Godzilla 2014 vs Heisei, Feats and Facts given!

This is an interesting debate i have been thinking about.

Unless one Godzilla can absorb larger quantities of radiation faster than the other, neither Godzilla has much to worry about having their energy stolen in this fight.

I'll start with the most controversial aspect of Legendary Godzilla debates: durability. In the beginning of the new film, we see Godzilla get hit by a nuclear weapon. We're told later multiple nuclear strikes were carried out against Godzilla, all of which were ineffective. This is supported by film evidence. It's also supported and shown in greater detail in the Godzilla Awakening graphic novel, which is considered canon. (In the same graphic novel, Godzilla was at ground zero of the asteroid impact that caused the Permian Extinction. Godzilla was unscathed by this.)

This shouldn't be controversial. This shouldn't even be up for debate. Legendary Godzilla tanked nukes, making him the most durable live-action Godzilla yet.

"But the MUTOs wounded him. Are the MUTOs stronger than nukes?"

This is a good question to ask. Now I want to quickly remind everyone we're talking about fictional monsters who live in fictional universes with fictional physics. Is everyone up to speed? Good. My short answer is, yes, the MUTOs are "stronger" than nukes--although stronger wouldn't be my word choice. While I don't recall seeing the MUTOs wounding Godzilla--I've seen the film 3 times, but I could still be wrong on this--it is a testament to the MUTOs' strength for hurting Godzilla.

If my logic isn't sound and my explanations are simply unacceptable, I have a few questions for you:

1) Is it plausible for a giant monster to tank a nuclear explosion?

If you think it is, continue to my next question. If not, there's no point to debate.

2) Is it plausible for a giant monster to attack with a force greater than a nuclear explosion?

If you think so, continue to my final question. Now if you think it's implausible for a giant monster to attack with a force greater than a nuclear explosion, yet at the same time think it's plausible for a giant monster to withstand a nuclear explosion, I don't know what else to say. It's not like there's a huge margin of difference between the two. If you think it's plausible for one to be the case, then it's equally plausible for the other to be as well, especially since both happened to the character we're discussing.

If monsters are strong enough to withstand nuclear attacks, it makes logical sense for monsters to have attacks greater than nuclear attacks.

3) If you think it's plausible for a giant monster to not only withstand a nuclear explosion, but to have an attacking power greater than a nuke, why are we still debating?


Anyway, Heisei Godzilla isn't powerful enough to hurt Legendary Godzilla. Legendary Godzilla, likewise, can't really hurt Heisei Godzilla all that much. Even if he did, Heisei Godzilla would heal the damage in seconds.


Next is strength.

Heisei Godzilla is one of the strongest giant monsters. Heisei Godzilla not only curled the 150,000-ton MechaGodzilla, he threw him a few hundred meters. Then there are the times when he picked up King Ghidorah by the tails and slammed the three-headed fiend repeatedly into the earth.

How does Legendary Godzilla compare? Well unlike any other Godzilla, except for maybe Final Wars Godzilla, Legendary Godzilla caused a tsunami just by coming ashore. The amount of raw power a creature would need to have in order to do that to the environment with its presence alone is staggering. Next, Legendary Godzilla bulldozed through the Golden Gate Bridge like it wasn't even there. He did this after making the darn thing wobble by tugging one of the cables. Excluding the anchorages and approaches, the Golden Gate Bridge weighs 419,800-tons. Godzilla shook a 419,800-ton bridge (!), and then, proceeded to bulldoze through it.

Heisei Godzilla, in comparison, struggled to push the Fukuoka Tower down, which only weighs 28,500-tons. That's being generous, since most of that figure is attributed to its underground weight.

Then there's how effortlessly Legendary Godzilla overpowered the Queen MUTO. And with a 550 ft. long tail, which Legendary Godzilla used to pulverize the Flying MUTO, this Godzilla would have to be a physical powerhouse to swing that large tail around.

So in terms of overall strength, flip a coin.

This is a stalemate. Either Legendary Godzilla incapacitates Heisei Godzilla for the win or Heisei Godzilla loses after Legendary Godzilla passes out from exhaustion. Or they go out and vandalize GODZILLA '98 posters, Whichever.

In describing the MUTOs’ attacks as being “stronger” than a nuclear explosion, They’re very different attacks, much like how MechaGodzilla’s Plasma Grenade and Shock Anchors are very different attacks. MechaGodzilla’s Plasma Grenade failed to penetrate Godzilla’s skin; MechaGodzilla’s Shock Anchors, however, pierced Godzilla’s skin like it was made of butter. Are the Shock Anchors stronger than the Plasma Grenade now? They’re very different attacks, so that would be an irrelevant question to answer. Are we going to diminish the quality of their attacking power because they didn’t push Godzilla back like the Plasma Grenade did? No, because they are two different attacks. Are we going to ignore the lethality of the Shock Anchors now because they failed to destroy the entire area just by existing? No, of course not.

An even better example would be Gamera and Legion. Gamera took a city-leveling explosion to the face. His body was left intact. And yet that didn’t stop Legion from stabbing him multiple times. That doesn’t mean Legion’s attacks are greater than that of a nuke. It just means Legion’s attacks are more focused when it comes to penetration. Similar things have happened in hundreds of films, TV shows, and comics.

Pointing out how the MUTOs didn’t instantly cause widespread damage with their attacks sounds like a good argument, except you’re missing the point. The MUTOs’ claws weren’t designed to cause widespread damage.

Anyway, if the MUTOs failed to destroy or damage something we know beyond reasonable doubt a nuke would annihilate, I’d concede.

