Godzilla takes final bow

The indestructible radioactive creature has kicked and stomped his way through 28 outings over the past 50 years, and even received a coveted star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame last month.

But it was not enough to save the larger than life lizard as Toho Films announced Godzilla: Final Wars was to be its last hurrah. The final film doggedly sticks to what it calls "suitmation", or an actor in a lizard suit to bring the monster to life, special effects that captivated its audiences in the first film in 1954.

But it was the increasingly slick computer generated images of Hollywood, including the recent Godzilla remake complete with stunning CGI effects, that have sounded the death knell for the rubber-suited monster.

Producer Shogo Tomiyama said: "This movie celebrates 50 years of Godzilla, and our aim was to make the best Godzilla film, one that nobody would be able to emulate. In order to do that, we included an all-star cast of both monsters and actors and used the whole world as our stage. We filmed in Shanghai, Paris, New York and Sydney. And in Ryuhei Kitamura, we had the most talented young director around."

The statistics are indeed impressive; the 10.2m budget is double the amount Toho has spent on any other Godzilla movie and seven times the budget of most Japanese films, while filming lasted 100 days.

Final Wars also reunites the star of the show with famous old monster foes Mothra, Gigan and Kumonga, who have joined forces and, once again, threaten mankind. The leading human roles are played by pop star Masahiro Matsuoka and Akira Takarada, who appeared in the very first film in the series, while the heroine is Rei Kikukawa.

When Godzilla first lumbered on to the big screen it was intended as a one-off outing for a creature awoken at the bottom of the Pacific by a US nuclear test. And although he died at the end of the film, which contained unsubtle digs at Washington’s nuclear programme, Toho realised it had a hit on its hands when more than 9.6 million people turned out to watch it in Japan alone.

Resurrected the following year in The Return of Godzilla, the beast enjoyed his golden years with 13 films between 1962 and 1975 before falling prey to a decline in the movie-going public.

Mark Schilling, author of The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture, said: "Godzilla is still a phenomenon and it has gone way beyond the movies.

"People in the US, and around the world, recognise Godzilla as an icon even if they have not seen the movie," he said.

"It’s like a greatest hits of all the old monsters and although the director did mix it up a bit, with extra fight scenes, he really stayed pretty close to the classic formats," he said.

Perhaps Toho Films’ biggest coup was signing up as director Kitamura, who has won critical acclaim for his earlier works, including Azumi, Versus and Sky High. He said: "Godzilla was popular throughout the world even before I was born, so I was filled with great emotion when I was approached to direct the last and best Godzilla film.

"It has been a tremendous project, although it was not until I went to California, until I saw first hand the fans’ reactions, that I realised that Godzilla is a superhero. And that’s strange because he’s a creature that destroys everything in his path, yet is still greatly loved.

"Because this is the last film, we could break all the rules and I think we have done that. We have created a whole new Godzilla."