GODZILLA
Gojira (1954)
While not the first giant movie monster, he was the first one to emerge as a result of current events. Less than 10 years after the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese film industry gave the world this city-crushing beast, awoken by atomic tests and bent on ravaging Tokyo with its radioactive breath. Sure, he eventually became the hero of a raft of sequels — defending Tokyo, and Earth, from a never-ending stream of similarly giant beasts — but Big G was never more awe-inspiring than here, his first massive step from the ocean.
