Godzilla (1998)'s comments

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Siskoid

I broke my rule against watching Roland Emmerich movies with 1998's Godzilla, a film I do not believe I'd ever managed to get through before. And boy, it was worse than I remembered/imagined. Let's get the whole "that's not Godzilla" conversation out of the way first. I would not mind a redesign (this one is a mutated iguana) if it still acted like Godzilla, or played Godzilla's iconic role. It doesn't. It's the T-Rex from Jurassic Park, running after individual humans, and its babies are ineffectual velociraptors (I mean, they snap at people but never bite them because... no reason or impediment). Emmerich has no CLUE what Godzilla is about. For him, it's an excuse for his trademark destruction porn, and yet, the military destroys more landmarks than the monster ever does. Plot holes abound in this thing, and Godzilla uses it to get from point A to point B instead of sensical geography. He's spawned in the Pacific, but shows up in New York. He's Batman, able to double back behind helicopters and hide in plain sight and no one ever notices. In fact, they keep losing this monster that's as big as a building in New York's sewers and subway system. It's just dumb as rocks. Maybe worm expert Matthew Broderick can explain; he's got a good handle on crypto-lizard behavior too. There's really no caring for the character subplots, boring, cliché-laden, screaming cartoons, some very badly acted indeed (Vicki Lewis is an early offender). There's an extended revenge riff against Siskel and Ebert, likely for their having panned earlier films, and along with YET ANOTHER instance of throwing the French under the bus (like in ID4), it makes me think Emmerich is a vindictive director indeed. Tonally, this boring, over-long turd also gets low marks, with uplifting "wonderment" music over images that should inspire terror, and making Godzilla look pitiful in its death throes before everyone starts cheering its demise. It feels sadistic, but of course, there's no intent behind it. Emmerich has no control over his intent, beyond spectacle. And that brings us to the CG. Wow. 1998 was too early for a full-CG creature to rampage in New York during a rain storm. It's awful even for its time, with low integration of live action and visual effects. It's a long 130 minutes to get to the only good thing about this flick - Puff Daddy's "Come with Me" track. But I can find that on its own somewhere, right?

4 years 4 months ago