Warbler said:
The Atom bomb is what inspired the original movie.
Actually it was the film THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. They took that concept and turned it into an allegory for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The problem with Zilla or GINO (Godzilla In Name Only) as I like to call him as he doesn't even deserve the zilla. Was that Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin decided to create an homage to classic American monster movies using a Japanese monster. It was a decent monster movie but it was not a Godzilla film in any way.
In fact, it's pretty much just a remake of BEAST with a different title. There are a number of scenes directly lifted straight from the 1953 classic.