrecy and refuses to share it with the world, only divulging its existence to his close friend Emiko, whose conscience compels her to reveal it in the hopes it can be used to stop Godzilla. Serizawa steadfastly refuses as once it has been deployed, there is no way to prevent the inevitable interest it would garner. Even if he were to destroy his notes to prevent the military seizing and appropriating them, the schematics of the device would still be in his mind. He ultimately chooses to die in Tokyo Bay with Godzilla, both a noble act of sacrifice and a means of preventing the device from being recreated ever again. The parable, again, seems clear: scientific advancement cannot be undone. The demons cannot be shoved back into Pandora’s box. To Honda, there is almost no pretext which justifies a generation of technology which could be an existential threat, and absolutely no world in which the continued existence and development of, or profiting from, that technology is forgivable.
As time has marched onwards, so too have the technological developments we undergo, and with them come updates to how our media caution against unbridled scientific advancement. Jurassic Park, the other film which fits my initial description of Godzilla eerily well, presents a different moral quandary. While Honda was, understandably, preoccupied with the existential threat posed by advanced technology, Spielberg (and the novel by Michael Crichton which the film is based on) turns his attention to the godlike power of creation rather than destruction. His dinosaurs are less black and white than Godzilla, and not just because they were shot in technicolor. They are, ostensibly, just animals, albeit dangerous ones in a context they were not designed for. The horror of Jurassic Park is not the inherent destruction of dinosaurs, but the fact that a park designed to entertain — one that viewers like me would plausibly attend if it existed in real life — could hide the capacity for destruction that it did. This mirrors the fright in the deployment of weapons of mass destruction during the Cold War, and technological advancements becoming more democratised and employable in contexts like that of entertainment.
This same message is echoed in Westworld, a television series also inspired by Michael Crichton’s writing. Instead of reanimating dinosaurs for the audience’s enjoyment, the park in Westworld is populated by high fidelity androids that visitors can adventure alongside with, have sex with, or violently abuse, only to be reset by the start of the following day. The take-home moral is less stark in Westworld than in Jurassic Park — there are many more complicating factors in the park’s doomed trajectory than just the inherent harm of playing god. We see characters with a range of motivations, some sympathetic and some selfish, that shape, intentionally or otherwise, the functionality of the park. We see guests make unpredictable decisions. The blame for the harm that the android “hosts” experience, and the harm they, in turn, inflict on guests, is split between parties. We sympathise far more with the humanoid robots, who have facial expressions and the capacity to articulate their feelings, than we do Godzilla or Spielberg’s T Rex. This is in part due to the depth that a television series affords where a feature length film does not, but also mirrors how technology does not develop linearly or in a vacuum.
Technology is more democratized and globalized than it has ever been. People with all manner of incentives and capacities are able to share inventions with the world, which then have a whole plethora of consequences, many of which are also irreversible. Unlike the brutality of a mushroom cloud or Godzilla’s chunky claws ripping through a building, many of the harms of modern technology are, at the very least, obscured from their most ardent consumers. The massive environmental impact of AI is localised, for now, to the locations of the water and the energy-hungry data centers they rely on. Intellectual property concerns are, to the average person, nebulous and easy to outweigh against the ease of generating AI art or text. Despite the media that all too often imagines otherwise, robots are not sentient, and until they have human faces and voices, we will continue to struggle to see the harm in letting people enact violence upon virtual women, for example, because of how detached from reality the issue seems at first glance. We are not experiencing the fallout of technological advancement like Honda was, lending clarity to his plea; we are in a small boat, in a very large ocean, no clue of the size or shape or threat — or even existence — of the beast awakening below us.
While impressive for its innovation, the puppet in Godzilla is not particularly intimidating to watch on screen. He is lumpy, his mouth has the squishy, clenched quality that suggests it is being operated by an opening and closing hand, and when his spindly arms flail it is more endearing than scary. Godzilla is still a horror movie, though, and not just in an honorary sense. There is horror in the desperation with which Honda begs the viewer to value humanity over technology. There is horror in how, despite evolving, it is a plea that resonates so clearly, seventy years on. There is horror in its futility.
