The Return Of Godzilla

SOS Barbican 
Kaiju Attack

The Return Of Godzilla
aka Gojira
aka Godzilla 85 (US recut)
Directed by Kôji Hashimoto 
Japan 2024
Toho
Screened at Barbican Outdoor Cinema 
Saturday 23rd August 2025

Last year, during the middle of the August Bank Holiday FrightFest, I left them all to it one night and slipped out to see Godzilla VS Hedora (aka Godzilla VS The Smog Monster) as part of Barbican’s outdoor cinema event. I loved it (of course, it’s probably my favourite Godzilla movie) but I didn’t review the evening because I’d already reviewed the Criterion edition of the film here.

And I had such a good time with it that, this year, I did exactly the same thing. Slipping away from FrightFest after a screening of Self Help (reviewed here) I made my way to the Barbican for a screening of the 1984 movie, billed as The Return Of Godzilla (among many titles) and sat sipping my cider, waiting for the film to start on the big, inflatable screen as the stars came out... and just soaked up the atmosphere. 

Now there were two interesting things I noticed as things started up properly. First, there was a recorded introduction by a man currently writing another new tome about The Big G and he made the point... and I didn’t realise this myself... that this was the actual UK premiere of the original Japanese version of the film. Now, I’m sure I saw an uncut Japanese version televised over here but, I may be wrong. Apparently all the home release versions are the butchered US cuts (with the return of Raymond Burr, reprising his role from the butchered US recut of the original 1954 movie) so, yeah. That makes more sense in hindsight because, although it can only be thirty years since I last watched this... I honestly didn’t remember any of it, apart from some of the music (I’ll get to that soon). 

The other thing I discovered, when the film began to roll, was that the western distributors of this print were Janus Films... which is actually Criterion, for all intents and purposes. So I’m really hoping this is a test screening for a full on Blu Ray box set from that company giving us a complete second wave at some point soon (especially since I have some gaps in that second wave... I haven’t seen them all like I have the first and third waves). So, yeah, fingers crossed. It was a packed screening, so that’s promising.

The film is a fairly standard, for all intents and purposes, retelling of the 1954 original but by way of a direct sequel to that film. And this is where it loses me a little because the producers decided to ignore all of the original sequels and make this one a direct follow up with the same Godzilla (Gojira). Except... wait a minute... in the original film the first Godzilla is definitely wiped out by the Oxygen Destroyer and turned into a skeleton, if memory serves. The following movies, starting with Godzilla Raids Again (aka Gigantis The Fire Monster, which is reviewed here) started with a second creature christened Godzilla... and it was that version of the creature which carried on into all the other sequels up to that point. But if that’s the case, with the creature being ‘reawoken’ here... how, if its a direct sequel to the first movie, could that possibly be? It’s just a broken down old skeleton or, I think probably less than that even (it might have dissolved completely, again, if memory serves?). So, yeah, the premise of this movie makes absolutely no sense, I’m afraid to say. 

The film was offered to original Godzilla veteran Ishirô Honda but he declined after remembering how the character had been lionised and dumbed down in the decades following the first film. Instead of helming this, he elected to help his friend Akira Kurosawa film Ran instead, although he did suggest the director for this project, who was one of his assistant directors working on the original series of Godzilla films. 

 Similarly, composer Akira Ifukube also turned the project down and so this is the only film in this second Hesiei Era (even though it was still technically made in the Showa Era, go figure) in which versions of Ifukube’s scores are not heard. Instead, composer Reijirô Koroku provides a score which, I’ll be honest, is a bit hit and miss for me. I could do without the occasional decline into cheesy pop synths but, again, some of the score is very good. Although the music, when scenes of the Super X weapon coming out to the rescue like something out of Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds, seems very English. In fact, it sounds pretty much like one of the famous marches Ron Goodwin would write for a World War II movie in the UK so, yeah, it feels like a throwback in those scenes too, even for a movie released in 1984. 

Another interesting point though... in Tokyo in 1954, skyscrapers were a lot shorter than they are nowadays and so the original 50ft sized Godzilla would certainly be dwarfed by his surroundings now. So this time they made the creature 80ft tall, in order that he could once again tower above the urban environment. This was probably a smart movie on the part of the movie’s producers, I would say.

And that’s me done with The Return Of Godzilla, I think. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I remembered liking it 30 years ago but the atmosphere and the audience response to it at the Barbican more than made up for any problems with the movie... those being a lot of dull, board meeting scenes which go on for way too long (much like the ones in the very boring Shin Godzilla, reviewed here) and not nearly enough of the Godzilla action you want to see. So, not my favourite of the Hesei era by a long shot but, still, an interesting watch to say the least. I hope Barbican do another outdoor Godzilla movie next year too.