Godzilla (1998) review

Spread across three separate ‘eras’ from 1954 to 2004, the Godzilla franchise is one of the longest-running film series in history, with 28 films made by Toho starting with 1954’s ‘Gojira’ and recently concluding with 2004’s ‘Godzilla: Final Wars’. However, while the franchise has definitely been very successful in its native country, it wasn’t always that big of a hit in other areas of the world, namely the U.S. Sure, some films were released here but not all of them and most of the films in the series that were released in the states were edited for American audiences. It wasn’t until 1998 when the first major American ‘Godzilla’ film was released, directed by Roland Emmerich, fresh off of the 1996 smash hit ‘Independence Day’… but you see, this is a ‘Godzilla’ film that fans of the series wish never happened. Even though it isn’t actually part of Toho’s official series (it was made by Tristar), many Godzilla fans rank this as the worst ‘Godzilla’ film ever made, mostly for not following the source material and re-inventing the titular creature in ways that were drastically different from the creature’s original design. But is it really as bad as what the majority of people say it is? Well, if it’s not compared to the original Toho films that much, it’s really not… that bad. I can’t say that it’s that good either, but not being a big fan of the Godzilla franchise, I’m not really going to go as far and say that it ‘ruins’ the franchise.

Interestingly enough, the plot of this film mirrors the plot of the original ‘Godzilla’ quite a bit, like the part about how the creature was created as a result of nuclear radiation, and how it first attacks a fishing ship before it makes its big entrance on land. While all of this is going on, Nuclear Regulatory Commission scientist Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) is hired by the military to investigate just what had caused the shipwreck. Soon, this mysterious and giant creature, referred to as ‘Godzilla’ by many people, (although later films in the Toho series have referred to it as ‘Zilla’ due to the reaction towards this film) arrives in New York City, causing much destruction throughout the entire city. As the military look to stop this creature before it’s too late, Nick discovers something about the creature and what it’s doing in New York, which could start even more trouble if that’s not taken care of as well; the creature has been laying multiple offspring and the eggs are about to hatch…

While the plot of the film is sort of similar to the original film, there has been plenty of backlash against how the creature in this film is portrayed, so much so that many people like to refer to it as G.I.N.O. (Godzilla in Name Only); heck, even Toho had it renamed when it was featured in ‘Godzilla: Final Wars’ because even they knew that this creature wasn’t Godzilla. While the visual effects for the creature are fine for the time, this ‘Godzilla’ really can’t compare to the original Toho Godzilla. It’s fairly smaller than Godzilla (though it’s actually about the same height as the original creature from the first Godzilla film), it doesn’t have atomic breath (I’m not sure if that scene where he ‘breathes’ fire really counts as him breathing fire), and to top it all off, he’s easily defeated by missiles and Godzilla fans know that Godzilla is never killed by missiles. It’s pretty much a given that in every Godzilla movie, the military is powerless against Godzilla no matter what they throw at him and yet here it turns out that this ‘Godzilla’ isn’t as powerful. Aside from that, this movie is basically just your generic monster movie with some bland dialogue, flat characters, and an ending that feels more like a mix between Jurassic Park and Aliens than an actual Godzilla film. Also, as hard as it tries, it doesn’t really capture the same serious tone of the original film and sometimes comes off as a bit campy.

But with that said, there are a few ‘good’ things about this film. Some members of the cast are pretty good, like Jean Reno, who plays a member of the French foreign intelligence agency who teams up with Nick to deal with the nest of Zilla’s offspring. Overall, the movie’s just a fun little popcorn flick and even though the film doesn’t really capture the essence of a Godzilla movie, I never found it to be boring. It’s sort of the same case with Emmerich’s previous film, ‘Independence Day’. I’m admittedly not the biggest fan of that film but it is a fun little popcorn flick and really nothing else. To me, that same scenario applies to this film. I understand why fans of the Godzilla franchise would hate this film as it really isn’t a Godzilla film (I agree with Cinemassacre’s James Rolfe in that it probably should be renamed ‘Zilla’ as it really isn’t worthy of the addition of the ‘God’ part of the title) but overall, I find this film to be a fairly decent guilty pleasure (a term that I don’t use, but it can definitely apply to this film). If you’re willing to accept that it isn’t a ‘Godzilla’ film, then it’s okay… though hopefully this new Godzilla film turns out to be much better.

Rating: 2.5/5

P.S. Before I finish, I want to address the attempted 'parody' in this film involving the characters of Mayor Ebert (Michael Lerner) and his assistant Gene (Lorry Goldman), poking fun at Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert after they had given negative reviews to the last two films made by Roland Emmerich, 'Stargate' and 'Independence Day'. I can see what they're trying to do, but ultimately the filmmakers don't take full advantage of the situation. To quote Gene Siskel, "If you're going to go through the trouble of putting us in a monster movie, why don't you at least take the advantage of having the monster either eat or squash us?"... and that sums up why their attempted parody does not work... though I will say that both Lerner and Goldman definitely bear striking resemblances to Siskel and Ebert in this film and heck,  I'd say Lerner could've even played Ebert if they had done a biopic on him around that time.