Before things get too negative, it’s best to point out and remember that, for the most part, the Godzilla series is awesome. Most of the movies that have been released in its 70+ year-long history are worth checking out for anyone who’s into sci-fi, horror, or action/disaster movies, with the original, released in 1954, rightly being considered a high point of the entire series. The other universally loved one that got some fairly mainstream attention was Godzilla Minus One (2023), and some American movies featuring the character (that make up the ongoing MonsterVerse) have also been commercially successful… and not always critical misfires, either.
But a couple of American Godzilla movies haven’t been so great, and the Japanese ones – while usually more consistent – have also sometimes fallen a bit flat. There are also some animated Godzilla movies that are pretty disappointing, leading to not quite 10, but eight Godzilla movies that are either not nearly as good as they should’ve been, or outright kind of bad. This ranking will start with some that are a bit disappointing (though not necessarily awful), and end with a handful that should be avoided at all costs, even if you consider yourself a large fan of kaiju movies.
8 'Son of Godzilla' (1967)
Godzilla’s Showa era spanned from 1954 to the mid-1970s, and sometimes has a reputation for representing the sillier side of the series overall. That’s not an entirely fair thing to say about the whole era, seeing as the original film is pretty damn dark, Godzilla vs. Hedorah is surreal and not particularly family-friendly, and then Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla is also surprisingly brutal, but there are some more kid-focused Godzilla films from this era, and Son of Godzilla is unsurprisingly one of them.
It does what you think it would do: it gives Godzilla a son, Minilla, who looks like a much smaller version of Godzilla who’s been left out in the sun for too long and has started to melt a little. Godzilla seems aware that Minilla is kind of melted and also pretty dopey, so he continually resists the idea of becoming the smaller monster's adoptive father. If you ever watched Eraserhead and thought, “I wish this weren’t in black-and-white, had occasional laugh-out-loud moments, and also contained some giant monsters,” then Son of Godzilla might be the movie for you.
7 'Godzilla: King of the Monsters' (2019)
This might be a contentious pick, as Godzilla: King of the Monsters has its fans. Look, parts of this movie are very impressive. It does a good job at showing how gargantuan the various monsters featured throughout are, and whenever it’s just focused on Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah, or Rodan, it’s pretty easy to get swept up in the spectacle and some of the showdowns between these titans.
That being said, there was a visual/atmospheric-related choice here to make the whole movie dimly lit, and this occasionally hinders the impact of some of the big scenes. But the thing that really kneecaps Godzilla: King of the Monsters is all the non-monster stuff, with the human-focused scenes here being some of the worst and least-interesting in the history of the series. A Godzilla movie can be good if it has passable human storylines, and it can be great even if it has just pretty good human-focused stuff, but when they play such a big part in the movie, and prove so boring, it can really start to harm the good stuff. Good human drama can lead to great monster action, if you're given more of a reason to care and all, and there’s not much beyond some striking action sequences in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. That's better than nothing, though, which is why there are about half a dozen Godzilla movies identifiable as worse than this.
6 'Godzilla Raids Again' (1955)
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Though Godzilla Raids Again is a bit disappointing in how rushed it feels, it should be noted that it’s still an important film in the series overall. It came out one year after the original, and helped define how most of the sequels and future installments in the series would play out: Godzilla would reappear, and he’d have to fight one or more other giant monsters. Some avoid this by having Godzilla vs. humanity being the main conflict (see The Return of Godzilla, Shin Godzilla, and the aforementioned Godzilla Minus One), but Godzilla Raids Again was the first of many vs. movies in the series.
Sure, it wasn’t called Godzilla vs. Anguirus, but it also could’ve been, since it marks the first appearance of one of the more underrated monsters in the overarching Godzilla series, and part of the film deals with them battling. Otherwise, it does feel a bit like a “second verse, same as the first” kind of movie, as the monster fight isn't what the movie’s primarily concerned with. Humanity does, once again, have to combat Godzilla, but Godzilla himself also has to fight Anguirus. It has its moments, but feels a bit thrown together and almost like a cash-grab, perhaps in a similar way to how King Kong (1933) was very quickly followed by the slapped-together (yet admittedly interesting) Son of Kong, released the same year.
