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GODZILLA
Rating: 
USA. 1998.
Director – Roland Emmerich, Screenplay – Roland Emmerich & Dean Devlin, Story – Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich, Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, Based on the Character Created and Owned by Toho Inc, Producer – Dean Devlin, Photography – Ueli Steiger, Music – David Arnold, Visual Effects Supervisor – Volker Engel, Godzilla Design & Supervisor – Patrick Tatopolous, Associate Visual Effects Supervisor – Karen Goulekas, Creature Supervisors – Kurt Carly & Bruce Marr, Creature & Digital Effects – Centropolis Effects, Digital Effects – Digiscope (Supervisor – Dion Hatch), Sony Pictures Imageworks (Supervisor – Jerome Chen) & Visionart (Supervisor – Joshua D. Rose), Miniature Effects – Cinnabar (Supervisor – Andrea Whittier), Sight Line Productions (Supervisor – Don Baker) & Striber Visual Network Inc (Supervisor – John Striber), Mechanical Effects Supervisor – Clay Pinney, Production Design – Oliver Scholl. Production Company – Centropolis Entertainment/Fried Films/Independant Pictures.
Cast:
Matthew Broderick (Dr Niko Tatopolous), Maria Pitillo (Audrey Timmonds), Jean Reno (Philippe Roache), Hank Azaria (Victor ‘Animal’ Palotti), Kevin Dunn (Colonel Hicks), Michael Lerner (Mayor Ebert), Arabella Field (Lucy Palotti), Harry Shearer (Charles Caiman), Vicki Lewis (Dr Elsie Chapman), Doug Savant (Sergeant O’Neal)
Plot: Dr Niko Tatopolous, a biologist with the US Atomic Energy Commission and a specialist in radiation-mutated lifeforms, is flown to the South Pacific to investigate reports of a giant lizard, mutated as a result of French nuclear testing, that is attacking shipping. The creature, nicknamed `Gojira’ by a Japanese survivor and mispronounced as ‘Godzilla’ by the American media, heads to Manhattan Island where it rampages through the city streets, causing mass destruction. As the military rally all efforts to stop it, Niko tries to alert them to the fact that it has laid a nest of eggs somewhere in the city.
Sometimes one just ends up scratching their head and wondering what it is that drives public tastes and/or the opinion of critics. Two years earlier when Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day (1996) became less of a film than it did an event, this critic ended up scratching his head and wondering what made everybody go so crazy about something so one-dimensionally cliched and simplistically flag-waving. When it came to Godzilla, one found themself in almost the opposite position. Despite a mega-hype build-up that announced that the film was from the same people as and would be even bigger than Independence Day, Godzilla opened in the US and confounded all expectation to become a colossal flop, with the public and critics alike everywhere rushing to junk it. In fact Godzilla is
not a bad film at all. If the truth be told it is really quite the most enjoyable, unpretentious out-and-out monster movie that has come this in some time. Why all the negative hoopla is frankly beyond one – perhaps it is the very absensce of flag-waving that disappointed people.
One didn’t really expect much from Godzilla at all. Director Roland Emmerich and his co-writer Dean Devlin do not make particularly good science-fiction. Dean Devlin writes by cliche and Roland Emmerich directs in simplistic emotional cues and their combined body of work – Universal Soldier (1992), Stargate (1994), Independence Day, The Patriot (2000), Emmerich’s solo films The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and 10,000 BC (2008), and works they have produced such as the tv series The Visitor (1997) and films such as The High Crusade (1994), The Thirteenth Floor (1999) and Eight Legged Freaks (2002) – lacks anything appreciable in the way of original ideas or challenging treatments of themes. Independence Day is the best example of all their faults – mindless mega-scale special effects for their own sake and the substitution of election campaign-type populist sentiments in the place of drama. Stargate was their best film up to this point, which at least counterbalances their cliched writing with what is Roland Emmerich’s forte – the ability to conjure an effectively dramatic sense of wonder across an epic widescreen canvas.
Godzilla is of course an updating of the long-running Japanese monster series begun with Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1954). (See below for the other Japanese films). Emmerich and Dean Devlin do some occasionally clever updatings – in an amusingly contemporary touch, the creature has been mutated to giant-size by French nuclear testing in the Pacific. But mostly their writing is really terrible. Their characters are conceived as no more than caricatures – the French are snobbish about American junk food; the pompous mayor (who in an amusing move is named after one of the top US film critics) is a caricature that has been stolen straight from Jaws (1975). And the romance between Matthew Broderick and vacuous bubble-gum blonde Maria Pitillo is appallingly written. The good thing about Godzilla is that it rarely ever slows down enough to allow these one-dimensional figures time on screen.
Godzilla is at its best when it is without any pretensions doing exactly what it has been designed to do – being a BIG scale, big-budget, no frills, thrill-a-minute rollercoaster ride of a monster movie. And this is something at which it succeeds more than admirably. Whenever Godzilla turns up on screen, Roland Emmerich unleashes some top drawer special effects – enthralling scenes of mass destruction with it smashing its way through downtown Manhattan and ripping swathes through entire skyscrapers with its tail alone; an oddly Star Wars (1977) Death Star trench-styled battle between it and army helicopters amid canyons of high-rise towers; an immensely exciting climax with it rampaging across and being trapped in a suspension bridge. Roland Emmerich only unveils the creature gradually and keeps the camera down at ground level so as to heighten the sense of scale even more so. About three-quarters of the way through, the film seems to abruptly kill Godzilla off and then gives the appearance of jumping tracks into another sort of film altogether with the principal characters fighting off a lethal bunch of baby Godzillas. The sequence is undeniably modelled after the raptor sequences in Jurassic Park (1993), but Roland Emmerich whips it up into something intensely exciting. And as big budget epic-scale effects-driven films go – compare this to the hollow soap opera of the same year’s Deep Impact (1998) or the letdown that The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) was or the completely ridiculous CGI monster movie Anaconda (1997) – one would have been hard pressed to find any better adrenalin-charged, all-out effects excitement on the screen around the same time than Godzilla.
The Japanese Godzilla films are:– Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1954), Gigantis the Fire Monster/Godzilla Raids Again/The Return of Godzilla (1955), King Kong vs Godzilla (1962), Godzilla vs the Thing/Mothra vs Godzilla (1964), Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster (1965), Monster Zero/Invasion of the Astros (1965), Godzilla vs the Sea Monster/Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966), Son of Godzilla (1968), Destroy All Monsters (1968), Godzilla’s Revenge (1969), Godzilla vs the Smog Monster/Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971), Godzilla vs Gigan/Godzilla on Monster Island (1972), Godzilla vs Megalon (1973), Godzilla vs the Cosmic Monster/Godzilla vs the Bionic Monster/Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974), Terror of Mechagodzilla/Monsters from an Unknown Planet (1976), Godzilla 1985 (1984), Godzilla vs Biollante (1990), Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1991), Godzilla vs Mothra (1992), Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1993), Godzilla vs Space Godzilla (1994), Godzilla vs Destoroyah (1995), Godzilla 2000 (1999), Godzilla vs Megaguirus (2000), Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001), Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002), Godzilla: Tokyo SOS (2003) and Godzilla: Final Wars (2004). This film was also later spun out into an animated tv series Godzilla: The Series (1998-2000).
(Winner in this site’s Top 10 Films of 1998 list. Nominee for Best Director (Roland Emmerich) and Best Special Effects at this site’s Best of 1998 Awards).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1998
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