The Science of Gigantic Movie Monsters
Let’s dissect the funky biology behind the hulking, Hollywood classic.
The enormous, city-leveling monster is one of the biggest tropes of modern cinema. King Kong, Godzilla, Eight-Legged Freaks — brilliant, each and every one. Film theorist Noel Carroll lists these “magnification monsters” as one of the industry’s most fundamental categories of horror antagonist. The giant abominations might come from the depths of the sea or the far reaches of space, but most often, they’re byproducts of homegrown science gone awry.
But…how? How are gigantic monsters made to be gigantic? I’m not talking about movie-magic or props and CGI—this is a genuine moment of biological curiosity. What science (or at least, what flimsy attempt) gets all the credit for bringing these colossal creatures to life on the silver screen?
Most movies offer some fleeting explanation, which to be frank, can often be a bit upsetting for a scientist to swallow. It might be attributed to hot topics like “radiation,” or simply “mutation,” like the 1998 Godzilla reboot canon that simply attributes nuclear testing to the beast’s moment of creation.
Or, as has been promised in the trailer for the upcoming Rampage, which I probably won’t see in its entirety: “Have you ever heard of genetic editing?”
Well yes! Yes I have. I’m glad we’re on the same page.
But let’s roll with this for a moment. Let’s assume that, sure, radiation and genetics can make a normal animal inflate to the size of a small building. What I aim to deduce is exactly what mechanism is causing this gigantism to take place — and with a brief thought experiment, we can actually get fairly close. As per usual on this blog, get ready to play a big game I like to call “process of elimination of science.”
Out of the gate, I’m not the first one to attempt to solve such a puzzle. In the 1966 sci-fi staple Fantastic Voyage, literary giant Isaac Asimov pitched a few methods for shrinkage that (in my mind) lay a great theoretical groundwork for the genre:
“If you’re going to reduce size you can do it in one of two ways. You can push the individual atoms of an object closer together; or you can discard a certain proportion of the atoms altogether. To push the atoms together against the inter-atomic repulsive forces would take extraordinary pressures… The other method is to remove atoms in careful ratio so that the mass and size of an object decreases while the relationship of the parts remains constant.
… “Miniaturization is quite possible, but by neither method you have described. Have you ever seen a photograph enlarged, Mr. Grant? Or reduced to microfilm size?”
“Of course.”
“Without theory, then, I tell you that the same process can be used on three-dimensional objects; even on a man. We are miniaturized, not as literal objects, but as images; as three-dimensional images manipulated from outside the universe of space-time.”
Clever. But does this concept scale (so to speak) if we’re talking about enlarging massive monsters instead of shrinking a motley team of adventurers? Not exactly; Asimov was looking for an answer in physics, but since these modern-era movies blame their monster mayhem on “genetics,” I want to take a more biological approach. Still, the Asimov insight offers some pretty valuable context.
We want to consider three biological methods for gigantic animal expansion. First, larger atoms, actually in a similar vein to Asimov’s own answer to shrinkage. Second, larger cellular structures inside the monster’s body, and third, cells that remain the same size, but multiply in rapid quantity to create more living tissue and a proportionately larger body. I like the third one the best, but we’ll get there.
Asimov’s own instinct for explaining his shrinking was to go atomic, and it’s not a bad place start. This method would best capture how a “shrink ray” might work — instantaneously changing the size of everything in its path at the most fundamental level. The only problem: this isn’t genetic or biological in any way; gene expression controls the way proteins, cells, and tissue become arranged in the pattern of our body, but not the “size” of molecules. We’re still working with the same building blocks.
And if we did have bodies made of larger atoms, well we’d basically die instantly. Our body has elemental needs — we take in air, water, and nutrients to give us oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, dozens of other types of atoms that are needed to help us create energy and, you know, live. In order for this whole system to function, those atoms from outside our body need to click with the molecules already inside our cells. Bigger “versions” of the molecular structures in our body wouldn’t be able to bond with smaller “versions” coming from the outside. Almost immediately, all functions in our body would cease.
