There are two things I’ve loved for as long as I can remember: dinosaurs and Godzilla. Maybe the second thing owes a bit to the first, but it’s hard to tell from my memories at age 3. As you might expect, this summer’s release of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim was, in my mind, a major cultural event. Tumblr seems to back me up on this. All of pop culturedom has kaiju on the brain thanks to Del Toro’s love letter to rocket punches and rubber suits, and I find it not just entertaining but inspiring. Therefore, I have decided to undertake a task that’s been on my “Meaning To Do” list for quite some time.

I’m going to watch every Godzilla movie ever made.

Well, the Toho ones, anyway. I don’t know if I can bring myself to sit through the 1998 trainwreck again, but since I’m going in order I have a while before I have to make that call. I expect this is going to be an interesting trip, because some of these movies were childhood favorites that I watched over and over until the Betamax tape unraveled from sheer fatigue. Others were long, dull slogs that my 6-year-old brain just was not prepared to sit through in its impatient craving for giant fire-breathing lizard action. Many of the later films I have never seen at all, such as Godzilla vs. Biollante, which only recently received a long overdue Region 1 DVD release.

This is going to take some time, obviously, but I’m hoping it’ll be a fun little overview of the series once it’s done. For convenience, this will serve as the landing page for the whole project, and the list of films below will be updated as each one is completed.

Let’s kick it off with the film that started it all: Gojira (1954)

The Godzilla Filmography

Shōwa Series 1954 – 1975

Gojira (1954)
Godzilla Raids Again (1955)
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)
Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)
Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965)
Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (1966)
Son of Godzilla (1967)
Destroy All Monsters (1968)
All Monsters Attack (1969)
Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)
Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972)
Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973)
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)
Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)

Heisei Series 1984 -1995

Return of Godzilla (1984)
Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)
Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991)
Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992)
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993)
Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla (1994)
Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995)

Millennium Series 1999 – 2004

Godzilla 2000 (1999)
Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000)
Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)
Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002)
Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003)
Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)