A beginner’s guide to the fantastic beasts and the films that embraced them

R ecently, I broke a long-standing self-imposed rule of not watching any promotional materials or reading anything about a film until I’ve seen the completed film, when I succumbed to a late-night bout of YouTube-itis and watched the teaser for Nacho Vigalondo’s Colossal (2016). Because, Anne Hathaway. The film is about a down-and-out woman, played by Hathaway, who is stuck in a morass of bad relationships and alcoholism. She gradually realises from watching TV and YouTube that she is the controller of a Kaiju that is terrorising Seoul. And she proceeds to use this new-found power to put said Kaiju through its paces, including teaching it some nifty dance steps.

 

Purists will no doubt shudder, but what’s not to love about a dancing Kaiju. Now, for the uninitiated, what in the name of Gojira is a Kaiju? Kaiju is Japanese for strange beast, and the most famous example is Gojira or Godzilla, as the creature is known outside of Japan. The beasts are usually huge and capable of destroying cities and armies. Besides Godzilla, there are numerous examples of the Kaiju, including Mothra, Gamera and Gappa. A debate that has long inflamed cosplaying hordes at Comic-Cons the world over is whether King Kong is a Kaiju or not. My purist (that word again) friends insist not, because King Kong is an American creature created by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace that made its first appearance in the American film

King Kong (1933). Others argue that King Kong is a strange, gigantic creature, most often found on an exotic Asian island, and is therefore a Kaiju, despite moonlighting on occasion on the Empire State Building, Fay Wray or Naomi Watts in hand. There is also the small matter of the Toho-produced King Kong versus Godzilla films, where the climactic battles usually end in stalemates.

 

Let us leave the learned to debate these weighty issues and look instead at the more unusual instances of the Kaiju in cinema. For me personally, the Kaiju in Guillermo del Toro’s underrated Pacific Rim (2013) has been the most satisfying Kaiju experience, thanks to the sheer scale and sophistication of the special effects that elevates the material beyond the usual cheesiness that Kaiju aficionados crave. Thankfully, a sequel is due next year. At the other end of the cheesiness scale is Michael Deak and Aaron Osborne’s delightful Zarkorr! The Invader (1996), where a postman is chosen to save the planet from the titular Kaiju.

British Kaiju fans will be well served by looking into their own cinematic history, where they will find Eugène Lourié’s

Gorgo (1961) and in the same year Denmark produced

Reptilicus in a Danish version directed by Poul Bang and English version by Sidney Pink. And in Korea, there is

Yongary: Monster from the Deep (1967) by Kim Ki-duk (no relation to the later filmmaker with the same name), and its 1999 remake

Yonggary by Shim Hyung-rae. And it would be remiss not to mention the Thai Kaiju film

Garuda (2004) by Monthon Arayangkoon.

Here’s looking forward to Kōbun Shizuno and Hiroyuki Seshita’s Japanese Godzilla , due later this year.