Symbolic Godzilla

I used to be convinced of something very similar to what T-Rex is on about in today’s Dinosaur Comic- if only more creatures of darkness donated themselves to science maybe we would have a better world. We could use the powers of the Creature from the Black Lagoon to enhance undersea exploration. We could replace our nuclear power plants with giant Godzilla monsters kept happily penned in on a reservation where we’d only need them to spew their atomic breath into some sort of container every so often. But to keep their menace our monsters need to be kept at a distance and always misunderstood, otherwise they lose their value.

It’d be like Monster Island, without the violence. Here’s the comic (click to enlarge):

The problem with such a scientific refuge is that inevitably the monsters would fight, as has been proven by such fine documentaries as Frankenstein vs. the Wolfman, Godzilla vs. Mothra, and Alien vs. Predator.

Incidentally, Ridley Scott has been quoted as saying that he won’t have an Alien 5 because Alien vs Predator reminds him too much of Jason vs. Freddy, which makes a certain kind of sense. Now that they are battling it out with each other, these alien monstrosities have lost a certain amount of the fear they used to generate from the silver screen. Of course, I played the AVP video game and kept getting killed easily despite playing as an alien so that really killed the “scare factor” of the franchise for me first. Plus, simply the fact of learning too much about how the aliens germinate and spread across space has removed the fear of the unknown that they represented. They’re no longer this incomprehensible alien predator, they’ve become one more space monster to fight. Aliens (the second alien movie) realized this and made it much more of an action movie.

So our monsters, our werewolves, our Godzillas, our aliens need to stay out of the light and need to stay mysterious or they lose the power they represent to us and they cease to reflect our fears. In the light of overexposure, they become cheesy jokes.