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Run for your life! Godzilla returns
©Associated Press YOKOHAMA, Japan -- A slope-shouldered man with a megaphone squinted into the sun and pointed at the bay beyond the amusement park square where we stood. "There," said assistant director Atsushi Kaneshige, gesturing at the peaceful blue harbor where yachts tugged at their moorings. "That's where Godzilla will rise out of the water." He didn't expect us to actually see anything. He was trying to motivate us. As extras in the latest Godzilla movie, Godzilla X Mechagodzilla, he wanted us to imagine being chased by the giant genetically altered dinosaur, stomped on, ripped apart by its talons, chomped up and swallowed. "And remember," added executive producer Shogo Tomiyama, "Run with your mouth closed. If you don't, it will look like you're smiling." Nearly five decades after Godzilla made its debut on the big screen, the monster born from a nuclear accident is returning, for the 26th time, to fight an equally menacing mechanical version of himself. Sound familiar? It should. Godzilla has beaten three generations of Mechagodzillas, twice in the mid 1970s and most recently in 1993. Tomiyama refused to reveal much about the plot. But he said the final battle scene would rehash a theme of the 1960s and 1970s Godzilla movies, when the giant reptile often saved the human race from its modernization-at-all-costs mentality. Modernization has come much slower for the filmmakers themselves, however. Except for one embarrassing departure -- the hugely unsuccessful high-budget, Hollywood-style Godzilla movie made in America in 1998 -- the mutant icon hasn't strayed far from its low-tech origins. Known in Japan as Gojira, from a combination of the words for gorilla and whale, the monster first appeared in director Ishiro Honda's 1954 classic with an actor in a zipped-up rubber suit slashing through miniature buildings and toppling telephone poles. That hasn't changed. Unable to match Hollywood's budget-intense whiz-bang special effects, Japan's Toho Studios -- limited to $8.3-million, tiny compared with the $100-million TriStar spent on its 1998 Godzilla disaster -- has stuck to old-fashioned filmmaking. Although Godzilla appears to be a towering 172 feet on film, it is still played by an actor in a 110-pound rubber outfit, who has to breathe through a small tube in the monster's neck. Once suited up, he tears apart sets that have been glued together piece by piece and are accurate right down to the building-top advertisements and traffic signs. Unusual camera angles and cinematic tricks borrowed from Alfred Hitchcock movies add suspense and give the monster its on-screen presence. For us extras, there would be no sightings of Godzilla. Or even of the little man in the rubber suit. Instead, the 300 of us -- middle-aged men, families, couples -- spent an entire Sunday repeatedly sprinting away from his imagined threat. First, we ran from a plaza up a flight of stairs. Then we ran along a wooden seaside boardwalk. Then it was off to a nearby industrial strip, where we ran and ran and ran some more. Our battle cry: Yoooi, staaaaato! (Ready. Action!) Off we bolted, past picnic tables and soldiers with prop guns, past the camera, bounding to the top of the steps that marked our finish line. At noon, we were given a free lunch. When the day was over, we got a Godzilla shirt as a souvenir. Godzilla remains one of Japan's most enduring icons of the post-World War II era, re-emerging every few years to warn about the hazards of the country's rush to modernize. In the postwar years, the nation basked in its newfound prosperity and all signs of its war-devastated cities were wiped clean by new buildings, roads and dams -- often at the expense of its forests and rivers. "Godzilla has always been the enemy of science and technology," said Dr. Toshio Takahashi, a Waseda University professor who has written several books about the monster's cultural status. "It adapts to changes in society, and it's a reminder about what could happen if we throw away the past to pursue the future." Over the years, anything with the potential to destroy civilization has roused the monster from its deep-sea lair. Scriptwriters have woven in themes of nuclear bombs, economic expansion, space travel, the Cold War, pollution, defense technology and biotechnology to keep formulaic story lines current. The movies are always set in the near future. "Godzilla offers a looking glass on society. That theme runs throughout all the movies," director Masaaki Tezuka said. "Godzilla exists because people exist."
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