The links here will tell you all aboot each of the 33 actual Godzilla movies in... well maybe not excruciating detail, but at least enough. Each entry will have info on the release, principal staff, a synopsis, the themes, monsters & mecha appearances, and English versions of the films.
The Showa SeriesThe Champion Festival SeriesThe VS SeriesThe Millennium SeriesThe 2010's Series???N.R.A.Q.Never Really Asked Questions
Q: Where are the Hollywood movies?
A: I don't care.
Q: No but really, where are the Hollywood movies?
A: They fall outside the scope of this site, which only cares about the real Godzilla movies, not the ones that are numbered seperately on every wiki. Just like how it's not real Champagne if it isn't made in the Champagne region of France, it's not a real Godzilla movie if it doesn't come from Toho. The later Hollywood movies can certainly be very entertaining if you're extremely high, but they're not good, in any traditional way, and they aren't real Godzilla movies, so I don't care. You have the whole rest of the internet for information on those, this is my personal webzone, and I'll include what I please.
Q: What is with these titles?
A: The series is pretty notorious for the incredible variation of titles each of the entries have. The titles I use here are chosen specifically based on the following criteria: No repeats, while keeping the core of a recognizable title, without being overly long. This rules out sticking to any "official" English titles in full because those are full of nonsense and contradictions, and I'd have to field a question asking about why I deviated from that. Using the original Japanese titles is out too, because some of those are truly obnoxious, two of them are exactly the same, and #31 in particular has an amazing Japanese title that's really hard to translate properly because of how all the kanji compounds work. One thing that's always irritated me is Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, because it's not a sequel to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, and at the time it was produced, it was a toss-up in the west whether that movie was called Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster or Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, so the existence of the "II" is ridiculous to begin with. Instead, I chose to differentiate the "tai," "vs.," and "X," series by... using the thing that actually differentiates those titles. So any film that uses "tai," I render here as spelling out "versus." This not only differentiates the 70's films fromt the 90's ones, but from the recent short Godzilla vs. Hedorah as well, plus there is a precedent, as the US TV dub of #7 was called Godzilla versus the Sea Monster. Monster Zero wasn't, that had the "vs.," not "versus," tacked onto it on video in the 80's, but these are "nice names," and when we're dealing with movies that go by a bunch of different names already, as long as you know which movie I'm talking about, then it's fine. #25 and #27, however, I dropped the top title that's just the monster's names (so no "X") because of the precedent set by Tokyo S.O.S., Final Wars, and the anime trilogy, keeping those as just "Godzilla colon subtitle." Each individual page will feature the film's original Japanese title as well as the titles for each of the English versions, so it's not like I'm trying to confuse anyone, just on this main list, I want to use names that play nice with each other. Y'know, nice names, like when you're making a mapinfo entry in a ZDoom wad.
Q: What is the "Champion Festival" series? Aren't those movies part of the Showa series?
A: Yes and no. Yes, in that they mostly (aside from All Monsters Attack) fit into the Showa timeline and were produced during the Showa era. No in that Destroy All Monsters was intended to be and was in many ways the last of the Golden Age of Godzilla. The genesis of All Monsters Attack is a whole thing and the staff of Hedorah was intentionally a fresh start intended to inaugurate a Godzilla for a new generation. These films are stylistically distinct from everything that came before and their existence as a distinct entity was confirmed by the book Godzilla Champion Festival Perfection. Also 15 movies is a little long compared to the subsequent series, so splitting it up just looks better on paper.
Q: VS series? Don't you mean the Heisei series?
A: No I don't. "Heisei" is a term used by western fans for 7 films, one of which wasn't released during the Heisei era, and doesn't include all the rest of the Heisei era Godzilla films. For the record, "series" and "era" mean different things, with "era" referring to a Japanese "nengo," or "era name," which is where Showa and Heisei come from. The 32 Godzilla films are split neatly down the middle, with 16 being produced in each of these eras. I wouldn't mind the name if that's what the series was called, but Japanese fans don't say this, they call the 1984-1995 series the "VS series" because each of the sequels has "VS" in the title (as opposed to the Japanese word "tai" which means versus). Because the western term is imprecise and incorrect, I use the Japanese term here.
Q: I know that not a single one so called Reiwa series Godzilla films actually came out during the Reiwa era, but that's what Toho officially calls the series!
A: I'm aware of this, but again, this is not what what Japanese fans call this series. They call it, understandably, the 2010's series. For the same reasons as above, it makes even less sense to me to refer to a series of films by an era not a single one of the films was produced in, so I use the Japanese terminology instead. If Toho wants to use technically incorrect naming conventions, that's up to them, but this is only a naming convention they've used at English events, and there's no evidence they internally or domestically call this series the Reiwa series. This isn't an elitism thing, it's a "not getting things backwards and wrong" thing.
