As mentioned previously, in “Impossible Voyages” I’m watching and writing about a run of new (to me) science fiction films to be watched over last year, which has extended to this year (2026). You can read the rationale and ground rules here. In the meantime, we are advancing from 1955 to 1956 with this movie, #34 in this series.
We’ve had a couple of giant monsters in this series–there is the titular beast from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, for instance, and the giant squid from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But the monsters in Rodan are the first proper Japanese “kaiju” (Japanese for “strange beast”). I haven’t seen a lot of these films (and I ended up watching Leagues instead of Godzilla, for instance) so it was interesting to check this out.
Spoilers Ahead
Rodan (1956)
Directed by Ishirō Honda
The Story: A group of miners find themselves under attack by a giant bug-like creature that emerge from the tunnels they are working in. But this thing, though deadly, turns out only to be the food for an even more enormous pteranodon-like creature, dubbed a “Rodan.” Later, a second Rodan emerges, and both cause destruction wherever they go not only by direct attack, but also due to the enormous winds the flapping of their wings causes. In the end, the Rodans are defeated when the Japanese military are able to trigger a volcanic eruption that destroys them.
Starring: Kenji Sahara as Shigeru Kawamura, a mining engineer who first discovers Rodan. Yumi Shirakawa plays Kiyo, his fianceé, and the sister of a slain miner. Akihito Hirata is Professor Kashiwagi, a palaeontologist. Apparently, Haruo Nakajima–the original Godzilla actor and stuntman who portrayed the creature in its first twelve appearances–played both Rodan and the Meganulon (the bug creature at the start).
Comments: So, like I said, I haven’t seen a lot of the classic Japanese kaiju films. I remember watching Godzilla vs. Megalon back in college, and I’ve seen one or two Gamera movies as instalments of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. So my impression of the whole genre is overwhelmingly goofy. Even the modern Godzilla movies that I’ve seen are mostly inherently outrageous (the big exception of course being Godzilla Minus One, which was awesome). Thus it was interesting to me to tune into Rodan and find it a film that told its story with an absolutely straight-face.
And there is a lot to appreciate about the movie. It’s got an epic scope with impressive effects and model work, with lots of images of cars and buildings getting smashed up in spectacular fashion. It has some genuinely scary and horrific moments, particularly with the early scenes where the miners are being killed by an unknown threat. And it’s got a whole ensemble of earnest performances.
But having said all that, it’s also badly limited–both by the scope of what it’s trying to do and what it’s capable of.
By “trying to do” I just mean that even though there are ostensibly characters in this movie–most notably the engineer Kawamura and his girlfriend Kiyo–they matter less and less as the movie goes on. Kawamura has got one genuinely heroic moment: when he rides a mining car into the Meganulon (basically a giant dragonfly nymph) to destroy it. But after that he spends his time injured and traumatised, and then almost fades out of the story completely. He and Kiyo reappear briefly toward the end, when they have to evacuate, but they don’t matter–they don’t impact the plot, and the movie doesn’t take time to show us how things are effecting them.
Without people that we actually care about, all we have to watch is the monster itself, which is where the thing about what the movie capable of comes into it.
Because yeah, Rodan is impressive looking, but it’s still a product of the 1950s movie technology. As a result, you have this giant flying dinosaur-thing that rarely actually flaps its wings while flying. Rather, it looks like it is zipping around thanks to some sort of built-in jet engine or something. For me that steals away the believability of the thing more than obvious model-work or miniatures.
So all that to say that while I was impressed by Rodan, I didn’t fully enjoy it, and I did not find myself caring about anything going on in the way that I think you want to with any movie you are giving your time to.
But it’s also worth noting, like I said, that I haven’t seen a lot of these films so I don’t feel like it’s easy to respond to the movie fully for what it is. I’m judging it mostly on the basis of how it makes me feel seeing on a cold viewing from 70 years in the future without a lot of the historical context I usually try to keep in mind when I’m watching something from earlier periods. Maybe the characterization in Rodan is much deeper than in its contemporaries. Maybe the level of creature detail in Rodan is actually super-impressive for a film of its type (certainly the effects are more impressive than say, Doctor Who was able to pull off whenever it tried to show dinosaurs 15-20 years later).
So I’m reluctant to judge the movie too harshly. But I will say it promises something that it doesn’t quite deliver, and makes me appreciate all the more what Godzilla Minus One was able to pull off a few years ago, with its strong though economical production values, and its characters that it got us to care about all the way through.
Other Thoughts
• Probably everyone reading this knows that Rodan went on to appear a bunch more times at the movies and on TV, most recently (time of writing) in 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters (on the big screen) and in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (on the small screen).
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