With a new Godzilla film set to hit theatres in two months’ time, I thought I’d take this opportunity to revisit Ishiro Honda’s original version that first captured my imagination as a child. The ensuing sequels and spinoffs have garnered the franchise a reputation for silliness, but the 1954 progenitor, far from being a trashy monster flick, offers a sobering meditation on what ethical considerations should guide scientific practices.

When I decided to re-watch the original Godzilla, I discovered that the film I had seen countless times previously was an American version. Perhaps this is why it somehow never occurred to me until recently that the titular monster was created as a stand-in for the atomic bombs that devastated Japan just nine years prior to the film’s release. However, as I watched the film, it struck me as inadequate to paint the story as purely allegorical. Godzilla is not merely a proxy for nuclear weapons; he is a product of their use. Furthermore, a major plot point involves a young scientist agonizing over whether or not to unveil his secret “Oxygen Destroyer” capable of defeating Godzilla. He fears that if revealed in its current weaponized form, his device will soon be used for ill, but knows that the future of his country (and perhaps the world) depends on its deployment. Forcing the audience to confront the impact of nuclear weapons, something we know to be real, and having them coexist with fictional destructive forces like Godzilla and the Oxygen Destroyer serves as a warning that nuclear weapons are not the first, nor likely the last agents of mass destruction to be visited upon humankind by its own hand. This unflinching perspective is what makes Godzilla so powerful. Rather than limiting itself to a critique of a specific historical event, it becomes a broader commentary on the military-industrial complex and how the technology we develop in the name of progress can upset the “natural order” of things and produce unintended consequences.

Honda’s Godzilla was a serious piece of cultural analysis, and judging by the harrowing trailer, the updated version aspires to do the same. I’m eager to see if it will have anything new to say, sixty years later.