Well then LUCKY FOR US, I don’t think this method carries much weight.
Onto scenario number two: larger cells. This one could, in theory, connect to genetics a bit more organically than the atomic method. Part of our genetic pattern does dictate the construction and size of cells, so with some pretty spectacular genetic splicing and dicing, our body could become programmed to create larger cellular structures. Big cells would use the same molecules and atoms from the real world, simply more of them. This isn’t a scientific impossibility; cell-size isn’t a “copy-and-paste” template across the entire animal kingdom, anyway.
But in inflating the size of cells, we run into a similar issue as with our atomic-level expansion — in the same way that our body needs to connect stuff together at the elemental level, we need to connect proteins and chemicals too. Those proportionately-larger cells will have proportionately-larger structures of proteins with which they’re expected to mesh perfectly.
Think about smells as a perfect example — specific scent molecules fit neatly with receptors inside our noses, but bigger cells and bigger receptors wouldn’t be able to “sync” with chemical signals coming from an external, normal sized world. And it’s not just smells — nutrients from food wouldn’t work either, and neither would the building blocks we need from water or air. All of these chemicals work with cell patterns specifically designed to fit existing molecules.
So, again, instant death. Probably by suffocation this time.
Now let’s look at the only option that might really be possible: Normal-sized cells, just a lot lot more of them.
Let’s consider how the [insert vague pseudoscience] genetic modification from the movies could actually instruct our cells to multiply at a rapid, unchecked rate. This is indeed plausible—in cancerous tumors it’s a natural process, but with some movie magic, maybe the “genetic editing” tells the body to grow all cells and tissues to scale. The result is a proportionately larger body made from the same building blocks that we use now: atoms, molecules, and cells that we would be able to recognize. This mechanism is actually feasible…in the sense that it won’t instantly result in death.
But there are costs with this type of giant expansion as well, and to be frank, they’re all terribly depressing.
For starters, animals that become gigantic would no longer be able to communicate. Vocal cords operate using very specific muscles and cavities to produce just the right pitch of sound for our ears — or the ears of any given species — to detect. If an animal were to become gigantic, the resonance in their vocal cords would become skewed to produce sounds at a much deeper end of the sonic spectrum. Becoming the size of a house would result in subsonic vibrations that normal-sized members of the species could no longer hear.
And to make matters worse, you’d have to pee ALL THE TIME. Special thanks to this article from SyFy for the hard-hitting journalism: “Scientist Calculates How Much Godzilla Would Pee Each Day. Really.” In short, bigger bodies require far more resources, which produces more waste. It all checks out.
It gets even more depressing than that. As a giant monster you’d be aware of your own crippling loneliness. It turns out that one of the major determinants for “estimating the intelligence of various animal species” is simply brain size; the larger the brain, the greater number of neurons and the greater propensity for animal cognition. So a larger animal brain with more cells would be significantly more intelligent than it was at a smaller size.
Conclusion: Animals that grow into movie monsters will become more isolated, more self-aware, and more in need of bathroom breaks.
So is it possible for “gene editing” to create a giant creature? That’s not what I’m here to decide. What I can say, though, is that if it were possible, gigantism would come with some terrible side-effects.
Oh, and I forgot the worst one of all: You’d never be able to return to normal size. When the number of cells in your body increases, it’s not just on the outside, but inside your muscles and arteries and digestive organs too. To shrink back down, these newly added cells would need to die off — this “dead cell” material wouldn’t disappear, it would clog all the passageways inside your body that matter.
So growing huge might not kill you, but the shrinking would.
In short, just…just don’t be a movie monster. Even if you’re lucky enough to survive the transformation, it’d be an abysmal, self-destructive lifestyle.
And if you’re a big-shot screenwriter, try to clarify next time whether the growth patterns in your movie monsters occur at the molecular or cellular level. There are a lot of us out here begging to know the truth. In the meantime, I guess I’ll go see Rampage in theaters.
HAHA no I won’t. Let’s just rewatch Godzilla 1998. It’s flawless.
