Giant monster movies have been around long enough now that, like comic books or movies in general, they can be categorized into separate eras of films. While I'm sure that there are other theories and breakdowns out there, here's my own personal interpretation:
Primordial Age of Giant Monster Movies (~1890 - 1952)
The Primordial Age represents the formative years of the giant monster movie as the genre first developed during the Silent and Golden Ages of Cinema. The earliest expressions of the genre are found in early Dinosaur films, the most notable and important being 1925's The Lost World, which introduced many of the elements that would later typify giant monster flicks, and King Kong (1933), which took The Lost World's elements, refined them, and introduced the giant monster as a central figure of the story in the form of Kong himself. The King Kong franchise has remained one of the most important in the genre from the beginning, serving (alongside Godzilla) as one of the main faces representing giant monsters as a whole. It is also the longest running (in terms of years) in the genre, with at least one appearance of Kong in each era.
Golden Age of Giant Monster Movies (1953 - 1968)
The heyday of the giant monster movie, representing the period wherein most of the genre's classics were released, many of the most popular characters introduced, and when most of the major franchises began. The Golden Age can be further broken down into two smaller eras, which together make up the whole Age: the Western Golden Age and the Eastern Golden Age.
Western Golden Age of Giant Monster Movies (1953 - 1960)
The Pure Golden Age is the period when the giant monster movie first emerged as a popular genre in Western cinema and reached the height of its popularity in the West. It begins with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), a landmark and influential film that introduced the concept of the radioactive monster and firmly established Will O'Brien's protege, Ray Harryhausen, as the premier stop motion maestro of the era. That film directly inspired the creation of two more, equally important and influential films the following year: Them! and Gojira. Them! was the first "big bug" film, a subgenre of giant monster movie wherein atomic tests cause the creation of giant mutant insect monsters which, of course, run amok. Gojira, meanwhile, introduced the world to my personal favorite monster, Godzilla, and single-handedly created the Japanese special effects genre.
The height of the Pure Golden Age was 1957 and 1958, during which no less than 16 giant monster movies were released over the course of 24 months. This included films as renowned (or infamous) as The Giant Claw, The Deadly Mantis, The Black Scorpion, 20 Million Miles to Earth, The Amazing Colossal Man, Varan the Unbelievable, Attack of the 50 ft. Woman, and The Blob. Many of Pure Golden Age films approached the genre has a fusion of Horror and Science Fiction, giving many a unique (and, at times, rather dark) flavor compared to some of the more light-hearted films that followed.
Unfortunately, many of the films released in the late 1950s were lower budget and lower quality, resulting in a crash and burn of the genre in the West. The transition from the 1950s to the 1960s saw a shift in tone and a shift in filmmakers' approaches toward the genre. It also saw the center of gravity shift away from Hollywood and across the Pacific to Tokyo.
Eastern Golden Age of Giant Monster Movies (1961 - 1968)
While the output of Western giant monster movies dropped going into the 1960s, it simultaneously exploded in the East following the release of the highly popular film Mothra in 1961. Unlike the American films of the 1950s (and the Japanese films that followed in their footsteps), Mothra approached the genre as a fusion of Science Fiction and Fantasy/Adventure - a dramatically different tone than '50s films, and as it turned out clicked immediately with Japanese audiences of the 1960s. Toho Studios, the creators of both Mothra and Godzilla, quickly retooled the Godzilla franchise to match this lighter and more whimsical tone beginning with 1962's King Kong vs. Godzilla, which immediately became the most successful Godzilla film of all time. The success of the Godzilla films and Toho's take on Science Fiction led to imitators, the first and most important being Daiei Studio's Giant Monster Gamera in 1965. Gamera's success, on the coattails of Godzilla, caused what contemporary critics called the "Monster Boom" of mid-1960s Japan, spawning 10 films and at least three TV series between 1967 and 1968, introducing the world to Japan's most popular super hero: Ultraman.
