All week long, IGN has been celebrating Godzilla Week and exploring the history of this venerable, 70-year-old franchise. There's plenty of reason to be excited about Godzilla's future these days, with the new film Godzilla Minus One taking the franchise back to its roots.
In honor of Godzilla Day 2023, we've gathered together all of our Godzilla Week features in one handy place. Read on if you want to learn more about the visual evolution of Godzilla, see IGN's picks for the top 10 Godzilla movies, and much more.
The 10 Best Godzilla Movies
Godzilla has been wrecking cities and saving humanity (depending on how he feels) since 1954.
In the realm of movie monsters, there's no one bigger -- literally -- and with Godzilla Minus One on the march, it's the perfect time to look back at some of the biggest and best films the monster also known as Gojira has to offer. So IGN's Godzilla super-fans put our heads together and came up with our definitive ranking of the 10 best Godzilla movies, from the 1954 original to some of the most recent entries in the canon.
Whether you're a Godzilla die-hard with a ranking of your own or a newbie to the Japanese genre icon who wants to know where to start with the King of the Monsters, this list is for you.
Read more about the 10 best Godzilla movies.
Godzilla's Atomic Origins Explained
Godzilla has been King of the Monsters since he first toppled Tokyo, and the world’s most famous kaiju is showing no signs of slowing down. But it hasn’t been a straight shot for the iconic monster, so let’s go back to the beginning to look at the origins of Godzilla.
Mankind first witnessed Godzilla's rise from the ocean depths in 1954 with the release of Ishiro Honda's Gojira. The first draft of Godzilla was inspired by the American sci-fi monster flick The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which also featured a giant dinosaur rising from the ocean to wreak havoc on the local city. While both scripts look similar on paper, there was one vital element that set these two movies apart: the atom bomb.
Read about Godzilla's atomic origins.
Godzilla Movies in Order: By Release Date and Series Overview
With a career spanning over six decades and over 35 movies, Godzilla is undoubtedly one of the most in-demand action stars to date.
Since his debut in 1954, he’s been smashing, crashing, and thrashing through buildings, enemies, and the Japanese government's defense system, making him the legendary gold standard for the epic genre known as the creature feature.
Now’s the perfect time to (re)prepare yourself and get further acquainted with all the Godzilla movies this iconic pop-culture franchise has to offer.
Learn how to watch the Godzilla movies in order.
A Visual History of Godzilla Movies
Godzilla is one of the most recognizable movie monsters of all time. There's a good chance you can picture Godzilla right now, but the design has actually changed a lot over the years. In fact, it changed almost every time a new Godzilla movie was made.
The changes were sometimes practical: the suits needed to be more flexible to work with the action in the script. But in one case, the design change was necessitated by the fact someone flat-out stole the suit and it was never recovered. Some changes were relatively minor, while others, like the design for the 1998 Matthew Broderick movie, were bad and should never be revisited.
To celebrate Godzilla Minus One, let's take a look back at Godzilla's evolution over the course of 70 years.
Read more about Godzilla's visual history.
Every Godzilla Game Ever
As the king of the monsters celebrates its 69th birthday, we take a look at every time Godzilla ever made, from humble beginnings on the Commodore C64 in the early Eighties to the pinnacle of monster mayhem, Destroy All Monsters Melee on the Nintendo 64. How many do you remember?
Read more about every Godzilla game ever.
Which upcoming Godzilla project has you most excited? let us know in the comments below.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
