Godzilla in Atlantis; Plus: 1.3 Million Watch History's Friday UFO Shows

6/4/2019

Let’s start today with the ratings for Friday’s UFO programming. Ancient Aliens was close to its week-to-week and year-to-year average. The first new episode of the fourteenth season drew 1.3 million people, with a 0.26 rating among the advertiser-covered demographic of adults 18-49. It ranked seventh in the cable ratings for Friday. Unidentified, the To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science UFO series, debuted with 1.286 million viewers and a 0.22 rating among adults 18-49, retaining most of its lead-in’s audience and outperforming most of the other shows that have followed Ancient Aliens over the past ten years in that regard. It ranked eleventh among all cable shows airing on Friday. But don’t despair! Both were outdrawn by HGTV’s My Lottery Dream Home, which had 1.6 million viewers and a 0.29 rating among adults 18-49. So, in the hierarchy of American life, lottery fantasies easily outdraw mind- and soul-shattering “truths” about time, space, and reality.

The ratings for History’s UFO shows dwarf the puny 440,000 who watched the return of Ancient Aliens’ onetime lead-out, America Unearthed, in its return to TV on the Travel Channel last week. But as we wait for America Unearthed to take on Ancient Aliens in an episode devoted to ancient astronautics, it might be amusing to consider how our favorite fringe themes recently showed up in a high-profile monster movie.

In the new movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the giant lizard is given a new origin story. According to the film, Godzilla was worshiped as a god by a lost civilization that is obviously meant to parallel Atlantis. In the movie, scientists trace Godzilla back to a sunken civilization. Its ruins are in a Classical style, and the scientists in the film compare them to those of Greece and Egypt. While the underwater city isn’t named, we learn that Godzilla’s movements beneath the waves may have sent the city to the bottom of the ocean, paralleling Plato’s fantasy about Atlantis vanishing in a single day and night. [Update: At least according to an article I read about the movie and Atlantis, since I have not seen a movie in a theater since my son was born; I understand that the article may have taken some liberties with interpretation.]

The movie also plays around with the idea that Godzilla and other giant monsters, known as Titans, were worshiped as humanity’s first gods, a concept that echoes H. P. Lovecraft’s use of monstrous otherworldly creatures as humanity’s earliest gods in the Cthulhu Mythos stories. Indeed, one of the Titans, Ghidorah, hails from outer space, just like Cthulhu. It probably goes without saying that when Godzilla returns to the underwater city where is worshipped as a god in order to hibernate and recover, he is basically acting like Cthulhu in R’lyeh.

As with other high-profile science fiction films like Prometheus, Alien vs. Predator, and 10,000 BC, it seems that when depicting ancient history, we can’t quite break out of the Lovecraftian/fringe history mode when trying to create a suitably epic vision of prehistory. Individually, there is nothing wrong with using this fantasy to create an entertaining story. It is fiction after all. But collectively, the growing number of big movies that allude to ancient astronaut or lost civilization claims becomes a bit worrisome because they have a collective propaganda effect of normalizing extreme ideas.

24 Comments

Scott Hamilton

6/4/2019 10:28:08 am

I'm not sure where you got that Godzilla was responsible for the city being underwater. I've seen G: KotM twice, and I don't remember that at all. I'm pretty sure the city is in that cavern because of the "Hollow Earth" theory (little relation to any real world Hollow Earth theory) mentioned in Kong: Skull Island and G: KotM. Basically the earth has tunnels and caverns that explain how Godzilla and other monsters stay hidden and move around so quickly.

That there was an advanced civilization down there will probably be major plot point in Godzilla vs. Kong, as the newspaper headlines in end credits of G:KotM talk about how the origin of the Titans may be found under Skull Island. So while I see why it looks like the ancient civilization was worshipping Godzilla, we may find out the opposite: the ancient civilization created Godzilla and the other monsters (excluding Ghidorah). This also makes sense for another very inside-kaijuball reason: The plot arc of the Legendary Godzilla movies is really starting to resemble that of the Heisei (90s) Gamera films. In those Gamera was a created by an ancient civilization to keep the population of other giant monsters under control. In the first film Gamera fights a bunch of angular flying creatures, the largest of which makes a nest in the middle of Tokyo and lays eggs. In the second Gamera film Gamera fights an alien, dies, and is brought back to life by human intervention. That film ends with the human characters discussing whether or not Gamera is really on humanity's side. The third film stresses that Gamera does not care about human casualties, and he fights another ancient monster that may have been created by the ancient civilization to be a failsafe against Gamera. So I won't be surprised if GvK we find out that Kong serves a similar purpose.

One other point of interest: There is a tie-in graphic novel called Godzilla: Aftershock, where Phoenician sailors, apparently blown into the Pacific somehow, see Godzilla and decide he's the god Dagon.

orang

6/4/2019 10:46:38 am

Don't forget that Lovecraft co-authored "The Mound", a story about a vast underground civilization.

Riley V

6/4/2019 06:15:30 pm

Thanks for all the backstory.

