Everyone thinks of Godzilla as a kind of antihero now, but in 1964 he was a clear-cut menace to civilization. So, when Toho Studios decided to give the atomic lizard a new adversary after his 1962 throwdown with King Kong, they settled on the only Kaiju they had in their menagerie with real heroic traits – the mighty Mothra. Director Ishirō Honda not only created some of the genre’s most memorable action sequences, but he also reinforced the series’ underlying message about the terror of nuclear destruction and humanity’s role in its own potential destruction. – Richard Whittaker
