Godzilla Reviews

This movie is just terrible! Not only does it fail to deliver in entertainment, it misses the entire point to Godzilla. The film wants its audience to condone the army as it attempts to kill Godzilla, in retaliation to it ruining the city. However, in the original Godzilla; the creature is used to restore the balance of nature. Godzilla is essentially an allegory for humans belief that we can control nature. This piece of absolute bullshit, suggest that Godzilla just wants to destroy the city and humankind, when in act it is the city and urban life which is destroying humankind and nature. Therefore Godzilla (1998) is absolutely against the premise of Godzilla, and due to this it failed to encapsulate audiences and lovers of the Godzilla franchise. Two thumbs down!

The king is...or the queen? I am still trying to figure it out, if "Godzilla" is a male or a female in this movie, they try to explain it but by that point I was almost done with the movie.

First off, this is not "Godzilla" there is no way this monster should be called "Godzilla", notice I am putting it in quotes. It looks nothing like the original or anything close to the TOHO monsters. It doesn't even stand up straight, there is no acid breath, its some sort of wind breath that turns thing into fire, WTF! The face doesn't even look like a lizard of any sort, and it died by getting fired by missiles! Seriously, every Godzilla movie he takes the missiles like a man! Not like this one!

Love story, in a monster movie, never works! This one between Niko and Audrey was so awkward and bad that I was cringing. The acting was terrible, it was like they didn't even care to try. Plus why was Niko a worm guy, you would think they would have someone who works with lizards not worms.

I also noticed that Emmerich pulled from a lot of movies. Especially when the army is trying to kill "Godzilla" I noticed that a lot of the shots were like Independence Day and even the script. I mean seriously you want to be original but yet you pull from your other movies, I think that's cheap. Plus there were shots that were too much like Jurassic Park, the eye shots, the shots when the babies were banging into the door, reminded me too much of Jurassic Park. I don't care if you want to pay homage to the movie, but don't take almost exact shots of the movies and try and make it your own, it just took me away from it way too much.

I did find to enjoy Victor played by Hank Azaria, I thought he had some good chuckles in the movie which made me like him a lot. Some of the action was very enjoyable, the first time you see "Godzilla" is pretty good and the tease was very good, but every time I saw the monster I just didn't like the sight since it said it was "Godzilla". Now if this movie was just some monster movie on its own, I would have gave it a higher rating, but because its "Godzilla" it really took me away from the movie.

There were some good chuckles from Azaria, and I thought Reno was good but didn't really need the accent to be good in the movie. Some of the sequences were enjoyable but all in the script was bad and there so many scenes that took me out of the movie and I just could not enjoy it like I did as a kid.

'Godzilla' is one of the worst remakes of all time, I haven't even seen the original one but this version is probably a lot worse

'Godzilla' is another 'make it stop' movie, much like 'The Great Gatsby', it's a really terrible movie which goes on and on for more than 2 hours

Matthew Broderick should be ashamed, he was a bad choice for the lead role and pretty much, the entire cast is pretty bad ('The Simpsons' should be thinking 'what the hell are our principal voice actors Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer doing in some crap like this?')

Godzilla doesn't really have much of a role, all he really does (until the end) is stomp past wrecking the roads with his huge feet, then he chases everyone through elevators and gumball machines and eventually tries to eat them, of course, the bridge traps him and he dies after being shot

Why couldn't 'Godzilla' be a decent remake like 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' (which was actually better than 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory')

'Godzilla' is actually another critically panned movie that got mixed reviews from the audience (such as 'Freddy Got Fingered' or 'The Lone Ranger')

'Godzilla' is almost all the time weak in scares (like 'The Woman In Black'), it gets scary at the end and the ending is a decent cliffhanger with lots of baby Godzilla

Let's just hope that 'King Kong' is good (I haven't seen the original either) but if I ever get the 100 years of Universal collection (which includes both versions), I will watch the 1933 one first (which is 80 years old this year)

Next year the original 'Godzilla' is 60 years old and perhaps that will give the remake involvement, highly doubted, 'Rollerball' will be 40 years old in 2 years and there's big surprise if the remake has involvement

To conclude 'Godzilla' is another bad remake and a big waste of time, time for Godzilla to crush the franchise with his giant foot

This year, the Americans are coming up with a new remake of the famous Japanese monster and, so far, the buzz is pretty good so it should be an improvement on Emmerich's version but, on the other hand, it won’t be difficult. Indeed, this first US remake was big and it was bad... Big budget doesn't always mean big success and they originally planned to have two sequels to be produced but these plans were scrapped due to the poor reception of this film. Still, despite the disappointing box office performance, it still made a lot of money, in fact, more money worldwide than any other American movie based on a foreign film. Even though I haven’t seen any original Godzilla features, this one was utterly disrespectful with the material which is not really surprising since Roland Emmerich admitted that he did not like the original Godzilla movies and, apparently, he only agreed to do this project after being promised to be able to do what ever he wanted with the series. I remembered when I watched this flick and how I was surprised how bad the whole thing looked. To conclude, it is really a terrible flick, you should avoid it and hope that the new version directed by Gareth Edwards will finally deliver something decent.

