The film marks the first time that some of Earth’s most fearsome and gigantic monsters would team up to defend the planet against a common enemy, with Mothra acting as a sort of conscience for them.ĭespite working together in the previous film, Godzilla and Mothra found themselves at odds again in 1966’s Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (a.k.a. Only Mothra is initially determined to stop Ghidorah as he arrives from space and levels city after city, but when she bravely goes it alone against the beast, her courage convinces Godzilla and Rodan - previously foes - to join the battle with her. Mothra showed up again in 1964’s Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, still one of the most popular and beloved of Toho Studios’ first wave of kaiju movies. Mothra agrees, sacrificing her life in a losing battle with the giant reptile, although her egg hatches and twin larvae emerge to wrap Godzilla in webbing and throw him into the ocean. Godzilla soon attacks Japan, and the humans lobby the Shobijin to persuade a dying Mothra to return to Japan and fight him off (the impending death of the creature is usually accompanied by the arrival of offspring). The Shobijin head to Japan to ask for it back and are captured as well, although some sympathetic humans help them return to Infant Island. Godzilla (1964) was her next appearance, in which her egg washed up on the coast of Japan where it is made into a tourist attraction. She tears through Japan in her search for the Shobijin before finally tracking them to Rolisica, where she destroys the capital city there until recovering the fairies and heading back to Infant Island. Mothra did not portray the giant insect goddess as a benign creature, however, but an enraged deity who hatches from her egg on Infant Island - where the inhabitants worship her - after her fairies, known as the Shobijin, are kidnapped by invaders from the nation of Rolisica who intend to exploit them. The director was Ishiro Honda, who made the original Gojira seven years earlier and directed many of Toho’s best-known kaiju films, while the screenplay was by first-timer Shinichi Sekizawa, who went on to write a number of Godzilla movies for Honda and Toho. The 1961 movie Mothra from Toho Studios was part of the company’s initiative to expand its universe of giant monsters, which had up to that point introduced Godzilla, Anguirus, Rodan, and Varan. Her origins have changed over the years, while her powers have included enormous blasts of air generated by her wings, a poisonous yellow powder (“scales”) that can suffocate her enemies, psychic abilities, and of course the silken web she can spray in her larval form to immobilize her opponents. The larval form was a large puppet operated by six stuntmen crawling in single file, while the adult version was a wire-operated mechanical puppet, with radio-controlled legs added in later films.

Mothra was initially created for the screen through two different kinds of practical effects. She ultimately became second only to Godzilla in terms of total screen appearances, while also becoming the only kaiju of the Toho universe to get her own spin-off series. She was the first of the major kaiju to share the screen with the king of the monsters, who had previously only fought the relatively lesser monster Anguirus in 1955’s Godzilla Raids Again and the American-created King Kong in 1962’s 1962’s King Kong vs. Mothra was the first of the kaiju to receive title billing alongside Godzilla, in 1964’s Mothra vs. The book established the concept of the two tiny humanoid fairies who act as Mothra’s heralds, as well as Mothra’s origin as a divine larva hatching from an egg and later evolving into its winged form.

She is actually known as Mosura in Japan and the first movie was based on a serialized novel called The Luminous Fairies and Mothra. Mothra made her debut in 1961, and alternated between appearing as either a giant larva/caterpillar or a massive moth. Her defense of the planet and its people continues in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, her first Hollywood movie. While colleagues like Godzilla and Rodan have been ambivalent about their relationship with humanity over the years - if not outright hostile on a number of occasions - Mothra has almost always seen it as her duty to protect those little creatures running around on the surface of the Earth, even if they often did not accord her the proper respect and understanding. She’s been called the Queen of the Monsters, and she is perhaps the most beautiful and mystical of the classic Toho kaiju.

Godzilla enemies by year