Rodan

Rodan
Godzilla film series character
Rodan featured in Rodan (1956)
First appearance	Rodan (1956)
Last appearance	Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)
Created by	Ken Kuronuma
Portrayed by	Shōwa series Haruo Nakajima Kōji Uruki Masaki Shinohara Teruo Aragaki Millennium series Naoko Kamio
Aliases	Radon Monster Zero-Two Fire Rodan

Rodan (Japanese: ラドン, Hepburn: Radon^?) is a daikaiju monster which first appeared as the title character in Toho's 1956 film Rodan. Though the character started off in its own stand-alone film, Rodan was later featured in the Godzilla franchise. IGN listed Rodan as #6 on their "Top 10 Japanese Movie Monsters" list, while Complex listed the character as #15 on its "The 15 Most Badass Kaiju Monsters of All Time" list.

The Japanese name Radon is a contraction of "pteranodon".

It was changed to Rodan for English-speaking markets in order to avoid confusion with the element radon. However, in Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II, the English version of the film used the original name Radon.

As with Godzilla, writer Ken Kuronuma turned to prehistoric animals for inspiration in developing the character, though unlike the former, whose species is largely left ambiguous, Rodan is explicitly stated to be a kind of Pteranodon. Just as Godzilla was conceived as a symbol of an American nuclear threat, Rodan was seen as an embodiment of the same danger originating from the Soviet Union.

Rodan's debut appearance was the first and only time the character was given a chestnut color, and its face was given a menacing face with a jagged fanged beak, which would disappear in later incarnations as the character became more heroic. Rodan was portrayed via a combination of suitmation and wire-operated puppets for flight sequences. During suitmation sequences, Rodan was portrayed by Haruo Nakajima, who almost drowned when the wires holding the 150 lb suit above a water tank snapped. In Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, the Rodan suit was of visibly lesser quality than the previous one, having a more comical face, a thick neck which barely concealed the shape of the performer's head within, and triangular wings. The modification of the character's face was deliberate, as Rodan was meant to be a slapstick character rather than the tragic villain seen in its film debut. A new suit was constructed for Godzilla vs. Monster Zero which more closely resembled the first, having more rounded wings and a sleeker face. The sleek face was retained in Destroy All Monsters, though the wings and chest area were crudely designed.