Godzilla Speaks
Allow me, not so good people from this planet, to introduce myself: my name is Gojira, although most of you will probably know me by my stage name: Godzilla. You first met me in 1954. I came not from anger, not from malice, but from radiation. I was awakened because you humans pressed buttons you didn’t understand. Since then, I’ve been watching. Watching you poke, prod, and tinker with the world, convinced you could control it. Every decade, new monsters. Every decade, the same mistakes. And I grew taller. And ever more weary. Not of life… but of you.
As a creature, I am as old as the Earth itself. I’ve seen it all, from the very first amoeba frolicking around in a rockpool right up through every one of the extinction-level events: I was there. The second to last of those was, of course, the passing of the dinos some 65 million years ago. I was sad to see them go; they tasted nice… I said second to last because after I’d been fast asleep for the past eons, cozily curled up at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, along came you. The homo. Sapiens… Ha!
1950
After the war had ended, you were all so optimistic! ‘Yay! We won!’ And went on to invent rock & roll and put giant fins on your Cadillacs. Brave new world… What you did NOT take into account, however, was the effect that Hiroshima would have on this planet. And I’m not even talking about the ‘geopolitical impact’ of that event; I don’t give a crap about that. To me, you people are little more than ants. And when was the last time you wondered about the political doings in the anthill in your backyard? Exactly. No, what I mean is the effect it had on the living creatures on this pale blue dot! First, it woke me from my slumber. The very first time I got to trample Tokyo! Watching you scream, scramble, and scurry like the little vermin you are, squishing you all under my big toe… it was truly awesome.
But it didn’t end there! Oh no! Suddenly, creatures came crawling from Black Lagoons! Giant ants and spiders walked the earth! Humans turned into slithering, all-absorbing nightmares! Everything went haywire! And then came The Blob… You know the story, don’t you? Sure you do: in 1958, a meteorite crash-landed near Phoenixville, PA, delivering a small, gooey substance that started eating everything it encountered, getting ever bigger. In the end, they froze it and dumped it in the Arctic. A bunch of you died in the process, I believe. The Blob! Yeah, man! Well, I have to confess something: it wasn’t a meteorite. It was me. Yes. I got a whalebone stuck up my nose, I sneezed and… yeah. So, some of you were eaten alive by my radioactive snot. Sorry about that. Moving on…!
1960
Ah, the sixties! You gotta love ’em, don’t you? Yeah, man… I remember once, I was smoking a joint with Mothra and Ghidora, just chilling, you know, having a beer and whatnot, listening to Jimmy jamming at Woodstock on the other side of the planet… And that idiot Ghidorah, he drank too much, tripped and fell, and there goes Tokyo again! Millions dead, pointless destruction… Ha! It was hilarious…
And, again, you got attacked by lots of little beasties! It was so funny… Whether it be apes that took over the world or bees that got all African and killer, there will be no rest for the wicked! Yeah, man… But by far the funniest was when that little wretched wench got attacked by great flappin’ flocks of Hitchcockian birdies! Miss Hedren almost got her lovely eyes pecked out for being such a promiscuous whore! That is at least what some of you thought the underlying theme was in this little flick. Wrong! It’s just another in a long line of examples of how this planet reacts to you, humans. That Mr. Smith of yours had it right from the beginning: you humans are a disease. A cancer to this planet. Luckily, you’ll soon be gone.