"He's not some monster trying to evade you. He's just an animal."

More than forty years and two-dozen movies after first raising his mammoth head in the Japanese monster flick Gojira, Godzilla made its Western-ised debut courtesy of the director/producer team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. By 1998, this particular twosome had firmly established themselves as purveyors of big-budget Hollywood blockbusters, with Stargate and Independence Day having previously blown out theatre speakers. Thus, this late-'90s reinterpretation of the normally dumpy, rubbery monster is a loud, special effects-ridden summer flick created with the brain-dead in mind. It's also a textbook example of a failure - it underperformed at the box office, the planned sequels never materialised, and it was disowned by Toho Pictures (the company responsible for the original Godzilla productions) who actively excised this version from the canon. For what it's worth, 1998's Godzilla is not the disaster that the majority have made it out to be as Emmerich pitches the idiocy at an agreeable tone, but the flick is definitely underwhelming on the whole.

The plot, such as it is, concerns biologist Dr. Niko Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick). Not long into the film, Niko is recalled from Chernobyl by the United States Army to study large footprints left on tropical islands. Meanwhile, accounts begin to materialise which claim that a large creature known as "Godzilla" has been capsizing ocean vessels around the world. Before anything can be put into conjecture, Godzilla - a stories-tall creature which bears the appearance of a dinosaur - emerges from the waters off New York City and begins wreaking havoc within the Big Apple. With the city under threat of annihilation, Niko is hired to work in conjunction with the military to stop the behemoth. As fate would have it, amid the chaos, Niko meets his former flame Audrey (Maria Pitillo), who's now a struggling reporter seeking her big break.

At first, the monster is not seen at all - it's an unseen but clearly gigantic menace, à la Jaws. With radars blipping, ships being destroyed, an attack survivor uttering the word "Gojira," and giant footprints being discovered, the sense of foreboding is enormous. Unfortunately, this style lasts all of 20 minutes, after which the style shifts from Jaws to Jurassic Park as Godzilla proceeds to rip up the city. Emmerich and Devlin's screenplay is an incredibly bloated affair, dragging out all the nonsense to an inconceivable 130 minutes. The most egregious addition is a subplot involving the offspring of Godzilla which would have been better suited for a sequel. This leads to an extended sequence involving baby 'Zillas which look and act like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park (the mini 'Zillas even hunt down the movie's heroes from one room to another...just like in Jurassic Park). However, whereas Jurassic Park was nail-biting and had a degree of substance, Godzilla is more concerned with money shots.

While the digital effects are competent here, they are not spectacular, and for the most part fail to hold up all these years later. At times the giant lizard looks convincing, and the creature design is impressive, but it oftentimes looks hokey and embarrassingly digital. More importantly, the size is inconsistent (it grows and shrinks at the plot's convenience), and the creature lacks weight. Each time a close-up observes Godzilla's foot as it hits the ground, it never looks quite right. And, of course, what summer blockbuster would be complete without plot holes and stupidity? In this case, a monster that's as tall as a skyscraper is able to fit through subway tunnels, and Niko is able to purchase home pregnancy tests in the middle of the night from a pharmacy apparently still operating in an evacuated city. Furthermore, the split-second timing typically associated with Hollywood movies is a frequent bother. For instance the protagonists find the nest of baby 'Zillas just as they're hatching, Godzilla arrives on the scene at the most convenient time, and so on.

In the original Japanese Godzilla films, the monster usually had a clear agenda. In this American appropriation, Godzilla is a mindless brute; a lizard that wants to eat and reproduce. The creature's destruction isn't intentional - it's just the result of a big dinosaur-like monster being trapped in a world designed for humans. Thus, this is literally a film about a bull in a china shop. Adding insult to injury, a few slipshod attempts at humour are included. There's an ongoing gag regarding the fact that no-one can pronounce Niko's last name correctly, and the script attacks film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. Of course, the reason for this attack is because Ebert and Siskel panned Emmerich and Devlin's prior movies. But the characters serve no purpose in the story other than to add further padding, and, as the critics themselves noted, the revenge part was handled poorly. Are these characters torn to shreds and eaten by the monster? Nope. They just bicker. What a wasted opportunity.

Working in the film's favour is Emmerich, a proficient blockbuster filmmaker who's skilled as mise-en-scène despite the idiocy of his screenplays. Godzilla can only be defended as a dumb piece of entertainment, though that's a strictly subjective opinion. In terms of shot composition and direction, the film is fairly skilful, with a number of standout action sequences scattered throughout the narrative. The climactic chase through New York City is particularly impressive, as is a set-piece involving helicopters pursuing the giant lizard. When the pace slows down and the film tries to give the cardboard characters some dimension, Godzilla is less successful. But when it's focused on delivering pure entertainment, there is fun to be had.

Ultimately, Godzilla is pretty much critic-proof. It has its niche audience, and said audience will probably enjoy it (it was my favourite movie when I was eight years old). After all, it's a widely-shared viewpoint that critics are boring and are not able to enjoy blockbusters. Godzilla is not as good as Emmerich's other efforts, but it has its strengths, and all of the harsh criticising the film has received does seem a bit excessive. It's dumb fun; take it or leave it.

5.1/10