The first thing to remember about Godzilla is that this 335-foot tall monster is Japanese.

The second thing to remember about Godzilla is that it was born in the Philippines in this latest in a long line of Godzilla remakes.

Now, the only thing missing to make Godzilla a certified box office bomb in China is something that connects Godzilla to Vietnam.

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Thankfully, there's nothing about Vietnam in Hollywood's second iteration of Godzilla. But pundits are predicting the Japanese monster won't tear apart China's box office when it hits the big screen on June 13. That's geopolitics for you.

But this prediction might not just cut it, seeing how the Japanese monster did on its opening weekend in the USA last week. Defying dire predictions, Godzilla posted the second-biggest opening of the year by grossing $93.2 million, said distributor Warner Bros. Only Captain America: Winter Soldier has had a bigger opening so far.

Godzilla first hit movie screens in Japan in 1954. The Americans gave the world their first version of the monster in 1989. In this second American re-imagining, Godzilla tries to save the world from a monster named M.U.T.O., an acronym for Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism.

The box office problem facing this 60-year old Japanese thing that's destroyed Tokyo God-knows-how-many-times is that Chinese-Japanese relations are really in the pits - and look to get worse.

There's the standoff over the Diaoyu Islands (called Senkaku by the Japanese); Japanese capital flight from China because of this; and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe honoring Japanese dead from World War II by again visiting Yasukuni.

Then there's China's intractable maritime dispute with the Philippines that gave birth to this version of Godzilla, and with Vietnam where Chinese have died in real-world riots.

That said, Chinese nationalism might just prove fatal to Godzilla's success at China's box office. 

TagsGodzilla, Geopolitics, Chinese Nationalism