YMMV / Godzilla: King of the Monsters! (1956)

• And You Thought It Would Fail: Bosley Crowther (a rather infamous New York Times film critic) called it "an incredibly awful film" and then proceeded to tear the film apart for being similar to King Kong (1933) ^note Which aside from featuring a larger than normal creature and having parts set on an island, there is virtually no similarity and claimed that it was "too bad that a respectable theater has to lure children and gullible grown-ups with such fare". Nevertheless, the film succeeded spectacularly, grossing up to $2 million in the United States alone as the first Japanese movie to ever break a million in the foreign box office. And while it continues to be popular with fans and critics alike today and even has a release by The Criterion Collection, most of the foreign-language films Bosley championed are rather unknown in comparison.
• Critical Dissonance: Yes. The film received negative reviews by movie critics at the time. Even those who found the context between Godzilla and the H-bomb. This did very little to deter American audiences to see the film.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Steve Martin easily ranks as one of the most well-remembered human characters in the franchise. Subsequent Showa era films often starred reporter characters clearly modeled after Martin and it is not at all uncommon to see him given Canon Immigrant status to slot him into both fan works or even official Toho products.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The fact that the main character's name is Steve Martin brings about a bit of unintentional hilarity by association. In fact, when Raymund Burr reprised the role in Godzilla 1985, at the height of the real Steve Martin's popularity, all references to him were strictly kept to his last name. It's also kind of amusing that by that point Steve Martin had also been in a movie that relied a lot on him interacting with Stock Footage and Fake Shemps.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: At the time, the original Godzilla was the subject of immense critical controversy in Japan due to its premise bringing up the ugly aftermath of World War II while they were still in the midst of recovery, and as such, the movie didn't do all that well critically (financially it did very well) at its initial release. However, the recut version of the film slightly downplayed the connection between Godzilla and nuclear weapons, sidestepping a potential controversy in America. As a result, the movie was seen as a typical monster movie in the United States and became a huge success. The popularity of this version of the film led to a release of the recut in Japan, which fared quite well the second time around. Ultimately, this would be instrumental in leading to the original cut of the film becoming Vindicated by History in Japan itself and would help establish Godzilla as one of the country's most famous film franchises. And despite technically being a Japanese film re-edited for American audiences, the movie was popular in Japan back in 1957. It helped spread the "King of the Monsters" moniker over there and inspired reporter characters in later Kaiju films similar to Steve Martin.
• Narm: The film added some really odd screams when Godzilla attacks Tokyo. One of the instances is when Godzilla destroys a police car, you can hear the scream once it explodes.
• Superlative Dubbing: The first page quote featured on the main page was a Woolseyism used to explain Godzilla to American audiences while avoiding explicit references to nuclear weapons.

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