Godzilla vs. Biollante and the Moment Genetic Power Overtook Nuclear Power as the Scariest Thing On Earth
Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)
This evening we watched Godzilla vs. Biollante, the second Godzilla film of the Heisei Era. It has been many, many years since I last saw this film, probably back in the late 1990s. Since that time, I have gone on to earn a PhD in genetics and work in the field of genome sequencing and research. Why watch it now? I’d love to say it’s because of some momentous occasion… well, perhaps it is? I’ll be joining Derek and Charlotte on the Castle Bravo podcast to discuss the film tomorrow!
Something I’d love to discuss on the podcast is the way this specific film taps into a very specific cultural moment both in Japan and globally with regards to the science of genetic engineering.
The first thing that struck me was that Godzilla vs. Biollante released in Japan in 1989, less than one year before Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park was published and three years before Stephen Spielberg’s film rendition of that book came to the big screen. I don’t think it can be overstated how important Jurassic Park was to film, but it also truly brought the fears many people felt about genetic engineering to life on the big screen. It’s a well-known meme today, but Ian Malcolm’s famous quote in the film foreshadowing the disaster that’s about to befall Jurassic Park was a deeply held fear of many with regards to genetic engineering of crops in the real world.
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to think if they should.”
What’s fascinating about Godzilla vs. Biollante is that it comments a great deal on the role international politics and competition played in the push for genetically modified crops.
Genetic engineering was discovered in 1973 and, despite what Ian Malcolm has to say, the scientists very much did stop to think if they should—in 1975 in Asilomar, California. This Asilomar meeting resulted in a set of guidelines that recommended caution in the use of genetic engineering. In the following few years, the NIH, the USDA, the EPA, and the FDA all took part in applying guidance and regulations to the genetic engineering industry.
But how does that all relate to the political issues and international competition brought up in Godzilla vs. Biollante? I found a BBC News article from June 14, 2002 that explains it very clearly:
“By the late 1970s, America was having difficulty competing with the Japanese and Germans in high-tech areas. The US Government saw the promotion of biotechnology as a way of rejuvenating its economy.
C Boyden Gray, Counsel, President Bush 1989-93: ‘The pharmaceutical industry and agricultural sector are leading edges of American economic and technological innovation. We wanted to make sure that innovation wasn’t impeded and was in fact allowed to bloom as much as possible.’
Consequently, the administration decided the new technology did not warrant extra regulation.”
A great deal of Godzilla vs. Biollante’s B-plot is about espionage between the Japanese government, a US-backed American biotech corporation, and a fictional Middle Eastern nation called Saradia.
The very start of the film features American agents speaking English stealing “Godzilla cells” from a recent Godzilla attack by mowing down a bunch of Japanese soldiers, only to be thwarted by a Saradian agent who in turn kills them and steals the Godzilla cells for Saradia.
This same plot element repeats again and again throughout the film featuring bumbling American agents trying to steal biotech from Japanese scientists and the same Saradian agent taking them out and stealing that biotech for Saradia.
The film is very explicit about this theme. One character directly describes how the United States is advanced in agriculture and wants the Godzilla cells for genetic engineering of crops. The Saradian government wants the cells for the same reason—to turn their desert nation into cropland. Later on, that same character directly states that the entire reason the Japanese want to finally kill Godzilla is so Japan can harvest a huge amount of Godzilla cells for itself.
So not only was Godzilla vs. Biollante commenting on the broader topic of genetic engineering similar to how Jurassic Park did later on, but it’s also specifically commenting on the Japanese perspective—that the United States was an existential threat in the genetic engineering space.
The film takes this theme to some really interesting places beyond this B-plot as well. There’s another thread in the film about a high-tech anti-Godzilla aircraft developed by the Japanese military called the “Super-X2”. The Super-X2 is the Japanese military’s ace-in-the-hole until its revealed that Godzilla can melt even the supposedly un-meltable “fire mirror” that represents the Super-X2’s secret weapon. Due to this failure of the Super-X2, the Japanese military resorts to biological warfare as well, planning to use a genetically modified bacteria that eats nuclear material to defeat Godzilla.
Of course, this bacteria becomes the MacGuffin that the American biotech agents and Saradian agent want to steal!
There’s even a fun side comment in the film about how “the Americans have developed oil-eating bacteria”—hinting at another side to the conflict, as Saradia is, of course, an oil-rich nation completely reliant on oil to survive (until they can use Godzilla cells to turn their desert into cropland… I guess).
Thinking back on the state of genetic engineering in the 1980s, a time when the USA was allowing genetically engineered therapeutics and GMO crops to be developed and unleashed on the world, really puts Godzilla vs. Biollante in a new light. Ignoring all the many (many) scientific inaccuracies in the film (they keep the Godzilla cells in a liquid nitrogen filing cabinet?!), the commentary on the geopolitical landscape with regards to genetic engineering is top tier.
The one other thing I wanted to discuss here before it slips my mind was the concept of a “chimera,” which is brought up numerous times in Godzilla vs. Biollante. A major plot point in the film is that Biollante is a chimera—a mix of human, rose, and Godzilla. Early in the film, one character brings up the legendary monster known as the chimera, foreshadowing Biollante’s nature.
But “chimeras” have been created in the lab since at least the 1960s. While they do occur naturally (there are many examples), in research we have been able to create chimeras between individuals of the same species and between different species including chimeras that integrate human cells into their makeup.
In the film, there is a moment where Godzilla is “attracted” to Biollante and the scientist who created Biollante as a chimera of his own daughter (I know), a rose, and Godzilla comments that perhaps Godzilla was attracted to Biollante because they are the “same creature—one an animal, and one a plant”. But a chimera is actually one organism that integrates the cells of multiple species, making it biologically distinct from any of the species that make it up.
I want to emphasize this because there is perhaps an unintentional theme in the film related to the “state” of a chimera, and I frankly think the film drops the ball with it. Instead of saying they’re the “same creature”, I would have said Biollante is “a distinct organism—neither wholly plant nor wholly animal—integrating the strengths and weaknesses of both.” To me, among the many places where this film dropped the ball scientifically, this was the most egregious part.
Not that I’m expecting a lot of scientific accuracy but… well, I’m expecting better than that. I mean, the “frog DNA” part of Jurassic Park doesn’t make a lot of sense from a biological perspective either, but it’s less egregious, in my opinion.
So those are my thoughts on Godzilla vs. Biollante! A very good film, in fact! One that I would recommend to fans of the genre but also, honestly, one of the ones that holds up surprisingly well (despite the ridiculous Dragon Quest soundtrack… good lord).