History, however, managed to repeat itself in the East and the flood of giant monster films caused the genre to start burning out in Japan. The popularity of the Gamera and Ultraman franchises, which were aimed more toward a much younger audience than earlier films, by the late 1960s had begun to cause the already light-hearted Japanese films to become even more lighter and more geared toward children. The expense of these films had also taken their toll: Toho Studios decided to end the expensive Godzilla franchise with a finale film, 1968's Destroy All Monsters. The surprise success of the film, however, convinced the studio to continue the series, but with the conscious decision to lower the budget and aim more directly for children.
This shift would completely alter the landscape of the genre, and thus with the end of Japan's "Monster Boom" came the end of the Golden Age.
Dark Age of Giant Monster Movies (1969 - 1983)
The Dark Age was the period during which the genre declined to its lowest point, and for a time seemed to nearly shrivel to nothing.
The early 1970s saw a continuation of trends that had emerged toward the end of the Asian Golden Age: Japanese giant monster films, at this point almost exclusively represented by the Godzilla films, were reinvented as children's films and saw production values, writing, and budgets decline. Stock footage became commonplace (in All Monster's Attack [1969] and Supermonster Gamera [1980]), it represented most of the film) and stories generally became formulaic, generally mimicking Ultraman plots (i.e. Alien Invaders attack Earth with giant monsters, our hero must fight and defeat them). This continued until the general collapse of the Japanese film industry in the mid-1970s, which ended the Showa Godzilla series and temporarily halted the Showa Ultraman franchise in 1975 (with Ultraman only briefly resurrecting with 1980's Ultraman 80). To the detriment of the Eastern form, these films are the most widely known and remembered in the West.
While the Eastern giant monster genre came crashing down, in the West the genre saw a small revival following the successes of 1975's Academy Award-winning Jaws and 1976's Academy Award-winning remake of King Kong. While Jaws was not actually a giant monster movie, it spawned a series of "large Killer Animal" imitators that were popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s, such as The Food of the Gods (1976), The Crater Lake Monster (1977), and Alligator (1980). Kong also spawned several imitators during the same period: A*P*E and Queen Kong in 1976, The Might Peking Man in 1977. Unlike the few American films of the Asian Golden Age or the preceding Japanese films of the early '70s, these films rejected the Fantasy and light-hearted elements, instead opting for darker Horror films.
By the mid-1980s the Japanese film industry had recovered while American interest in Killer Animal films had waned, with the last major American film of the period being 1982's Q - The Winged Serpent.
Silver Age of Giant Monster Movies (1984 - 2004)
The Silver Age began with the reboot of the Godzilla franchise in 1984's The Return of Godzilla, a film that followed the trends of the late Dark Age by returning to the franchise's more Sci-Fi/Horror roots while also upping the production quality to the highest the franchise had ever enjoyed. The international success of the film reestablished Godzilla as the preeminent giant monster franchise, but also became the final Japanese giant monster film to see an American release for 15 years. This split between the East and West caused the giant monster genre to weaken and, for at time, nearly disappear in the West despite a Renaissance occurring in the East.
In the West, the genre saw few entries past 1986's widely panned King Kong Lives, and by the 1980s had largely be relegated to the occasional low budget (often direct-to-video) creature feature: 1988's The Blob, 1990's Tremors (and its sequels), 1995's Mosquito, 1997's Anaconda, 1999's Lake Placid, and 2002's Eight Legged Freaks represent high points in the West during the Silver Age. Jurassic Park (1993) and Anaconda would prove particularly influential, one representing a major shift in special effects techniques (replacing stop motion and puppet effects with much easier and cheaper Computer Generated Images) and the other spurring a revival of the Giant Killer Animal genre, which following 1997 rapidly produced dozens of poorly made low-budget direct-to-video giant monster movies.
