Our ongoing series looking at movies that took the blockbuster genre into the realms of excess. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
By John J. Joex
Rating: 1 out of 5 Stars
Throughout the 90’s writer/director/producer Roland Emmerich had made a name for himself with successful genre films such as Universal Solder, Stargate, and Independence Day and had achieved a fair amount of clout when deciding upon his next project to follow ID4. And so he chose to turn his attention to a United States-base reboot of the popular Godzilla franchise that had produced twenty two movies in Japan up to that point. There was much trepidation among fans around the creation of an Americanized Godzilla (and who can blame them after the 1978 Hanna-Barbera Godzilla cartoon), but that did not deter Emmerich from moving forward with the project in his typical style of big, dumb movie-making.
This movie still had iconic lizard coming into existence as a result of nuclear testing, but it was those knucklehead Frenchmen exploding the bomb this time near the French Polynesian islands which set things into motion. Shortly after these tests, a monstrous creatures launches a series of attacks at sea and on land as he makes a bee-line to the Atlantic and New York city (apparently he heard that the big money is on Broadway). Nuclear expert Dr. Niko “Nick” Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) is brought in because he specializes in how radiation can affect different species. He at first refuses to believe the military’s claim that this creature is a dinosaur mutated by the nuclear testing, but then he comes face to face with the monster, literally. He then lends his aid to the military’s campaign to destroy the monster before it levels New York City and/or produces offspring. At the same time, Nick’s ex-girlfriend, reporter Audrey Timmonds (Maria Pitillo), remains in the city with her camera man (Hank Azaria), despite the mandatory evacuation, in an attempt to get the story of the century.
While many fans cast a very dubious eye on any attempt to create an American version of Godzilla, the fact is that such an endeavor could have worked. With the advancements in CGI that we had seen in the 90’s and with several very capable filmmakers available, a westernized reboot could have paid homage to the source material while also providing a new direction with significant momentum. Unfortunately, Emmerich only seemed interested in the property for its franchise potential and did little to make the movie appeal to longtime fans of the Japanese movies while also failing to deliver a movie that delivered a decent viewing experience on its own merits.
Now to be honest, apart from the 1954 Godzilla movie, the Japanese franchise usually delivered cheesy, moderate to low budget monster flicks that provided little more than an excuse for the Godzilla and his adversaries to wreak havoc on Tokyo and other Japanese cities. But then they never took themselves seriously or tried to deliver something along the lines of a grand-reaching science fiction movie. So it’s not like Emmerich was pissing on high art here. Still, he should have at least taken into account the Japanese franchise’s large fan base and he also should have put some focus into making a decent movie and not just starting up a new money-grubbing film franchise.
Yet even after all of that, his film had the potential of at least delivering a guilty-pleasure type movie, sort of a bid budget spin on its Japanese source material, but it took several more wrong turns that kept it from achieving even that modest goal. First and foremost, he changes the appearance of the titular monster drastically from what fans expected. Now that in itself is not necessarily a problem (though many of the Godzilla faithful would disagree), but there was no real reason for the change. Perhaps Emmerich was trying to present a more realistic version of the creature, and if he was going for a more realistic take on the story, I could see that. But there’s nothing even vaguely resembling reality through the rest of this hackwork piece of filmmaking. Second, it’s just too damn long! It’s a Godzilla film, it doesn’t need to be two plus hours long. And the sequence where Godzilla chases the taxi through the streets of New York seemed to go on forever and has to be one of the most ridiculously superfluous scenes ever added to a movie. Third, was this movie a comedy or a drama, because it definitely seemed confused over the matter? Emmerich did a good job of treading that fine line with Independence Day, but in Godzilla these contrasting elements worked against each other and ultimately added yet another factor that helped derail this mess of a film.
In addition, the casting just did not work. Again, with Independence Day, Emmerich took a chance on a comedic actor (Will Smith) and that casting choice definitely paid off (and launched Smith into the Hollywood A-List). But Matthew Broderick was just not the right fit as the lead for this movie. And lest you think I’m hung up on this Ferris Bueller performance from the 80’s, I must remind you that Broderick got his start as the excellent lead in an important early 80’s genre film – WarGames (he also delivered a career high point in one of my all-time favorite movies, Glory). Broderick is definitely a talented and versatile actor, but he just seemed out of place the entire movie and Emmerich showed no ability to capture the same magic he realized with Will Smith in ID4. And the cast that Emmerich surrounded Broderick with did not seem to fit as well, again confused on whether this was a serious movie or a comedy (and that infantile stab at Siskel and Ebert with the characters of the Mayor and his assistant added nothing to the film).
It was obvious that Emmerich had big plans for this film as the starting point of a franchise seeing as he immediately set out planting the seeds to any of a number of sequels with the Godzilla eggs (and did anybody really believe that they destroyed all of the eggs during that attack on Madison Square Garden?). But contrived, calculated plots littered with copy and paste (or just downright bad) dialogue do not guarantee a flourishing franchise (but they can lead to it: Jurassic Park, the Star Wars prequels, Transformers, etc., etc.). And apparently Emmerich’s disaster of a monster movie proved enough of an embarrassment that even though it did make money worldwide, it never spawned any of its promised sequels (and we can definitely be thankful for that).
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