Monster movie

A monster movie, a creature feature, or a giant monster film, is a disaster film which revolves around military personnel, innocent civilians and emergency services struggling to stay alive in assaults against animals - often abnormally large ones - or other types of monsters. The film may also belong to the horror, comedy, fantasy or science fiction genre. Monster movies originated with adaptations of horror folklore and literature. Typically, movie monsters differ from more traditional antagonists in that many exist due to circumstances beyond their control; their actions are not entirely based on choice, potentially making them objects of empathy to film viewers.

The most common aspect of a monster movie is the struggle between a human collective of protagonists against one or more monsters, who serve as the antagonistic force. In Japanese cinema, giant monsters known as kaiju often take up this role.

The monster is created by a folly of mankind - an experiment gone wrong, the effects of radiation or the destruction of habitat. Or usually the monster is from outer space, has been on Earth for a long time with no one ever seeing it, or released (or awakened) from a prison of some sort where it was being held.

The monster is usually a villain, but can be a metaphor of humankind's continuous destruction - giant monsters since the introduction of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms have for a time been considered a symbol of atomic warfare, for instance. On the contrary, Godzilla began in this fashion yet as time moved on his reputation quickly grew into that of a cultural icon to the Japanese, as much as Superman is a cultural symbol to America.

The attempts of the humans to destroy the monster would at first be the usage of an opposing military force - an attempt that would antagonize the monster even more and prove useless (a cliché associated with the genre). The Godzilla series utilized the concept of a superweapon built by Japanese scientists to suppress him or any of the monsters he fights.

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