Godzilla

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Godzilla (ゴジラ, Gojira^?) is a fictional monster featured in Japanese films and has become one of the world's most recognized movie characters. He was first seen in the 1954 film Gojira, produced by Toho Film Company Ltd. To date, Toho has produced 28 Godzilla films. In 1998, TriStar Pictures produced a remake, set in New York City.

Godzilla is a gigantic mutant dinosaur or dragon, born from the heart of a nuclear blast. As the Godzilla series continued, the great beast was developed as a character, and has become something of an anti-hero.

Godzilla is one of the defining aspects of Japanese popular culture for many people worldwide. Though his popularity has waned slightly over the years, he is still one of the most renowned monsters in the world. To this day, Godzilla remains an important facet of Japanese films, embodying the kaiju subset of the tokusatsu genre.

Godzilla's appearance has changed between films over the years, but many defining details have endured. In the Japanese films, Godzilla is depicted as a gigantic dinosaur with rough, bumpy (usually) charcoal grey scales, a long powerful tail, and bone colored dorsal fins shaped like maple leaves. His origins vary somewhat from film to film, but he is almost always described as a prehistoric creature, and his first attacks on Japan are linked to the beginning of the Atomic Age. In particular, mutation due to atomic radiation—fury unleashed from man splitting the atom—is presented as an explanation for his great size and strange powers. Godzilla's iconic design is composed of a mixture of various species of dinosaurs; specifically, he has the body and overall shape of a Tyrannosaurus, the long arms of an Iguanodon, and the dorsal fins of a Stegosaurus.

Godzilla remains an enduring fictional character beloved by fans worldwide, and is among the few fictional characters granted a Lifetime Achievement Award when he was awarded one by MTV in 1996, becoming the second fictional character (and the first to be completely non-human in nature) to receive it.

Original concept

As Godzilla was developed as a character over the years, the tone in the Godzilla series has since shifted from its original concept. The first Godzilla film was meant as an allegorical criticism of the use of nuclear warfare at the end of World War II. Ishiro Honda's witnessing of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the primary inspiration for the anti-nuclear message behind the original Godzilla film.

Read more at Wikipedia.org