Godzilla (Japanese: ゴジラ, Hepburn: Gojira is a fictional monster, or kaiju, that debuted in the eponymous 1954 film, directed and cowritten by Ishirō Honda.
Godzilla is a prehistoric reptilian monster, awakened and empowered after many years by nuclear radiation. With the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Lucky Dragon 5 incident still fresh in the Japanese consciousness, Godzilla was conceived as a metaphor for nuclear weapons.
Others have suggested that Godzilla is a metaphor for the United States, a "giant beast" woken from its "slumber" that then takes terrible vengeance on Japan.
As the film series expanded, some storylines took on less-serious undertones, portraying Godzilla as an antihero or as a lesser threat who defends humanity.