Wasn’t Godzilla awakened/transformed by a nuclear bomb test?

And just to play the dozens

“Your mama so ugly Mrs. Godzilla uses your mama’s picture to scare her kids.”

6/5/2019 12:16:32 pm

"Wasn’t Godzilla awakened/transformed by a nuclear bomb test?"

If you mean in the original 1954 Godzilla, the answer is no.

Dr. Yamane's explanation for where Godzilla came from in the first film is similar to that of the Legendary Godzilla: Godzilla is one of a species that has been living in undersea caves, and H-bomb tests destroyed his natural habitat and irradiated him. There's no mention to him being mutated at all, though his fire-breathing is a bit hard to explain otherwise. The fact that another identical Godzilla shows up in Godzilla Raids Again is more proof that the series saw Godzilla as natural species, not a mutant.

Though most people think of Godzilla movies classically featuring mutants, that's not really the case. The only early Toho kaiju movies that really push the idea of radioactivity creating mutants are the first two featuring Mothra, where Mothra is found on an island heavily irradiated by atomic bomb tests and full of mutants, but even those films muddy the waters by also talking about an ancient civilization worshipping Mothra, which shouldn't be possible if she was only created a decade earlier!

The first Godzilla movie to feature Godzilla as a verified mutant is 1991's Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, which has a time travel plot involving people from the future trying to remove the relic dinosaur that will become Godzilla from the remote island where it will be exposed to an atomic test.

Accumulated Wisdom

6/4/2019 11:09:11 am

You are forgetting the "Planet X" connection. If, I remember correctly, Ghidrah and Mecha- Godzilla came from another planet. A planet in opposite orbit of our Earth on the other side of the Sun. These Invaders arrived in Flying Saucers, and wearing sunglasses. Godzilla is eventually taken to Planet X for battling Ghidrah.

Enquiry

6/4/2019 11:17:08 am

As a matter of curiosity - do you know which author started the Planet X nonsense? It's only a recent thing.

6/5/2019 12:28:55 pm

The Planet X in Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965) was not connected to any real world belief in a Planet X, but was part of 1950's and 1960's trope of using X to stand for something strange and mysterious. Most directly, the screenwriters were probably influenced by movie The Man from Planet X (it features some plot similarities to Astro-Monster), but other titles from the era are X the Unknown, X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes, and The X from Outer Space.

6/5/2019 03:14:22 pm

Scott Hamilton,

I hope you can help me identify a show by the following description.

Japanese boy and girl.

Both wearing helmets with antenna.

bad guys look like they are covered from head to toe in black pantyhose.

One of the helmets with antenna will melt the pantyhose dudes.

The other helmet deflates the pantyhose dudes.

Mastermind hanging out in space with fangs coming up from his bottom jaw.

When Japanese boy and girl get into trouble, they can't handle, they call upon a giant gold robot. Looks like a male version of the Statue of Liberty all polished up, with a Ric Flair wig.

Gold robot hides out inside a mountain cavern.

Last saw this program at my grandparent's house, just before entering kindergarten. After 40 years, this is what, I remember of the show.

Any help would be extremely appreciated! Thank you!

6/5/2019 05:14:32 pm

AW, sounds like Ambassador Magma, known as Space Giants in English speaking markets.

6/6/2019 11:23:23 am

THANK YOU!!!

I remember the gold robot looking a little bit differently. Do not recall him having antenna. Wearing a Ric Flair wig still fits although, I recall a feathered back look.

Jim

6/4/2019 12:33:06 pm

"we learn that Godzilla’s movements beneath the waves "

Sounds legit, Wolter, in his comments is now speculating a water breathing dragon on the prow of his Viking box ship.
The evidence keeps piling up.

Kal

6/4/2019 02:19:21 pm

Planet X/Nibiru silliness goes back to good old Zachariah Stichen, popularized by Nancy Leider from incorrect data and evidence following the ousting of Pluto as planet 9. By 2012, when alleged planet was said to come, nothing happened, and it turned 2013 with no explanation from Lieder or others.

NASA found evidence of something out beyond Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects, but not beyond the Oort cloud, which is farther out, mainly planetoids perturbed by a long period object possibly anywhere from 2 Earths to 1 Neptune, but it would always be beyond the outer planets, and would only approach Pluto in hundreds of years, never coming anywhere near even the orbit of Saturn, so it would never come into the solar system and pass by Earth, ever.

Godzilla KotM played fast and loose with all sorts of myths, including eatern dragons, ancient civilizations, an ancient alien monster, and others, but was never specific in calling anything Atlantis or never directly quoting Lovecraft, even though the ice monster they find is clearly a Chuthulu like beast, or something like it, but instead of tentacles, it has three heads, more like a hydra than a squid, as in the Toho Godzilla character it is copying.

terry the censor link

6/4/2019 03:59:47 pm

Gamera got a similar origin story in the 1995 reboot: a product of Atlantis, designed to fight bad monsters.

disco, disco, disco dance machine

6/4/2019 09:33:43 pm

The Japanese word “Godzilla” literally translates into a combination of the words for “gorilla” and “whale.” But Godzilla looks nothing like either a gorilla or whale! WTF?

