Do we like them?

Do we like Godzilla?

A character from Godzilla (Gojira) (1954–present)

Our score: 4 out of 10. Not a hero or a villain. He's a force of nature that people made. We'd back him from a very safe distance, and mostly when something worse turns up.

In the 1954 film Gojira, a Japanese fishing ship is destroyed near Odo Island, and then another ship goes the same way. Islanders call the cause Gojira, a creature from their old legends. Scientists work out that it's an ancient sea creature, disturbed and made far more dangerous by H-bomb testing.

Godzilla isn't a scheming villain. He's a wounded, enraged animal, and a metaphor for nuclear destruction, made by human recklessness. His rampage is terrifying and total, yet it never feels like cruelty. That is why he's hard to hate and impossible to cheer for in the first film.

Over seven decades and dozens of films, he's gone from terror to defender. In many later stories he fights other giant monsters, and audiences have come to treat him as a hero-ish icon. The score averages those two sides: a devastating destroyer who is sometimes on humanity's side.

In the 1954 original, humanity's only answer is a secret weapon called the Oxygen Destroyer. Its inventor, Dr. Serizawa, uses it at the cost of his own life, and it kills Godzilla. The film closes on a warning that more could follow if nuclear testing continues.