Since the new Godzilla reboot is the talk of the town, we figured we’d do a little research and find out if this giant dinosaur could ever be a reality.
Whether or not you’re happy about it, the Godzilla franchise is getting yet another reboot. The new Gareth Edwards-directed film — starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bryan Cranston and Elizabeth Olsen — is slated for release May 16, and the official trailer was dropped on Tuesday.
In the trailer, we get to see a mysterious creature wreak havoc upon the world while Cranston begs the authorities to be honest about the danger. We never actually get to see the newly redesigned Godzilla, only his tail. It’s still pretty intense, we have to admit!
Now, if you ignore the several origin stories of Godzilla and accept that it either magically mutated from a simple ocean creature or was just slumbering in the ocean for millions of years for reasons unknown, can Godzilla actually ever happen?
The simple answer is a big, fat no. But we’re not about simple answers, so here’s why Godzilla will remain a mere movie invention:
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1. What is it?
So, according to the 1998 American Godzilla, the creature mutated from some marine lizard during nuclear testing. Per the Japanese version, it was just a giant dinosaur-like beast that slumbered underwater for millions of years. Both are, of course, silly origin stories.
Nuclear testing would not be able to alter a creature’s genetic makeup or cause it to grow to that massive a size, so that’s that. The dinosaur theory is better, but even a theropod dinosaur, like the rest of them, did not stand upright and actually kept its body parallel to the ground. So it must be some strange mutant, physics-defying monster.
2. Just weight and see
The water Godzilla slumbered under helped the creature support its own weight, but no skeleton or material known to mankind could support the weight of a beast that big. So basically, when Godzilla would emerge from the depths of the ocean, it would just collapse into a bloody mess under the weight of its body (especially since it stands upright in the films). Obviously that would make for a very short and gory film.
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3. The heart and the heat
Let’s get real here: To pump blood through a massive body of a mutant dinosaur, a heart the size of a Greyhound bus would be needed. On top of that, the pressure from the earthquake-like heart’s pumping would need to be supported by arteries made of indestructible materials (otherwise they’d cave in seconds). And this is only while the creature is motionless; the pressure on the heart and arteries during movement would kill Godzilla, even if he had magical arteries.
Now to the hot stuff. Since weight grows quicker than surface area, Godzilla would obviously weigh too much to avoid overheating. Since heat cools down by spreading across the skin, its mass would produce too much to be absorbed by its relatively small surface area of skin. Given the monster’s weight, it would produce an enormous amount of heat and would have no way of expelling it quickly enough. So Godzilla’s organs would simply broil with any motion, and he would subsequently die.
On a brighter note, are you planning to watch the new Godzilla flick?
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