Godzilla turns 70 and his monstrous empire is thriving

The creature is a profit-generating idea with a multi-generational fan base that's stayed loyal through kitsch and thin.

- Howard Chua-Eoan

In 1954, Japanese cinema made two enormous contributions to world culture. In April of that year, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai was released by Toho Co. Embraced by the US and Europe, the 207-minute epic has become one of the most influential movies of all time, referenced for the last 70 years in movies major and minor, from the original Star Wars (aka A New Hope) to Predator to A Bug's Life to Mad Max: Fury Road, and on and on. In 1960, it was even remade as an American western, The Magnificent Seven, itself a classic of the genre.

On Nov 3, 1954 – also via Toho – Japan's second gift arrived: Gojira, who would become Godzilla to the world. Don't smirk. I'm here to take the nuclear-bomb-triggered mutant seriously.

I know it's easy to scoff. For decades, the creature was played by men in rubber suits (in the first 12 movies, by actor Haruo Nakajima who was an extra in Seven Samurai). The original was less than half the length of Kurosawa's epic, but it's a more tedious experience. Its moralizing about the consequences of atomic warfare – while praiseworthy – was a drag on the narrative.

Still, it was successful enough to spawn sequels that found an audience in Japan and abroad. The first re-edited and voiced-over English version even declared Godzilla to be "king of the monsters".

It hasn't been easy being king. In the mid-1970s, box office receipts dropped off when the monster became goofy and googly-eyed cute. (A lot of people can see Godzilla in Jim Henson's adorably single-minded muppet, Cookie Monster). Production stopped for a decade. A reset in the mid-1980s gave the destroyer of cities psychological depth – straddling good and evil – but 2.0 ran out of steam by the mid-noughties.