TOKYO -- Fans of Japan's favorite movie monster Godzilla who mourned his demise and were put off by his slithery lizardlike U.S. reincarnation can take heart.
A resurrected version of the nuclear-spawned villain who first trampled his way through Tokyo 45 years ago will ring in the new millennium in a saga complete with a battle in Tokaimura -- the site of Japan's worst-ever nuclear accident.Sony TriStar's 1998 version of Godzilla, a taller and leaner computer-generated monster that zipped past New York City's skyscrapers at speeds the original could never match, disappointed many diehard fans.
"The U.S. version was a bit hard to digest as the real Godzilla," Toho Co's Takao Okawara, who directed the new "Godzilla 2000: Millennium" as well as the 1995 Toho film that recorded his ostensible extinction, told Reuters in an interview.
"It was too synthetic. The essence of Godzilla's real character is indestructibility," Okawara added. "So since we are starting a new series, we decided to show the proper Godzilla."
Godzilla, whose return to the screens premiers on Saturday at the Tokyo International Film Festival, is an old hand in the resurrection business.
In the original black-and-white 1954 film, "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" was awakened from his prehistoric slumber by U.S. atomic testing on Bikini atoll and went on a rampage of death and destruction that threatened to destroy Tokyo.
The movie, made only nine years after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ended with the clear message that unless nuclear weapons were abolished, Godzilla would return.
They weren't and he did, at the rate of once a year from 1962 to 1975.
That's when declining popularity put him in deep sleep until his revival in the 1984 "Godzilla," which packaged an anti-nuclear message with its monster mania.
Then in 1995, Toho made "Godzilla vs. Destroyer," in which the monster became a walking nuclear bomb who had to be killed without destroying the earth.
Even as that "final" film was being made, Toho admitted Godzilla might well return in response to popular demand.
Back for his 23rd appearance, Godzilla this time clashes with a mysterious giant spaceship that has been reactivated after crashing to earth 60 million years ago.
The movie has three major battle scenes, including one in Tokaimura, the site of a Sept. 30 accident at a uranium fuel processing plant that left two workers in critical condition and exposed at least 69 people to radiation.
But Godzilla's message -- if you're looking for one -- goes beyond the mere focus on nuclear dangers, Okawara said.
"Godzilla is a symbol of the fact that humanity is threatened by what humanity itself creates," Okawara said.
"It's not just nuclear (dangers) but other things, such as the destruction of the environment and war which are brought forth by humans and then take revenge on humans."
Why the long-lasting popularity of the cold-blooded but somehow heart-warming creature, once again played by an actor sweating inside a latex suit?
Okawara says it's because he means many things to many people.
"Some people see him as the 'heaven-sent' child of nuclear (weapons), some as a...mere monster and some as a symbol of the threat to humans from what humans create," he said.
"You can't just sum him up in one simple sentence."