Top 10 Times Godzilla Was Defeated: C.C.C Issue #80

Top Ten Times Godzilla Was Defeated 

Godzilla is known as the king of the monsters for a reason. Rarely is he ever bested, and in the upcoming Godzilla: King of the Monsters, we’re going to see him earn that title. How do I know he won’t be killed? Well, next year we’re getting Godzilla vs. Kong, so it’s almost a guarantee. Does that take away some of the suspense of King of the Monsters?

Not really.

On a few occasions, though, Godzilla has been defeated. He may be the king, but he isn’t invincible. 

10. King Kong vs. Godzilla: Kong K-O

This wasn’t a clear defeat, but it certainly wasn’t a victory for Godzilla, either. At the end of their epic battle, Godzilla and Kong tumble off a cliff while locked in combat and plunge into the ocean. After the dust settles and the waves cease, only Kong emerges, wading out to sea, back to his island home. Godzilla doesn’t surface, and there’s no sign of him (though he would eventually return, of course). For a long time it was rumored that in the American version, Kong wins, and in the Japanese version, Godzilla wins, but this has since been debunked. Even though it didn’t offer a clear winner, the battles leading up to the end were enough to excuse this ambiguous conclusion.

9. Mothra vs. Godzilla: Cocooned

This one was never one of my favourites, but it is a more clearly defined defeat than in King Kong vs. Godzilla. After defeating Mothra, Godzilla is attacked by her two larva, which shoot their cocooning silk at him, covering him so completely, he becomes incapacitated and falls into the sea. Mothra vs. Godzilla may be one of the best Godzilla movies, but I always found this defeat a bit underwhelming. Yes, it’s bittersweet that Mothra’s offspring avenge their dead mother, and it’s less ambiguous as to who won compared to the fight with Kong, but…cocooned with silk? It just seems too weak of a method, especially after the likes of the oxygen destroyer, an avalanche, and the eighth wonder of the world taking out Big G in previous films.

8. Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-out Attack: Disintegrated

This one’s a little hard to explain, but then again, with a title like that, is it any surprise? One of the human protagonists flies a ship inside Godzilla, which drills out through his neck, making his atomic breath shoot out the hole instead of his mouth, which is pretty cool. Godzilla sinks to the bottom of the ocean, still alive, but bleeding out, and then he kind of just self destructs when he tries to use his atomic breath again. It’s hard to do it justice, but it’s a pretty enthralling sequence, and certainly different from anything that had been done before. All that’s left is his massive heart resting on the ocean floor, and it's still beating. You just can’t keep a good monster down.

7. The Return of Godzilla: Volcano

The Return of Godzilla is very faithful to the original 1954 film in several ways, not the least of which is how it ends with him dying. Godzilla is lured away from Tokyo, into the mouth of Mount Mihara, where a bunch of explosives are detonated. It isn’t enough to prompt a full-on eruption, but enough to make Godzilla fall into the volcano, and trap him there. His roars are more like screams, as he slowly descends into the mountain, the music growing somber, then he completely plunges in, disappearing from sight. While not as inventive as his first-ever death (and as we’d find out in the next film, not an actual death at all), it was still a pretty satisfactory conclusion to an otherwise inconsistent reboot. 

6. Godzilla vs. Mothra: Battra and Mothra

Even though it’s basically the exact same defeat as the movie preceding, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, I just like this version better. Battra and Mothra fly a beat-up Godzilla out over the ocean. Mothra lets go, but Battra, too injured to flap anymore, plummets down with Big G, landing in the water with a spectacular splash. Battra’s death creates a strange, giant glowing symbol on the ocean surface. In Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Godzilla’s defeat is so brief, it feels a little less significant, because the movie still ends with him alive and raring for the next battle before the credits, but this was a little less certain (though we knew he’d be back sooner than later, anyway).

5. Shin Godzilla: Frozen

After 29 movies, Toho had to come up with something new if they were going to stop Godzilla in the same movie that just had him resurrected. At a certain point, it gets difficult to imagine new ways in which to stop Godzilla, but this version of him in particular made it even harder, because this is perhaps the most powerful Godzilla has ever been, able to fire lasers out of his back and evolve instantaneously to survive Japan’s attacks. A gleefully ridiculous plan is implemented: drive explosive trains into his feet to knock him down, then put tanker trucks with long hoses spewing a freezing agent into his mouth. Amazing. In an otherwise pretty serious monster movie, this successful attempt to stop him sort of doesn’t fit, but it’s just so original (and comical that it actually works), I have to respect it.

4. Godzilla Raids Again: Avalanche

Even though Godzilla Raids Again isn’t one of my favourite Godzilla movies, the ending is very entertaining, and the way they defeat him is great. Instead of outright killing him this time, fighter planes fire missiles at surrounding mountains, causing an avalanche of snow and ice, which buries Godzilla completely. In the next movie, King Kong vs. Godzilla, he emerged from an iceberg, picking up right where he left off. It would become a common pop culture notion that Godzilla was known to emerge from a giant block of ice, even though this only happened twice in the entire series, and the first time was pretty early on, too.

3. Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S: Mechagodzilla

After a two-part battle, with the first part, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, ending with Mech-G losing, the giant robot got the upper hand in the second round thanks to the Mothra larva using their silk again, but what Mecha-G did with Godzilla was quite an unexpected surprise. It’s explained in the previous movie that Mecha-G was built over the original Godzilla’s bones, so in this conclusion, the A.I. goes on the fritz again, but now that it’s out of human control, it can take the bones back to their resting place at the bottom of the ocean, along with the living Godzilla in its mechanical claws. If the millennium era had ended on this unusually poignant note, I would have been content…but the all-out brawl that is Godzilla: Final Wars was a far more awesome way to close the third series. In a way, though, I think Final Wars takes away some of the memory of how great the ending of Tokyo S.O.S was, and how satisfying it was to see Godzilla defeated by the mechanical titan of terror.

2. Godzilla (1954): Oxygen Destroyer

The original Godzilla couldn’t be stopped by conventional weapons, so Dr. Serizawa used his oxygen destroyer, but sacrificed his own life in order to take the secret of how to make another to the grave. I always thought the whole oxygen destroyer concept was so interesting, and it's such a classic sci-fi device. Godzilla bobs in the frothing water like a bath toy before sinking to the bottom of the ocean and disintegrating, bones and all (though, as described previously in regards to Tokyo S.O.S, that was retconned in the millennium era). It was a haunting and tragic end for Godzilla, and the only time he definitively died in a span of over forty years. Having his death cost one last life, though, makes it a very bittersweet ending.

1. Godzilla vs. Destoroyah: Meltdown

The reason this is number one comes down to a couple main factors. One, Godzilla had more than earned his status as king of the monsters by this point, and had been both a bad guy and a good guy and an anti-hero. When the original Godzilla was killed in 1954, it was sad because of Serizawa dying, too, but wasn’t as sad when it came to the monster itself. In Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, there was undeniable sadness felt when Big G decayed like a giant radioactive isotope. As in the original, it ends with a hint that he’s not really gone, but the entire movie had been building up to his inevitable demise, and it’s an unexpectedly emotional conclusion that, even though it didn’t remain permanent, still feels like an earned ending all these years and additional movies later.