Trivia / Rodan

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: While no, pterosaurs couldn't fly at supersonic speeds or grow that huge, several facets of the film monster wound up pretty on the ball with research made decades later.
  • The scene with Rodan diving and swimming underwater actually turned out to be very probable with later fossil finds showing many species, including Rodan's basis in Pteranodon, were adept swimmers.
  • The two Rodan having sexual dimorphism with the male and female differing in coloration, and the male being brighter colored, lines up well with later finds.
  • The infant Rodan is portrayed as capable of flying not long after hatching, unlike most birds and bats which are helpless for an extended period of time and require parental care. Later findings confirmed pterosaur young were quite capable of flying shortly after hatching, which is why they're now called "flapplings".
• Bad Export for You: While the Japanese cut of the film avoids this, the American cut seen on the Classic Media DVD is an example. For the most part the Japanese prints were in poor condition due to improper care to the film negatives and resulted in rather average transfers, something the American cuts didn’t suffer from. Rodan is one of the rare occasions where the Japanese cut looks and sounds better than the American cut. The American cut, meanwhile, is very grainy and scratchy. It’s not the worst example of this trope, but it’s noticeable.
• Science Marches On: Like in Godzilla (1954), it's stated that dinosaurs and flying reptiles lived 2 million years ago. While in the 1950s, the age of the Earth was somewhat known in the West, in the East (especially in Japan) it wasn't.
• Throw It In!: When Rodan is being burned to death in the volcano, the Rodan puppet's strings broke in the middle of filming. The puppeteer desperately tried to pull the burning mannequin out, the result was that Rodan seemed like he was trying to make one last escape attempt before dying, which Eiji Tsuburaya liked and kept in for its emotional effect.

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