The first real day of gardening for me includes attacking my creeping charlie. While I was working, I remembered the Godzilla comparison I wrote about a couple of years ago. But since getting rid of creeping Charlie is a good thing in my world, how could I be Godzilla, a horrible, scary, destructive monster.
I was thinking through all the Godzilla movies (yes, I’ve seen them all, even the Matthew Broderick) and it occurred to me that in the Japanese films, Godzilla went through a “nice-ification” over the years. In a few of the movies, Godzilla actually comes to the rescue by fighting off worse monsters (Mothra, Ghidorah, Gigan, Megalon, etc.) When Godzilla became a father in Son of Godzilla, he really mellowed.
This is a more common occurrence than you realize. I can think of a lot of characters who morph from the bad guys to good guys. M.A.S.H. is the best example; although Frank Burns never redeemed himself, Colonel Blake started off as a lame head of the unit before he sobered up and became beloved of this staff, then Charles started off as a pain-in-the-patoot and gradually became just one of the guys. Diagnosis Murder had a string of hospital administrators who started out as impediments and eventually became supporters of Dr. Sloan. Hamilton Berger, the DA on the first Perry Mason series eventually toned down his attitude and even asked Perry to represent a friend of his at one point. Lots of long-standing series went through this.
I’m glad I can still be Godzilla in my creeping Charlie battles without feeling guilty for destroying Tokyo!
Any bad guys that you actually like? Or morphed into someone you could like?