6/5/2019 12:40:00 pm

"Gojira" doesn't translate to anything, it's written in the Japanese katakana alphabet, used for foreign words and made-up names. It has long been an article of faith among people writing about Godzilla that Gojira is a portmanteau of "gorilla" and "kujira" (whale) and that it came from the nickname of burly stage hand at Toho, but that explanation has come to be seen as unsupported folklore. The only thing we know for sure is that producer Tomoyuki Tanaka chose the name Gojira, and we don't have any documentation that explains why he did. Frankly, he probably chose the name because he thought it sounded cool.

T. Franke link

6/5/2019 08:33:11 am

It is very typical to display Atlantis in classical style, although this is (a) not logical, since Atlantis is described as a non-Greek civilization, and (b) it is directly against the words of Plato, since Plato describes the building style of Atlantis as "barbaric".

The reason is not a lack of phantasy, I presume, but something else: They all have an idea of ideality of Atlantis in their heads. And the epitome of ideality is the classical world. So they display it in classical style.

But who brought up the idea that Atlantis was an ideal city?

These were the Atlantis skeptics who wanted to depict Atlantis as much an incredible place as possible. Atlantis as a wondrous, over-big, over-old, simply phantastic place. Because on the basis of this exaggeration, you easily can dismiss it as non-existent. This science has brought up certain collateral damages, as it seems.

It is rarely noted that certain scientists silently changed their mind on this, in the meantime, e.g. Christopher Gill. Atlantis had nothing phantastic in the eyes of the ancient Greeks.

6/9/2019 01:58:19 am

T. Franke,

Have you ever pondered the mathematical level of meaning to Atlantis? By no means have, I figured it all out. One of the dimensions given is 345 miles. The 3-4-5 sequence relates to, and seems to convey the Pythagorean theorem.

Curious about your thoughts. Thank you!

6/10/2019 02:55:36 pm

Hello Accumulated Wisdom,

Yes, I pondered about mathematical meanings in the numbers of Plato's Atlantis story, and there are many hypotheses and approaches to this idea (Brumbaugh, McClain, Vidal-Naquet, etc.). But none of them convinces me.

It is IMHO a mistake to see Plato as a Pythagorean, or even as a Neo-Platonist before Neo-Platonism even came into being, and to see something behind each and every number.

Somebody once called Plato and his successors the "protestants" of Pythagoreanism. They wiped out all symbolic and non-rational ideas and insisted only on the rational part of Pythagoreanism.

By the way, if the number 345 is measured in miles, as you say, then it is not valid to make any argument on this basis since Plato did not know miles.

6/12/2019 02:50:03 am

Hello T. Franke,

Thank you for your kind response.
I had never given this idea much thought. I believe, I first heard about it from some show on the History Channel. One of HC's talking heads mentioned it, without any elaboration. Since then, I have gained more mathematical understanding.

I was reading Carl Feagan's blog the other day. While reading his Atlantis article, the dimensions of the island stood out, and suddenly took on new meaning. Instantaneously, I had a whole new understanding, complete with a multitude of mental visualisations. A personal, EUREKA moment.

Until recently, I had the same belief, regarding the mile. Too many pseudoscience authors, and outright BS Artists were trying to convince people the mile was ancient. From what I understand, the value for the mile is indeed ancient. Extremely ancient. This value was adopted by the English in 1325. This making it plausible for Plato to have used this value, and proving all of the BS Artists with English superiority issues WRONG.

With the possibility of Plato using the mile value in mind, I would like to know more about the mathematical theories applied to his work. You mentioned names. Which are the best sources, you have come across, regarding this idea? Did any author come close to convincing you?
Mile value, or not, I do see the numeric connection, and would like to learn more. Maybe, it's there. Maybe, it's not.

6/12/2019 02:38:31 pm

@Accumulated Wisdom:

Sorry, my answer is on the first level of comments as a standalone comment, see below.

6/12/2019 02:37:31 pm

When it comes to mathematics in Plato's work in general, maybe this is the best:

Robert S. Brumbaugh:
Plato's mathematical imagination: The mathematical passages in the dialogues and their interpretation (Indiana University publications : Humanities series) 1977.

But in the end, the number of academic articles on the subject is endless. And the opinions differ widely. You just have to start somehwere.

I do not think that Plato knew the mile.

6/12/2019 03:19:47 pm

T. Franke,

Thank you! I was looking for the best starting point for tackling this idea. I appreciate your knowledge and willingness to pass it along. I didn't think Plato knew the mile either, however, I do think it's an idea worth considering. I was not attempting to convince you, one way or the other.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

A.W.

Oniomancer

6/18/2019 01:19:34 pm

Surprised no one mentioned the Seatopians and their underwater civilization of Mu from Godzilla Vs. Megalon but then everyone seems to want to forget that movie.

George

7/29/2019 07:00:39 am

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Godzilla in Atlantis; Plus: 1.3 Million Watch History's Friday UFO Shows

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