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On 27 October 1954, in the bustling Japanese city of Nagoya, cinemagoers first glimpsed a creature that would become seared in the world’s collective imagination: a gigantic radioactive lizard. Standing 50 metres tall, this ocean-dwelling monster had been awakened by an atomic test. And now it was rampaging towards Tokyo, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake! The legend of Godzilla was born.
Godzilla still holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-running cinema franchise. Since the original release in 1954, there have been 38 films – 33 made in Japan and 5 in Hollywood. The latest chapter in the franchise – Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire – came out in 2024 and marked the monster’s 70th birthday.
Throughout its long history, the franchise has spawned scores of posters. Not only do these tell us much about changing eras and aesthetics, they also show how different cultures interpret the message embodied by the atomic monster at its centre.
But what are the best Godzilla posters ever produced? Read on to find out.
The very first Godzilla poster
Sometimes, successful sci-fi characters are born in a hurry. Embodying the zeitgeist, they immediately strike a chord with the audience. That’s exactly what happened with Godzilla.
The legend of Godzilla emerged from a failed movie project: Toho Film – a giant of Japanese cinema at the time – was supposed to be making a war film, but things just weren’t working. In the meantime, in March 1954, an incident occurred that shocked the public in Japan. The radiation from an American nuclear test in the Pacific hit a Japanese fishing boat, Lucky Dragon Number 5, killing one of the crew.
This event, with its echoes of Japan’s painful recent experience with nuclear weapons, inspired the film Godzilla: their war movie foundering, Toho Film instead switched their focus to making a picture about a sea monster awakened by an atomic test – and made all the more destructive by radioactive fallout. And so at the end of October of that same year, the first Godzilla movie hit cinemas, directed by Ishirō Honda.
The poster for US version of Godzilla: a very different beast
Godzilla was a hit in Japan, becoming the eighth-biggest-grossing film of 1954. Naturally, Toho Film was keen to replicate that success around the world.
Godzilla arrived on American shores in 1956. The US version was heavily edited compared to the Japanese original, so much so that it merited a new title: Godzilla, King of the Monsters! Here’s the original American poster.
To make the film more palatable to American audiences, extra scenes – shot in a matter of days – were added, along with a new character: an American reporter, played by Raymond Burr, dispatched to Japan to cover news of the giant monster.
The resulting movie was not as dark as the Japanese original, and would be the version distributed most widely in the rest of the world.
Atomic Godzilla posters
There was one key difference between Japanese and American versions of Godzilla: the US release was shorn of the most explicit references to atomic bombs and nuclear tests.
After all, just nine years earlier, the United States had dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wreaking on those cities just the sort of devastation depicted in Godzilla.
But not all Western versions of the film avoided allusions to the atomic origins of the terrible creature and the film’s anti-nuclear message – albeit as far as posters were concerned. On the original French poster from 1956, for example, a series of subheadlines emphasise how Godzilla is the terrible consequence of an atomic test.
Likewise, a massive mushroom cloud appears in the background of the Italian poster for the 1977 re-release. This unique edition (which was impossible to get hold of until a few years ago) has a curious backstory. It was produced by Luigi Cozzi, an Italian director who was a huge admirer of Ishirō Honda. Cozzi wanted to restore some of the darkness of the Japanese original, but had to use the American version as starting point due to rights issues.
He added library footage of Hiroshima before and after the atomic bombing, as well as new music and colour. A special sound system even made the seats shake as the giant lizard stomped across the screen!
A subtler reference to nuclear weapons is seen in this rare Czech poster from 1957. Designed by artist František Kardaus, it features a strutting, snarling Godzilla overlaid with an atom diagram.
A West German poster from the same era makes no mention of the atom bomb, but paints an apocalyptic picture nonetheless. At the time, Germany was still rebuilding cities flattened by Allied bombing during the war, and that destruction is evoked in this design.
However, the nuclear theme does appear in the West German poster for the second film in the franchise, Godzilla Raids Again.
Avant-garde Polish Godzilla posters
Over the decades, most Godzilla posters have tended towards the camp and the kitsch. But the film has also inspired more abstract and elegant designs. Some of the best have come out of Poland.
Here is the Polish poster created for the first Godzilla movie, released in the country in 1957. It was created by Alicja Laurman-Waszewska.
And this is the seventies poster promoting the eighth chapter in the franchise: Son of Godzilla.
Another striking Polish poster for the 1977 release of Godzilla vs. Gigan.
And here’s a few more surprising Polish posters for the franchise. From left to right: The War of the Gargantuas, 1966; Godzilla vs. Hedorah, 1971; and Terror of Mechagodzilla, 1975.
The best Godzilla posters down the decades
In creating Godzilla, Ishirō Honda and Toho Film not only launched a spectacularly successful film franchise, but a whole new cinema subgenre too: the giant monster movie (kaiju in Japanese). Over the years, their outsized lizard smashed through cultural and political barriers around the world, leaving behind an impressive trail of poster art.
To mark Godzilla’s 50th anniversary in 2004, a professor of Japanese history at Columbia University began collecting advertisements for films in the franchise. Today he has over 5000 posters in his collection! So, in the same spirit, here’s a selection of posters for Godzilla films released around the world from the 1950s right up to 2024.
We begin with this Spanish poster for the second instalment in the franchise, Godzilla Raids Again. In the film, we see Godzilla encounter another monster for the first time: a giant radioactive quadruped!
Godzilla was reborn during the eighties, as this poster for Godzilla 1985 proclaims.
In 1992, audiences saw Godzilla take on another terrifying creature – this time with wings! The poster for Godzilla vs. Mothra features this magnificent oil painting by Noriyoshi Ohrai, a prolific poster artist in the eighties with credits including Star Wars, Mad Max and The Goonies.
The legend of Godzilla meets the new millennium: the poster for Godzilla 2000, released in 1999.
Two posters for Shin Godzilla, the 21st reincarnation of the monster, which hit cinemas worldwide in 2016.
In Godzilla Minus One, released in 2023, our favourite giant lizard returned to its original fifties setting. Produced once again by Toho Film and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, the picture won an Oscar for best special effects the following year. It was the first Academy Award for a Godzilla movie and long overdue official recognition of the franchise’s value. Here’s the accompanying poster.
We’ve finally reached the latest chapter in the saga – for now: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire was released in 2024 to celebrate the radioactive reptile’s 70 birthday. Below, left is the Chinese poster; the Western version is on the right.
We leave you with perhaps the weirdest Godzilla poster of all.
It’s this Romanian number for the first Godzilla outing, released in 1956. It’s not clear that the artist actually saw the film before designing the poster, because with its depiction of a docile-looking dinosaur, it looks more like a poster for Night at the Museum!
And what do you think? What’s your favourite Godzilla poster?