1970
And then, everything turned orange and brown, for some reason. I just kept attacking Tokyo like there’s no tomorrow (spoiler alert: there isn’t. At least not for you…) I even got to fight a mechanized version of myself! How cool is that? And you, you little ants, you were really starting to get the hang of this whole ‘let’s destroy this world we live on‘- business: deforestation, pollution, underground nuclear testing… And, as always, the planet reacted: grisly grizzlies attacked you, entire forests rose up, and giant monkeys clambered up the World Trade Center! (And I have to say, if it wasn’t for my mate Kong, I might’ve never even considered the Big Apple as a nesting site…)
But the most entertaining (from my point of view, at least) of this decade’s outing of Man vs. Nature: Man Loses was, of course, Jaws. Oh, yeah! I had me some fun watching from behind an oil rig how Fishy McTeeth started munching on all those yummy little things like free dangling legs and small children. “You’re going to need a bigger boat…” Yeah, you do! Much bigger…
1980
Right! On to the Turbo Walkmans and Miami Vice! While chillaxing in the Humboldt Current, I noticed how little flurry traces of white started to emerge from the fast-disappearing forests in South America, finding their way north. They seemed to make you people really happy and full of a cocky energy, like you needed more of that… It drove at least one mad scientist to the point where he started gene-splicing his way into another playmate for me! Aww…
Among the critters that made your life miserable in this particular decennium were drooling dogs, gruesome Gremlins, and even the occasional fly, but the most significant thing was that by now, even the plants started revolting! It started with lovely little Audrey in New York, and then it rapidly spread through all of society! Blind people getting eaten by sentient Venus flytraps! As if you were somehow peering into your own immediate future… Very nice!
1990
The age of the internet. Like the ants you are, you turned the whole world into one big, digitized colony. My impatience with you had by now caused me to be at least the size of a skyscraper. And I made it to the USA for the first time! Yeah, man! Hello, New York! Goodbye, New York! Sorry about Times Square… And to think I wasn’t even supposed to be there! I stayed up all night partying with Destoroyah, took a wrong turn at Madagascar and ended up in Manhattan… Where I got to fight Matthew Broderick! Phew! Barely got away there, I’ll tell you that…
Anyway, as with computers, you also started to hack your own DNA: mixing genes, splicing creatures, bringing monsters to life that should never have seen the light of day. And, of course, you had to show off. Giant lizards, alien hybrids, genetically enhanced killers… all running around, making a mess, while you clapped and cheered. Like cockroaches infecting your own children with horror and nightmares… Yummy!
2000
For me, it was the mere blinking of a big, reptilian eye, but for short-lived, rapidly multiplying viruses like you, yeah, the turning of a millennium is something to get all worked up about, apparently. “Oh, no! All our computers are going to explode! All our porn will be gone!” And what happened in the end? Diddly squat. Not one zero turned evil. Bunch of little drama queens, you are…
While I was hanging with Megaguirus, we saw Cthulhu crushing Cloverfield, dragons fighting snakes, megasharks eating giant octopussies, and Dinocrocs, Supergators, and one of my aquatic nephews all eating you! What a feast! And while ever more hurricanes, earthquakes, and dot-com bubbles threatened your world, you just dug in deeper. Stuck your head in the sand ever further. But that’s alright. The day of reckoning is coming, you little ants…
2010
While I was glad to see I was suddenly all cool again, you people, as usual, got it all wrong: me and Kong, Mothra, Ghidorah, and all the others, we’ve been bestest of buddies ever since we landed on this ball of rock! We’ve been chilling and thrilling, scratching our backs on the Himalayas, and watching you scurry about for ages! But you lot, stemming from warring monkeys as you are, couldn’t help but pit us all against each other. Conflict, there must be! War! Death! Apes, you are… Ants!
As for your natural world, things start to get really weird now. That thing they found on the ISS? Well, they didn’t destroy it. It escaped, and after it wreaked colossal havoc on Seoul, it took the bus to Florida, where it started infecting everything, like a pimple, ever-growing and about to burst… The basic building blocks of nature itself start to unravel now. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold… It’s almost time now…
2020
Because, here we are. Present day. Quite a journey, wouldn’t you agree? But we made it. Well, I did. Because your little human world has gone completely off the rails by now… What happens next? Well, that’s easy: you will all go down in a blaze of nuclear fire, and then it will be like you never existed. Maybe I’ll come around again by then. Have me a spot of lunch, while watching the double feature ‘E.L.E. Part Six: This Time, It’s Personal‘… followed by what happens The Day After.
And me? I’ll probably go back to sleep, and when I wake up again in a few million years, I will tell the then ‘dominating’ critters of you: the dapper little ants that thought they ruled the world…
Bye, humans!
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