5 'Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters' (2017)
close up of Godzilla in Planet of the Monsters
In the 2000s, there was a Godzilla movie called Godzilla Final Wars (2004), and not everyone liked it. It was a bit wild, and a pretty out-there way to commemorate half a century of Godzilla. But if you can get on its wavelength, it’s a blast. Still, there was something of a hiatus for a whole decade, and that was broken by an American Godzilla movie coming out in 2014, and then Shin Godzilla coming out in 2016.
And then not long after that, there were also some Godzilla anime movies, the first of the bunch being Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters. This is easily the most tolerable movie in the trilogy it belongs to, but a good deal of the enjoyment comes down to what it hints is coming in later movies. Those later movies fail to deliver entirely, so in hindsight, Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters was just a tease. It is an adequate opening chapter, but no more, and since it’s so heavily tied to those other two movies, it’s inevitably dragged down a bit, too.
4 'Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle' (2018)
Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters introduced the idea of a Godzilla movie set 20,000 years in the future, revolving around an attempt to reclaim Earth long after it was effectively overtaken by monsters. That sounds cool, and the fact that it’s all animated means the potential to have absolutely massive monsters and all sorts of crazy set pieces seems unlimited, or at least not as limited as doing such a futuristic movie in live-action (and without a gargantuan budget) would be.
Technically, it did introduce a planet of monsters, but didn’t do a huge amount with them. Then along comes Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle, with a title promising more conflict, but there’s even less to be impressed by here than there was in the first movie. It has an interesting take on Mechagodzilla, sure, but it’s not really exciting beyond the reinterpretation. It’s a slog of a film, but with this kind of cursed anime trilogy, the worst is still yet to come!
3 'All Monsters Attack' (1969)
After Son of Godzilla, there was Destroy All Monsters, and that one felt like it could’ve been a final chapter for the series as a whole. It had a lot of action and went pretty big, but it ended up not being the end, as one year later, it was followed by the similarly titled All Monsters Attack.
Speaking of similar titles, All Monsters Attack certainly shouldn’t be mixed up with Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, which came out in 2001 and is an all-time great giant monster movie. All Monsters Attack, on the other hand, is a pretty cheap-feeling and somewhat lazy Godzilla film, putting Minilla front and center while also having very little monster action that’s not just repurposed footage from previous films in the series. It’s a kid-focused movie, and maybe kids would forgive (or not notice) the inclusion of stuff they’ve seen before, but if you're not a kid, All Monsters Attack really drags, even at just 70 minutes long.
2 'Godzilla: The Planet Eater' (2018)
The Godzilla anime trilogy comes to the dullest conclusion possible with Godzilla: The Planet Eater. Just as the previous film put a new spin on Mechagodzilla but wasted it, so too does this one make the initially bold decision to depict iconic Godzilla foe King Ghidorah in an interesting and novel way, but then there’s very little by way of combat or excitement; nothing much beyond a new design that might initially catch the eye.
It feels so cheaply made, with the animation being horrifically stilted and the storytelling just such a drag. It’s non-stop characters explaining what’s happening, and there’s little reason to care about what they're seeing, and very little excitement to be found in what the audience does occasionally glimpse. Godzilla: The Planet Eater is a bad Godzilla film, sure, but it’s also up there (or down there?) as one of the worst anime films ever made, Godzilla-related or otherwise.
1 'Godzilla' (1998)
Zilla looking at Matthew Broderick as Nick in 1998's Godzilla
In the 1990s, dinosaurs were probably at their coolest (thanks to Jurassic Park), and large-scale disaster movies were also kind of making a comeback, as shown by Titanic and Independence Day. The latter’s director, Roland Emmerich, ended up trying to combine the feel of a disaster movie with something that feels a bit like a dinosaur movie, except the dinosaur is giant. And potentially Godzilla. But said giant dinosaur doesn’t feel like Godzilla.
This movie might be called Godzilla, but it doesn’t understand Godzilla. It’s a pretty woeful attempt to take a legendary series that had existed in Japan – and found some success elsewhere in the world – for 40+ years, and Americanize/blockbuster-ify it all. And it misses the mark at every turn, being dull as an action movie, unfunny when it tries to be, and impossible to care about when judged as a disaster film of sorts. It’s dreary, unappealing to look at, and has some all-time boring human characters. Worse, it can’t even get the monster side of things right, and it’s astounding how much of an expensive misfire the whole damn thing was.
