Bong Joon Ho famously said, “Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” This is absolutely true. But if you’re looking to get started with the Godzilla franchise — which now runs 40+ films, ten television series, and countless short films, video games, and comics — the concept of more films becomes very intimidating indeed.
Newcomers will be best served watching Ishirō Honda‘s original 1954 film or Takashi Yamazaki‘s current Godzilla Minus series, but viewers averse to subtitles also have the option of dipping their toe into English-speaking productions or the franchise’s many alternate Americanized cuts before taking the full plunge. Here’s a ranking to help you know where to get (or not get) started.
Get BWT in your inbox!
Get BWT in your inbox!
12. Gigantis the Fire Monster (1959)
Directors: Hugo Grimaldi and Motoyoshi Oda
Writers: Hugo Grimaldi and Shigeaki Hidaka & Takeo Murata
Where To Watch: The DVD is out of print, but not hard to find.
The worst attempt to bring Godzilla to the United States was the time someone tried to pretend he wasn’t Godzilla at all. The producers of Godzilla, King of the Monsters! had also acquired the rights to the sequel, Godzilla Raids Again. But producer Paul Schreibman, who didn’t appear to particularly enjoy or understand the character, hoped to use the footage to produce an entirely unrelated dinosaur action flick called The Volcano Monsters.
Those plans fell through when the co-financier went bankrupt, and the creature suits on loan from Toho were lost. Schreibman allowed a dub to move forward but insisted director Hugo Grimaldi strip it of any reference to both Godzilla and the events of the original film.
As a result, Godzilla is now Gigantis. The creature’s legacy is gone. Its iconic roar is now more closely approximating a croaking honk. Since the original film is ignored and new footage consists entirely of stock footage from unrelated science-fiction titles, the terror surrounding Gigantis never makes any real sense. The pre-existing messiness of Godzilla Raids Again compounds, becomes utterly bewildering, and then falls apart. Today, Gigantis the Fire Monster is almost exclusively remembered as an early voice role for a young George Takei.
11. Godzilla (1978-1979)
Executive Producers: Dick Robbins and Duane Poole
Where To Watch: Toho made both seasons available on YouTube in 2021.
Plenty of Godzilla fans have complained about Minilla, Godzilla’s adopted child, who is widely considered to have Scrappy-Dooed the franchise when he debuted in 1967’s Son of Godzilla. But dedicated fans know the real menace on that front is Godzooky, Godzilla’s idiot nephew, who starred in the Godzilla animated series Hanna-Barbera produced for two seasons in the late ’70s.
The series does offer unique historical value as far as American takes on Godzilla go. It was the first attempt at creating an American Godzilla instead of just editing around a Japanese one, and it boasted vocal effects from The Addams Family’s Ted Cassidy and Scooby-Doo and Boo-Boo Bear’s voice, Don Messick.
It also offers unique scientific value in its ability to make 22 minutes feel like several hours. The show ran into constant issues with network censors who were wary of monster violence, which meant episodes became increasingly focused on the mind-numbing antics of Godzooky and his idiot human friend Pete, who is also the nephew of a more interesting character that never gets to do anything.
10. Godzilla (1998)
Director: Roland Emmerich
Writers: Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich
Where To Watch: Streaming free on Fandango at Home.
The second attempt at an American Godzilla was better than the Hanna-Barbera version, but only barely. Its most enduring legacy today is a Saturday morning cartoon, a series of Taco Bell commercials, and the film’s controversial creature design. But the real problem is the film’s script, which spends more time making fun of Greek names, The Simpsons cameos, and throwing jabs at Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert than it does on its story or the titular kaiju.
The creature design, while not resembling Godzilla in the slightest, is pretty neat when the film focuses on practical effects. And it would inspire some fun moments in the Japanese films, first in a meta moment in Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack that jabbed at America’s inability to know what a Godzilla movie looks like, and then in Godzilla: Final Wars where the character (now just named Zilla) throws down with Godzilla as Sum 41 plays. But the execution often focuses on bad CGI, which means the film rarely has a chance to shine. Bummer.
9. Godzilla (1977)
Directors: Luigi Cozzi, Terry O. Morse, and Ishirō Honda
Writers: Luigi Cozzi, Terry O. Morse, Takeo Murata, and Ishirō Honda
Where To Watch: It’s never officially been made available in North America.
A.K.A. Cozzilla, this is an anomaly on this list because it’s an Italianized version of the Americanized cut of the original film. But it’s unique enough in its own right to deserve a mention here. Trying to cash in on the success of John Guillermin’s 1976 King Kong remake at the Italian box office, Starcrash and Paganini Horror director Luigi Cozzi initially tried to license the British kaiju film Gorgo, but licensing issues turned him to Godzilla instead.
