Few characters in the history of cinema can claim to be relevant for 70 years, but starting from The 1954 kaiju classic that started it all, Godzilla gave birth to such a character. Affectionately known as the King of the Monsters, no giant beast to ever grace the silver screen has had a greater, more lasting impact on the pop culture landscape. But does that title of the king appropriate? This is to say, is Godzilla actually a king? Or would Queen of the Monsters be a more appropriate nickname?

The question of whether Godzilla is male or female is actually worth pondering. For English-speaking audiences, we've largely come to know the monster as him. But it's not as simple as all that. For example, Godzilla has children, which raises gender issues. Minilla, for example, was represented as the son of the monster in the not-so-great 1967 film Son of Godzilla, but it was not explicitly explained how the child came to be.

Does Godzilla lay an egg? Did he have a mother? The same theme was adopted by Baby Godzilla from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II” in the Heisei era of the franchise. It was technically a dinosaur that the beast, transformed by humans, adopted as its own and was not the actual child of Godzilla. These moments in the franchise raise questions rather than provide answers.

As such, we're going to dive deep into the history of the Godzilla property and try our best to truly answer this question. Spoiler alert: it's not simple at all. So buckle up, because we're about to get into the weeds.

Godzilla, aka Gojira, directed by Ishiro Honda, was a Japanese production. It was largely done in response to the devastating use of the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. It is also a Japanese film that spawned many sequels, and the rest of the world, especially North America, later embraced those films. But Godzilla being a Japanese creation is important because it's easier to avoid using gender in the country's language.

This is the case, in the original Japanese films, Godzilla and all other monsters, enemies and allies alikeare referred to without gender markers such as "he" or "she". However, Japan used gender-neutral pronouns, basically the equivalent of "it". That's the first wrinkle. So where did the "he" come from that led us to label the kaiju as the King of the Monsters? You can largely thank the US for that.

In the English dubbed versions of the Godzilla films, the character is explicitly described as male. Why exactly? Geoffrey Engles, who translated both Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again, the first two Showa era franchisesfor the University of Minnesota Press, has the answer. Angles translated both novels into films in English for the first time in 2023. In an interview for MovieWebhe explained why gender occurs in English translations:

"This particular kaiju has no gender, at least in the book, neither in Godzilla nor in Godzilla Strikes Again." In Japanese it's very easy to avoid gender entirely avoid gender but using those words over and over again would be weird and repetitive so we need pronouns in there somewhere and so I thought long and hard about it and finally decided use 'he', which I think is a potentially controversial decision."

Angles mostly talks about his own experience, but that certainly translates to writing an English dubbing script. At the very least, it helps explain why in the early movies of the Showa era, Godzilla became known as he was. However, Angles also revealed that Toho, the Japanese company that controls the Godzilla franchise, doesn't necessarily have to give the monster a gender:

"Some people feel very viscerally, like the people at Toho feel very strongly that Godzilla is 'it' and not 'he' or 'she' or 'they.' I sort of give my reasoning for that choice later - (Godzilla and Godzilla Strikes Again author Shigeru) Kayama thought of Godzilla as the protector of the nuclear bomb, and it was the men in America who were developing the hydrogen bombs that so much scared Japan in 1954. So maybe it's not inappropriate to call Godzilla "he".

Warner Bros. and Legendary agreed with that logic when they created it MonsterVerse, which launched in 2014 with director Gareth Edwards' Godzilla. That franchise now includes a total of five films, with the latest entry being Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. The MonsterVerse Godzilla is definitely him and has always been referred to as such on screen. Director Michael Doherty, who helmed Godzilla: King of the Monsters, was asked directly about the gender issue in a 2019 interview. Yahoo!. His answer was rather blunt:

"That's him, his name is King of Monsters."

Toho's line of thinking that Godzilla is neither he nor she and more is supported by certain films in the property. Godzilla 2000 and others imply that Godzilla reproduces a-sexually, laying an egg at some point to continue on. That's actually how the franchise continued (without getting into the messy continuity of it all) after the original 1954 Godzilla killed the beast with the oxygen destroyer.

There's also the idea that Godzilla somehow transcends gender by being a literal god. The mark for 2016's dark reinvention of the Shin Godzilla franchise was literally, “God incarnate. A city doomed to ruin." That is also something to consider. It's not as simple as 'boy' or 'girl'.

The frustrating answer to the question we started with is that there is no definitive gender that can be attached to Godzilla. It depends on the movie we're talking about, the person we're talking to about it, and the language in which a given movie is being watched. much has been introduced over the years to complicate matters (the "god" of it all being perhaps the most complicating factor).

The most interesting exception to all the rules that exist happened in 1998 when the first American version of the franchise appeared. Director Roland Emmerich's Godzilla may have been a major disappointment at the timebut it also brought something interesting to the myths. In the film, it is revealed that this new version of Godzilla actually produces asexually. Or, to put it another way, it only takes one parent to produce an offspring. The climax of the film sees a huge nest of baby Godzillas preparing to attack New York, before being blown to pieces.

This version of the creature, later renamed Zilla, was not very popular and was eventually killed off in Godzilla: The Last Wars. However, this idea of ​​the beast being able to reproduce asexually has once again clouded the question of "Is Godzilla male or female". Maybe Godzilla is a hermaphrodite, which is a creature with both male and female reproductive organs. While this movie can't really be used to represent the wider Godzilla canon, it did help raise an interesting question. It also further proved that this question has no black or white answer.

You can pick up the original "Godzilla" on 4K or Blu-ray via Amazon.