More than Barney with an Attitude...
At first the Genie served us alone, and did so well. It shortened World War II by perhaps a year or more. It saved the lives of countless American soldiers.
But there was no getting the Atomic Genie back into the bottle.
Before long the Atomic Genie served not only us, but also our Communist enemies. And it was growing... Evolving in a few short years into the Thermonuclear Monster that could attack almost without warning and wipe out civilization as we know it. It was growing still larger and more powerful, and we couldn't control it at all.
With Civil Defense drills, the Emergency Broadcast System, and our basements stocked with drinking water and dry foods, we kidded ourselves that we could not only survive, but win out over the Nuclear Monster if it turned its fury on us.
But there was one nation that knew better.
Japan. The only nation on Earth with real experience at being on the recieving end of a nuclear attack.
In 1945 the Japanese faced invasion with no rational hope for victory. But her soldiers and her people had courage, ingenuity, determination, and strength of will second to noone else on Earth. They would not quit. They would not surrender. They would fight to the last breath for country and Emperor and die gladly rather than live to know defeat...
And the Power of the Atom snapped them like a brittle twig beneath the foot of an elephant.
They knew there was no defending against this thing that had been unleashed. It could attack anywhere at anytime, and resistance was as futile as fighting the sea with a sword.
The Japanese gave form to their grim understanding of the situation in Godzilla. A primal force that had been around long before mankind, which had existed, like the Power of the Atom, quietly and harmlessly for aeons until foolish Man meddled carelessly with the forces of Nature.
Godzilla was bigger than Man. More powerful. With all our knowledge and military might, we were no more than an annoyance to him. When he decided to destroy Tokyo, all the depth charges, tanks, rocket launchers, air strikes, and electric cables humans could devise proved utterly useless. He could crush the works of man to rubble at will. He could leave legions of human beings in his wake either dead or suffering the slow, agonizing death of radiation poisoning.
For the sake of ending the story the Japanese had to contrive a way to defeat the monster. But even then, this enraged force of Nature would not be beaten by might, but instead by an act of incredible responsibility, conscience, and self-sacrifice.
The name for the giant creatures of Japanese movies is "kaiju". We usually translate that into "monster", but it really means something more supernatural. This applies especially well to Godzilla. Although released by Man, he is a force of Nature. Not just an unusually large dinosaur roaming the 20th Century.
This is why so many Godzilla fans realized so quickly that the "American Godzilla" film (oftern referred to as "G'98") is not really Godzilla. It's not the new creature design that threw them off... It's the creature's lack of meaning.
The makers of G'98 had access to big budget CGI special effects which could depict a creature of any shape or size doing almost anything at any speed. They thought it was a great chance to depict the creature as a real animal who was agile enough and clever enough to dodge most of what the humans shot at him.
What they didn't realize was that it wasn't the bulky suit and crude effects that dictated that the Toho Godzilla stomp straight into cannonfire. It was the nature of the beast. He failed to dodge rockets for the same reason that you fail to dodge gnats with your car. The impact simply isn't of enough consequence to justify evasive manuevers. Godzilla doesn't have to be clever enough to outsmart humans with their much-vaunted brains. It was our overconfidence in the power of our brains that unleased him in the first place!
G'98 was an animal. A very unique, very large animal. But a "normal", mortal creature nonetheless. All it took to kill it was a clear shot and a big enough gun.
Godzilla was kaiju. Immortal. Invulnerable. Firepower that should've cut even a 400' Tyrannosaurus to shreds did him no serious harm. Only the superhuman powers of other kaiju or aliens could really affect him. Even the Oxygen Destroyer used on him at the end of the first film didn't finish him forever. It's like Godzilla has a special, supernatural resistance to anything created by 20th Century Man. This was so well understood by the later films that Godzilla once stood casually in the energy field of a huge human weapon to hold another monster in place for destruction.
It may be that Godzilla has to be Japanese. In American hands he becomes a big, impressive animal... And we humans prove that we are worthy of being the dominant species on the planet by getting the better of it.
In the hands of the Japanese, whose history has taught them that even the best, bravest, and most cunning efforts of mankind can be smashed in an instant, Godzilla is a supernatural force from which we are only spared by some sort of miraculous intervention.
G'98 affirms that man is indominatible.
Toho Godzilla says "Don't you believe it!"