Wednesday, June 15, 2005

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Godzilla 1998 Film Review

Godzilla 1998 Film Review



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What Happens:
The movie starts off with about 10 minutes of yellowed footage of Pacific nuclear tests, iguanas, and French signs. After this is the usual mysterious Godzilla ship attack in unknown waters. This brings us to see Jean Reno (playing a French spy) interrogating the only survivor of the ship massacre, who names the doer of the deed “Gojira.”

At this point we switch to see the military make an over-dramatic pick-up of Matthew Broadrick, who is happy studying earthworms at Chernobyl. This, of course, leads us to the war room, where it is trying to be decided who and what is Godzilla.

A short time later Godzilla is spotted off of the East Coast, and minutes later in downtown New York. The military rushes to New York and sets up to stop Godzilla. Unfortunately, the United States military, as portrayed by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmrich have the combined intellect of your pet rock. This means, of course, that the military can’t stop Godzilla. Don’t worry! Never fear! Matthew Broadrick is here! What? Matthew Broadrick you say? How could he help us? Unlike twelve four-star generals and a scientific investigation team, Matt has the power to see the painfully obvious: the monster is hungry and laying eggs.

The next step is of course to lure Godzilla to a pile of fish that would maybe feed a monster a twelfth his size that sits on a rock all day. Don’t forget, the monster has to feed his young (Yes, him. Apparently Godzilla can reproduce asexually). So the military puts a big pile of fish out in the street, and Godzilla digs up from the subway tunnels where he’s been hiding to get some. The military opens fire, missing Godzilla and blowing up half the city. Then, they realize that Godzilla is trying to escape, so they muster a total of four, that’s right, four whole Apache helicopters to chase him. They miss, blow up more of NY, and Godzilla crawls back down his hole. This whole episode happens again. This time, they chase him into the harbor and the Navy hits Godzilla with two torpedoes. Godzilla collapses.

Meanwhile, the military refuses to look for Godzilla’s nest. So Matt conveniently happens to meet up with Jean Reno (spy guy) and go after the nest. Meanwhile, Matt's old girlfriend, who’s about as convincing as a fruit fly, has stolen a secret tape from Matt and missed her opportunity to use it in becoming famous. She now decides to follow Matt into the subway to look for the eggs too.

Matt and Jean find the eggs, only problem is that they only brought 3.5 grams of plastic explosive. The eggs start hatching. The little Godzillas are really just raptors left over from Jurassic park. So the raptors of course run around and try and eat people.
Matt and Jean hide. Then girlfriend fruit fly appears. Guess what: the raptor nest is in Madison Square Garden. That makes it ok. See, Matt can’t seem to use a telephone, so they bump into Fruit fly while running from the raptors. She takes them up to her studio’s broadcast room there (at the Garden), and they beam the message to the military (while making her a big star media reporter) about the raptors. So they run from the building, and the Air Force bombs it. Everything’s happy.

Oh wait, the movie is bad, but not really bad…so Godzilla pops out of the ground, sees the dead raptors, gets mad, and then starts chasing the crew of stars. They hop in an abandoned cab (a Chevy cab, mind you) and zoom off running from the huge slightly angered monster. Godzilla chases the cab for a while. Our heroes in the cab manage to get word to the military where they are and drive across the Brooklyn Bridge. Godzilla gets stuck in the bridge cable (don’t ask how this impossible feet occurs). The Air force comes back. They shoot six missiles at Godzilla. Godzilla dies from the impact of those six missiles (in somebody’s dream world…). Now that it’s all happy, everybody goes home. Right before the credits we see one last raptor still alive at the Garden (sequel…lets hope not).



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What I thought:
It may be apparent as my satire seeps into my recap of the movie above that I did not like the new movie. The movie wasn’t about Godzilla, but the name was. Godzilla has a meaning in the Japanese films, a horror created by nuclear tests, but also a protector of Japan and loveable yet destructive. Godzilla was an unstoppable force, bulky ominous and more meaningful than a random monster attacking a city. There was a personality that Godzilla posses wasn’t even close to captured by Roland and Emmrich.

Another thing, the Godzilla we know and love can’t be stopped. The military in the Tri-Star production was incapable of stopping a pipe from springing a leak. The military is efficient, even if they can’t stop Godzilla. The Japanese military portrayed in the real Godzilla movies are an effective fighting force: they can’t stop Godzilla because he can’t be stopped, not because they can’t hit him. Also, do you ever remember a point when the military didn’t know where Godzilla was? I don’t think so. Every movie now has excellent special effects, so seperating the new movie for only that reason is really very pointless. All in all, I think that the new movie was so unrealistic and lacking of meaning that it wasn’t even meaningful.

I could keep ranting about this, and there will probably be more thoughts here later. For now, that’s it.

The 1998 Godzilla:
Masterful CGI creation
Swift, agile, non-threatening
Has kids from Jurassic Park
Easily killed

The real Godzilla:
Large, bulky, threatening by size and presence
Can’t be killed, unstoppable force of atomic by-product.
Has meaning, is more than a monster.
One word: personality.

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