As it currently stands, what I see are a pair of MUTOs hurting a Godzilla that had previously withstood nuclear weapons. In order to accomplish something like that, the lethality of the MUTOs’ attacks would have to be enormous. So why didn’t the Flying MUTO or the Queen MUTO destroy several city blocks when they pounced on Godzilla? Because Godzilla’s immensely durable body soaked up the blows. Godzilla was also fighting the MUTOs for several hours. So while the MUTOs might not be able to “hit harder” than a nuke with a single strike, multiple strikes would be more than efficient. Godzilla can’t destroy an entire city in the blink of an eye like a nuke, but give him a day, and it would look like a nuke did go off.

Out of curiosity, why is it preposterous to buy a giant monster possessing claws that are sharp enough to penetrate something that a nuke couldn’t? You’ve already bought the possibility of a giant monster tanking a nuclear weapon. Like I said before, there’s not a huge margin of difference between buying a giant monster tanking a nuke and buying a giant monster attacking with more effectiveness than a nuke. We're talking about science fiction, gentlemen.

I put MechaGodzilla’s Shock Anchors on the stand. Heisei Godzilla swam through oceans of lava, strolled out of volcanic eruptions, shrugged off onslaughts of energy weapons, and waded through countless bombs all without breaking a sweat, let alone dropping a pint of blood. But none of that stopped MechaGodzilla’s Shock Anchors from cutting through Godzilla's flesh and making him bleed. Are we going to completely dismiss all of Godzilla’s previous feats now? Are we going to dismiss MechaGodzilla’s Shock Anchors entirely because they weren’t nearly as impressive as MechaGodzilla’s Plasma Grenade or SpaceGodzilla’s Corona Beam or Biollante’s acid sap?

No, we accept it because even though the Shock Anchors didn’t level a building or reduced an entire city block to molten slag, they penetrated Godzilla’s skin, which is all we needed to know. Here’s another example: Showa MechaGodzilla’s Finger Missiles are far more efficient at causing widespread damage and explosions than, say, Destoroyah’s Horn Katana. Yet when it comes to penetration, which is the more lethal weapon? I could go on… G2K Godzilla shrugged off many powerful explosions only to have his skin pierced by Orga’s teeth. Orga’s teeth didn’t exactly make the city tremble when he bit down on Godzilla’s arm, so either those explosions were weak or the sharpness of Orga’s teeth have been greatly exaggerated. (It’s actually the third option, which is Orga’s teeth are simply better at penetrating armored skin than those aforementioned explosions and energy weapons.)

It’s the same thing here. The MUTOs have more lethal, effective means of penetrating Godzilla’s hide than a nuclear weapon, as demonstrated in the film. I’m not cherry picking. I’m not saying the MUTOs are more powerful than a nuclear explosion, or I’d personally rather be on the receiving end of a nuke than a MUTO claw. Obviously, a nuclear blast is, overall, far more powerful than a MUTO attack. All I’m doing is echoing what the film clearly presented to us.

Since Heisei Godzilla and G2K Godzilla were knocked out after having a building fall on their heads, should we ignore their better durability feats? Not that that has anything really to do with Legendary Godzilla, since he wasn’t hurt nor knocked out by the building that fell on him. If anything knocked him out, it was his exhaustion.

Heisei Godzilla has walked out of erupting volcanoes, swam through the mantle of the Earth, survived Birth Island’s destruction, and has laughed off countless explosions. These are all impressive durability feats. And yet none of that stopped MechaGodzilla’s Shock Anchors, which are nowhere near as powerful as any of those feats I’ve described above, punched through his skin as if it were made of jelly. Are you going to completely write off all of Heisei Godzilla’s previous durability feats because his skin wasn’t tough enough to stop a pair of blades that have next to nothing in terms of feats we can compare? No, because MechaGodzilla’s Shock Anchors were specifically designed to cut through extremely dense material.

Operation Castle, the codename of the supposed nuclear tests carried out in the Pacific during 1954, weren’t really tests. No, the military was trying to kill Legendary Godzilla. Six of these tests were carried out at the Bikini Atoll, on March 1st, 12th, and the 22nd, and then again on April 5th, 15th, and the 22nd. In the timescale of less than 2 months, Legendary Godzilla tanked 6 nuclear explosions, one of which had a yield of 15 megatons (Castle Bravo) and another had a yield of 13.5 megatons (Castle Yankee). In conclusion, Legendary Godzilla tanked nuclear explosions more times than he was visibly hurt by the MUTOs. This information not only strengthens Legendary Godzilla’s nuke-tanking feats, making them valid in these debates, it also proves the MUTOs have very lethal, focused attacks, for they succeeded where nukes have failed.

Legendary Godzilla, however, edges him out when it comes to durability. This Godzilla is, at the very least, 250 million years old. Legendary Godzilla was there—as in he was physically present at the time—when the Permian Extinction Event went off in his face. He was there when at least 6 nukes were dropped on him. In modern times, Legendary Godzilla swam across the Pacific Ocean, and defeated 2 very dangerous monsters, each equipped with weapons designed to hurt juggernauts like him, after fighting for at least several hours.

Regardless of which Godzilla you personally favor in this match, both are immensely powerful creatures. Legendary Godzilla has the edge in terms of durability, which is why this fight ends in a stalemate. Heisei Godzilla’s firepower is nowhere near Castle Koon’s 110 kilotons, let alone Castle Bravo’s 15 megatons. Heisei Godzilla’s only hope here is outlasting his Legendary counterpart, which is a legitimate argument to make.

In retrospect, Legendary Godzilla has the strength to incapacitate Heisei Godzilla. So both monsters have an equal shot at winning.

So here is my answer for this debate!

I hope you all enjoyed this! Remember, its just a theory. Nothing to get mad about :).