In the press room following its win for Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards earlier this year, the team behind Godzilla Minus One were asked for their thoughts on their film’s timely thematic parallels with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Another of that awards season’s major contenders, Nolan’s film generated a wave of controversy upon its release for omitting the atomic bomb’s effects on its victims, instead focusing its lens on the events that took place in the Los Alamos desert in 1942 and the subsequent fallout within the scientific community of the United States. “It feels almost fated that both of these films were released in the same year,” director Takashi Yamazaki responded, clutching an Oscar statuette in one hand and a golden Godzilla figurine in the other. “As a person of Japanese ancestry and descent, I think perhaps my response to Oppenheimer… I’d like to dedicate a different film to that when the day comes.”

It’s no surprise that lingering memories of the war still make for sensitive material in populist Japanese cinema. As the 33rd Godzilla film from Toho—the studio behind the original kaiju epic—Minus One follows a similar route; its protagonist, an orphaned kamikaze pilot, is stricken with survivor’s guilt after barely making it out of a close call with Godzilla in the film’s prologue. Of course, the Godzilla encounter here represents more than just that. Ever since he first graced the big screen in Ishirō Honda’s eponymous 1954 film, the King of the Monsters has functioned as one of cinema’s premier box office attractions as well as an effective allegory for national trauma—one that’s constantly mutating amidst cultural and geopolitical shifts around the world.

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Just eight months before the premiere of Honda’s Godzilla, a Japanese fishing vessel was showered with radioactive fallout from the U.S. military’s nuclear project, Castle Bravo—a fifteen-megaton hydrogen bomb test at the nearby Bikini Atoll. The boat’s catch that day was contaminated, spurring a panic in Japan about the safety of eating fish, and the crew was sickened, with one member eventually dying from radiation illness.

No doubt a fresh memory in the minds of a still-mourning Japanese population, this event is terrifyingly reframed in the opening moments of the original film. Rather than stemming as a direct result of H-bomb testing, however, the fishing boats at the start of the movie are instead vaporised by an enraged, out-of-frame Godzilla, whose slumber has been interrupted by the environmental changes caused by atomic research projects. From his first appearance—as a blinding burst of light from the bottom of the ocean that swallows all life around it—this piece of revisionist fiction draws a direct line between the iconic monster and the dawn of nuclear weaponry, creating a cautionary tale that doubles as one of the most powerful cinematic debuts of all time.

But while Honda’s beast doesn’t show up until the film’s 30-minute mark (even then, his visage is obscured by a mountain face), recent American adaptations of the character have favoured revealing him in all his glory early on in their runtimes. It’s a window into the differing methodologies of two national industries: one that sees Godzilla as an artistic tool and a symbol of collective catharsis, and another that sees him primarily as a reliable piece of IP that can be used to pump up a studio’s quarterly earnings every few years.

There is, admittedly, some appeal in these latter films. Like many Hollywood blockbusters released in the wake of 9/11, the contemporary American iterations of Godzilla seek simple resolutions for collective trauma by way of a monstrous creation of fiction. Whether he’s trampling through downtown San Francisco or turning skyscrapers into makeshift weapons in a brawl against King Kong, Godzilla’s path of destruction in these films is both scary and sexy, presenting an alternate reality where the ‘good guys’ emerge triumphant. The version of Godzilla portrayed here is often a friend of humanity, or at the very least a sympathetic creature who takes on the role of Earth’s reluctant protector—a stark contrast to the vengeful beast of the Japanese films, who strikes terror into the hearts of civilians rather than awe.

Where the Toho films gain their edge, though, is in their ability to reflect upon the changing state of the world. Following a 30-year string of movies that saw Godzilla square up against an increasingly fantastical roster of adversaries (amongst them aliens, robots, and other gigantic creatures), 1984’s The Return of Godzilla brought the character back to his darker roots as a larger, angrier, much more antagonistic being. The franchise’s nuclear themes were updated for the times, with the shadow of the Cold War looming over the proceedings, as tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated. The Oppenheimer comparisons are apt here, too, as various scientists and government personnel grapple with the use of atomic weapons to take down Godzilla, in light of their close spatial and temporal proximity to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Despite Godzilla’s devastating rampage, the underlying menace of American and Soviet officials attempting to strongarm Japanese officials into authorising the use of their respective arsenals is an even greater sinister presence. The intricate backdoor web of politics satirised here is taken to its contemporary conclusions in Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s Shin Godzilla. Released in 2016, writer Anno took inspiration from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and the resulting Fukushima nuclear disaster, with Godzilla serving as both a natural monstrosity and a walking testament to man-made horrors. By its midpoint, the movie effectively becomes a farce on the incompetency of bureaucratic protocols and red tape, as men in suits huddle in boardrooms to discuss potential responses to Godzilla’s attack while he bulldozes his way through downtown Tokyo.

But, as is often the case with these films, the beast is eventually slayed by a collective of misfits and oddballs outside the system who are able to put their differences aside in order to prevent the apocalypse—a ragtag team of outcast civil servants and excommunicated scientists united by their primordial instinct to survive. It’s emblematic of the best that the franchise has to offer. Amidst all the chaos and destruction, our response to tragedy is what defines us as humans; whether it be conquering our mutual fears or being with the ones we love. The best Godzilla films tend to be the ones that aren’t really about him at all.

MIFF’s 70th Anniversary Godzilla Marathon commences at 8:30pm on August 17th at the Astor Theatre. Five Godzilla films will also screen in Melbourne in November, for ACMI’s GodzillaFest.

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Kevin Bui is a writer and critic from Melbourne. His work has been published in The Guardian, Little White Lies, and The Big Issue.