Directed by Koji Hashimoto • 1984 • Japan Starring Ken Tanaka, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Shin Takuma

Thirty years after the original Godzilla and nine years after the final Showa-era film, the King of the Monsters was resurrected with this impressive reboot, which successfully inaugurated a new era in the franchise’s history. Ignoring the storyline established across the Showa-era films except for the first one, THE RETURN OF GODZILLA reestablished the iconic kaiju as a force of fierce destruction, while updating the film’s sociopolitical commentary for the late Cold War era. Here, the radioactive reptile returns to wreak destruction on Japan and along the way inflames tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, threatening to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war.