The $120 million digitalGodzilla was, despite a major promotional campaign, disappointing at the US box office, its first week after the May 20 launch pulling in just $74 million. A Japanese weekly magazine underlined the disappointment of fans in the Hollywood version of their hero in a six-page article headlined ``Can we approve a US Godzilla!?''. Shocked Godzilla disciples told SPA magazine after studying the dinosaur produced by Sony's Tristar Pictures studios: ``That's not Godzilla.''

Size may matter to the Hollywood machine,but in Japan so does a tradition that dates back to 1954 and Godzilla, King of the Monsters, the first of the ground-breaking monster flicks made by Tokyo's Toho studios.

Back then he was a 90 kg latex creation that left the actor inside breathless and soaked in sweat, with the special effects, which were special at the time, relying on piano wires, pullies and firecrackers.

Godzilla stayed pretty much the same as he screeched like a rusty hinge through 20 movies, coming back again and again until his demise in 1996. Now only the screech has remained of Godzilla's former popular self, Hollywood unable to come up with anything to match the shrill sound, though ready to dispense with the maple-leaf spurs on his back and the stocky frame.

Toho says the biggest difference between the Japanese and the United States versions is the ``overwhelming speed'' of the Hollywood dinosaur, which bounds on sinewy legs through the highrises of the Big Apple. Kenpachiro Satsuma, who has worn the Godzilla suit in sevenfilms between 1984 and 1995, says Hollywood ``should have followed the original form''.

``I'm not pleased about this computer-graphic thing being called Godzilla,'' he toldNewsweek. Others have said the new Godzilla was not as fearless as his predecessor. Film director Shusuke Kaneko told SPA ``it is interesting the United States version runs about trying to escape missiles,'' while Japan's Godzilla stoically stood against military attack.

``They seem unable to accept a creature that cannot be put down by their arms,'' Kaneko observed. Noriaki Ikeda, a special effects critic, praised the Hollywood remake, which he said ``energetically smashed the ceiling of visual impact for monster films''.

Toho says it is unfair that some Japanese suddenly claim Godzilla as their own after having for years dismissed the monster as childish. ``Hollywood realised the sophisticated computer graphics and other technically impossible things here in Japan,'' said Masahiko Suzuki of Toho's marketing division,suggesting that Godzilla's life had run its course and it was time for a fresh, imaginative take. ``The film is enjoyable even for long-time Godzilla fans,'' he said.

From the moment Godzilla rose out of a roiling sea and began his swim to Japan, it was clear he was a product of the US atmospheric hydrogen bomb tests at Bikini A toll in the South Pacific in the 1950s.

The creature born by the nuclear age became a symbol of a pacifist Japan and the horrors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II.

In the latest film, Godzilla has been awakened by France's contentious nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia where, along with nearby Fangataufa, the French Government detonated several underground blasts until January 1996. Godzilla gets Jean Reno in Hollywood's first remake.

And now with India and Pakistan in the subcontinent having conducted their own nuclear tests in defiance of world opinion, perhaps Godzilla's appetite will shift in the sequel from hautecuisine to curry.