With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound...

One of the great staples of Saturday Mad Theater was, of course, Godzilla. With the sheer number of Godzilla films in the 60s and 70s, the odds were good that Godzilla would show up at least every month or so on the show. And they never, ever, disappointed, even the worst of them. (OK, maybe not Godzilla's Revenge, which was just a bizarre film even by childhood standards.)

Really, the general plot of the films is irrelevant, which makes it perfect for when you're a kid. You just want to see the monsters fight. You want to see Tokyo, or Osaka get stomped and burned into oblivion. You want to see the tanks get melted and the planes get swatted out of the skies. It was only on rare occassions that the humans mattered in these movies. Godzilla and his sparring partners and allies were the stars.

Later, in the 80s and 90s, we got updated, grittier Godzilla films, in the Heisei Series. These kept the faith, and *felt* like Godzilla films, and managed to create a consistent mythology and a sort of continuity between the films that the original series sometimes seemed to lack.

And then came the dire "American" Godzilla film.... which really wasn't so much Godzilla as it was The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms redone. Jean Reno aside, nothing could really save this flop. It was different enough to alienate the classic fans (with great anger), and yet stupid enough to gain no new fans. The future was dark...

Until the Millennium Series came out, and Godzilla returned to its roots and provided some of the best entries in the franchise ever... including my personal favorite: Godzilla - Final Wars. Final Wars is a discussion for another time, because it is THAT amount of awesome... After Final Wars, Toho Studios declared they would not produce any Godzilla films for at least 10 years, and 2014 marks the end of that magic time limit...

We have a new American production of Godzilla being released in about a month, and judging from the trailers, there is room for hope. These new producers GET Godzilla. The Trailer alone proves to be more true to the series than the entire other American attempt.

We see considerable devastation. We hear Godzilla's trademark roar. We see humans fleeing in fear. We see what looks suspiciously like the clawed feet of a second monster. All with an ominous voiceover of Robert Oppenheimer's first thoughts on the atomic bomb: "I am become death, destroyer of worlds."

Taking a glance through the cast, I see they have Ken Watanabe cast as Daisuke Serizawa. If this is the same Serizawa as the original, I'm very pleased. (Actually, I'm always pleased to see Ken Watanabe in anything). Watanabe has that world weary, haunted quality that would work well for Serizawa.

It opens in April, and I am quietly optimistic.