What makes this version so unique is also what makes it not work. Cozzi’s distributor was only interested in the film if it was longer and in color, so he hastily colorized the film and lengthened it via stock footage. The stock footage — much of it highlighting the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima — is actually pretty compelling if you have the stomach for it.
But the colorization process, marketed as “Spectrorama 70,” consists of sloppy gel photography that makes explosions look cool but renders the remainder of the film visually unintelligible. As a result, the character drama that sold the film’s themes is now trapped under several layers of multicolored mush.
8. King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)
Directors: Thomas Montgomery and Ishirō Honda
Writers: Paul Mason, Bruce Howard, and Shinichi Sekizawa
Where To Watch: Not currently available for streaming, though a Blu-ray is still in print.
Godzilla went into hibernation upon the release of Godzilla Raids Again in 1955, not re-emerging again until 1962 when Godzilla crossed paths with American franchise King Kong. Interestingly enough, this originally started as an American production, with producer John Beck and original King Kong visual effects artist Willis O’Brien attempting to produce a crossover film between Godzilla and Frankenstein. But American studios balked at the cost of the stop-motion effects, allowing Toho to swoop in and produce it more affordably with suitmation.
The ultra-specific nuclear anxiety of the first film is now a more general commentary on American imperialism (Godzilla is awakened when the United States crashes a nuclear submarine into an iceberg) and corporate profiteering (King Kong is discovered by a pharmaceutical company exploiting an island tribe to produce a new narcotic). But the bulk of the film is focused on the clash between the two title characters, both now seen in color for the first time.
There have long been rumors that changes between the original and Americanized cuts of the film were extensive, including different outcomes to the final battle. In reality, the most significant change is the addition of newsroom sequences featuring Michael Keith as an American reporter. But while Raymond Burr‘s American reporter in Godzilla, King of the Monsters! was shown being impacted by Godzilla’s rampage, Keith’s scenes consist entirely of him looking bored in what is clearly just an office conference room with a cheap United Nations flag on the wall. It’s still a fun watch, but an obvious step down from the original.
7. Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956)
Directors: Terry O. Morse and Ishirō Honda
Writers: Terry O. Morse and Takeo Murata & Ishirō Honda
Where To Watch: Criterion Channel, Darkroom
Godzilla, King of the Monsters! sidelines the characters at the heart of the film in favor of Steve Martin, a hotshot American reporter played by Raymond Burr in the immediate aftermath of his wildly successful role in Rear Window. The result is an obvious step down from the original film, but it’s still worth watching to see Terry O. Morse pull out all the stops to incorporate Burr into the original footage.
While other Americanizations would lean on reporters for expository newsroom sequences, King of the Monsters! makes every effort to pull Burr directly into the action. That meant replicating airports and field hospitals as well as using body doubles and editing to try and establish an existing relationship between Steve Martin and multiple characters from the original film.
The seams are still obvious and the political weight that made the original cut so remarkable is all but excised, but it’s easy to see how early American audiences came to fall in love with Godzilla. It also features the incomparable James Hong in one of his earliest performances, voicing both men in the film’s love triangle.
6. Godzilla 1985 (1985)
Directors: R. J. Kizer and Koji Hashimoto
Writers: Lisa Tomei and Shuichi Nagahara
Where To Watch: Its last release was on VHS in 1997.
Following King Kong vs. Godzilla, American distributors began limiting changes in Godzilla titles to English dubs and minor editing changes. But The Return of Godzilla — which positioned itself as a direct sequel to the original film, ignoring the previous fourteen sequels — was the perfect opportunity to change that. Following a short bidding war, Roger Corman‘s New World Pictures acquired distribution rights to the film and hired future Hell Comes to Frogtown co-director R.J. Kizer to shoot new footage.
The new scenes included Raymond Burr reprising his role as Steve Martin, shown struggling with paranoia and the sheer weight of cosmic indifference ever since surviving the original Godzilla attack. As a result, it was the first American take on Godzilla to really carry the weight the creature deserves.
But it also rather messily tones down the original cut’s more overt political tones, interjecting generic American exceptionalism into a narrative that originally critiqued both the USA and the USSR for throwing other nations in the middle of Cold War squabbles. Its box-office failure would mean the next six Godzilla sequels wouldn’t get a theatrical release in North America. Still, its sheer ambition makes it the most watchable of the Americanizations.
5. Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
Director: Adam Wingard
Writers: Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein
Where To Watch: VOD
The biggest battle in Godzilla vs. Kong is not that of the two titular kaiju but of the two seemingly separate films battling for screentime. King Kong stars in a pretty decent action fantasy that features real stakes and an outstanding debut performance by the late Kaylee Hottle. Godzilla is the supporting character in a family drama that takes everything meh about Godzilla: King of the Monsters and turns it up to eleven.
Things pick up in a big way by the time the climax arrives, and the action spectacle of that showdown is enough to make sure all is forgiven. Kong uses one of Godzilla’s scales to make an axe! How cool is that? But the fact that the road there is so uneven makes this the most forgettable entry in the MonsterVerse. Still, it manages to be better than even the strongest of the Americanized re-edits.
4. Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
Director: Michael Dougherty
Writers: Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields
Where To Watch: VOD
The first MonsterVerse sequel kept the main focus on human characters instead of monsters, only now without the strength of Gareth Edwards‘ more intimate direction. The result is a family drama that is hard to care about, even with a cast that includes Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, and Charles Dance. Ken Watanabe at least gets ample opportunity to shine, though he probably would have been even better if the supporting cast weren’t so overstuffed.
But all that is a minor quibble when you consider this is one of the best looking Godzilla films ever produced. Every frame of kaiju action is pure spectacle, and classic supporting characters like Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah are given the best CGI presentation they have ever received. Some underwhelming character moments are a small price to pay when they’re sandwiched between such exciting visuals.
3. Godzilla: The Series (1998-2000)
Executive Producers: Jeff Kline and Richard Raynis
Where To Watch: Roku Channel
Roland Emmerich’s dreadful Godzilla never got a sequel despite some box office success, but it did get an animated series because no one in the ’90s found it weird to hand a children’s cartoon to a PG-13- or R-rated movie. Showrunners Jeff Kline and Richard Raynis expected to be able to lean on the cast of monsters from the wider Godzilla franchise, only to have to start designing new monsters from scratch when Toho said they couldn’t use existing characters.
The result is… great? The animation really makes a case for the 1998 film’s Godzilla design, and the new monsters’ looks are excellent. Few members of the original cast return, but the recasting is handled well—including, in a truly bizarre upgrade, Hank Azaria’s character now being played by Joe Pantoliano—and guest stars include major talents like Ron Perlman, Linda Blair, and Roddy McDowall. The series also delivered significantly improved writing over the film it was based on, with deeper character work and action, plus, amusingly, a more nuanced portrayal of the United States military.
2. Godzilla (2014)
Director: Gareth Edwards
Writer: Max Borenstein
Where To Watch: Paramount+
The debut entry in Legendary’s MonsterVerse faced some criticism for its focus on human characters, but director Gareth Edwards has a knack for telling smaller, more intimate stories against the backdrop of giant, terrifying monsters. As a result, this remains deeply compelling even with Godzilla taking on a supporting role. Aaron Taylor-Johnson gives one of his best performances, and Ken Watanabe packs a remarkable amount of tension into expository monologues.
That actual monster action does also manage to be plenty compelling once you get past Godzilla not appearing until the sixty-minute mark. The film was the first Hollywood production to pay clear homage to the Japanese films, and it pays off both in the character design and in several references to the original film and its earliest sequels. It also delivered the MUTOs, the first new enemies Godzilla had faced since Orga in 1999.
1. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)
Director: Adam Wingard
Writers: Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett and Jeremy Slater
Where To Watch: HBO Max, Prime Video
Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard is back, freed from the shackles of continuing storylines from Godzilla: King of the Monsters. The human characters take a back seat, using a smaller cast to avoid distracting from the spectacle. And the struggle to balance both title characters is now resolved, with the film focusing primarily on Kong but smartly utilizing Godzilla as a supporting character.
It helps that Wingard is clearly having the time of his life. The film resembles a $150 million Saturday morning cartoon in the absolute best way possible, with Dan Stevens chewing scenery as an outlandish kaiju veterinarian and the visual effects never hesitating to lean into the fun of the ape motion-capture performances.
The Godzilla and Kong interactions are an absolute blast, with the fight choreography of their first showdown delivering a very fun reference to the alley fight in John Carpenter‘s They Live. It’s an impressive return to form for the MonsterVerse, which started strong with its first two films before falling into a holding pattern, and it shows the best might still be to come.
The realm of American Godzilla is a confusing one, as evidenced by the fact that nearly every entry carries a variation on one of three titles. But they have served as an entry point for many dedicated Godzilla fans, particularly with the newer MonsterVerse titles. Again, new viewers will be best served starting with some of the Japanese titles. But if you need to hear English in order to get your foot in the door, there’s still no excuse not to get started.