In the East, the Godzilla series dominated the genre and represented the majority of films produced. Following the massive success of 1992's Godzilla vs. Mothra, the series was retooled to be more Fantasy-oriented liked the 1960s films. This proved incredibly popular and profitable, despite a drop in production value and quality. In 1995, Toho Studios killed off Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Destroyah and handed the rights to the character to Tristar Pictures, which set to work producing an American remake of Gojira helmed by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. That film, 1998's Godzilla, proved to be a critical bomb and a disaster, hated by fans and audiences, forcing Tristar to cancel a planned sequel and Toho to prematurely revive the franchise in Japan with 1999's Godzilla 2000.
In the meantime, Daiei revived the Gamera franchise with 1995's Gamera: Guardian of the Universe to critical acclaim and popular success. The Heisei Gamera trilogy went on to set the benchmark for Japanese special effects, and quickly became beloved as some of the best films in the genre. Simultaneously, Toho released a trilogy of Mothra solo ventures which harkened back to the child-oriented and low-quality films of the early Dark Age. On TV, Ultraman was revived with 1996's Ultraman Tiga and remains popular through to the present day.
With the exception of 2001's Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, directed by the Heisei Gamera trilogy's director, Shusuke Kaneko, the Godzilla films of the early 2000s were nowhere near as popular nor successful as the 1990s films. The absolute bomb of Godzilla's 50th Anniversary film, Godzilla: Final Wars (2004), ended the revival of Japanese giant monster films and the end of the Silver Age.
Contemporary Age of Giant Monster Movies (2005 - Present)
The post-Godzilla: Final Wars period has seen a relative resurrection of giant monster movies in the West compared to the East. Japan has produced few feature-length giant monster films since 2005, the big exceptions being 2006's Gamera the Brave, a failed reboot of the Gamera franchise that tried to harken back to the franchise's more child-friendly roots, and 2008's Monster X Strikes Back, an unsuccessful comedic sequel to 1967's The X from Outer Space. Instead, the most prominent Eastern entries to the genre during this period have hailed from South Korea: The Host (2006), Dragon Wars (2007) and Chaw (2009). In the West, there have been several successful big budget giant monster movies: 2005's remake of King Kong by Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson, 2008's 9/11 inspired Cloverfield, and 2011's Super 8. Despite the success and positive reactions to these films, however, the balance of American films still remains firmly in the realm of cheap direct-to-video shlock. The most prominent studio of such films is The Asylum, with films such as King of the Lost World (2005), Monster (2008), Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009), Mega Piranha and Megashark vs. Crocosaurus in 2010, and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (2011). Also worth noting during this period are the works produced by shlock master Roger Corman: Dinocroc (2004), Sharktopus (2010), and Dinocroc vs. Supergator (2010).
The most notable trend of the contemporary period has been near total rejection of practical effects, either animatronic or suitmation, in favor of all CGI effects work. This trend has been universal from the genre's best entries to its worst, with the only exceptions being the few Japanese films and the Ultraman franchise, which continue to stubbornly press onward with traditional techniques. The genre has, again, shifted back toward a more Horror-inspired tone, although a few few films have emphasized Science Fiction or Fantasy/Adventure instead. Several of the genre's contemporary entries have received critical acclaim, at least in part rehabilitating the genre in the eyes of critics and move perceptions away from associations with shlock American films and early '70s Japanese films.
Looking into the future, the genre has two major shining stars upcoming over the next year: 2013's Pacific Rim, a giant monsters v. giant robots movie helmed by popular director Guillermo del Toro, and 2014's big budget Godzilla from Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros., a second attempt at an American Godzilla film (unrelated to the 1998 film) helmed by indie director Gareth Edwards and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass), Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene), Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Academy Award-winner Juliette Binoche (The English Patient), and Academy Award-nominee Ken Watanabe (Inception). The success or failure of these two films will very much shape the future of Giant Monster genre, leaving the future beyond it very much in flux.
Conclusion
So, this is the way I view the history of the genre. Thoughts? Do you think there's a better or more accurate way to describe the genre's history? If so, please share in the comments!
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