Godzilla is 70 years old, and he continues to capture the hearts and minds of filmmakers and film lovers all over the world

A nuclear-charged reptile, a Tokyo tourism ambassador and an Oscar winner with a Hollywood star to its name – truly, no-one in showbiz works harder than Godzilla, who shows no sign of slowing upon its 70th birthday this year. Gareth Edwards's 2014 reboot broke a protracted dry spell and kicked off its own prospering cinematic universe, while Japan reinvented the iconic monster to truly terrifying ends with 2016's Shin Godzilla and last year's barnstorming, box-office-breaking Godzilla Minus One. Even as late as 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars, the Japanese films stuck to the tradition of filming Godzilla in-camera rather than rendering the scaly leviathan through increasingly common digital effects. Following Godzilla's pitch-black debut, which became a thunderous success among audiences, it would only take a decade for this fearsome incarnation of nuclear wrath to transition into a saviour of planet Earth. In the 1971 gonzo cult favourite Godzilla vs. Hedorah, it would throw down with an alien toxic sludge that thrives off earthbound pollution, a direct response to Japan's Minimata outbreak.