Godzilla | | Cast : | Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno | | Director : | Roland Emmerich | | Studio : | Columbia/Tristar Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Dolby, Widescreen | | Released Date : | May 19, 1998 | | DVD Released Date : | March 23, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 07, 2005 | | Summary | Consider the music | Content
 | I'll be honest up front--I've seen this movie 1 and 1/2 times, but it only took that half of a time about a month ago to figure out why the movie didn't work as well as it could have. I remember liking it at the theater and being scared and such, so I'm not going to trash it. But consider this:
More and more, producers and directors are understanding that verisimilitude (creating a sense of realness) is achieved when the moviegoers/watchers can relate to the characters as much as possible, and share their emotions closely. If you think about the big movies of the genre Godzilla falls into, the best way to do this is to CUT IT WITH THE SOUNDTRACK when the most intense, frightening, or grand moments are unfolding. Steven Spielberg, of course, discovered this back in the early nineties with "Jurassic Park," and the indelible scene where the T-Rex first strikes has NO music in it. If you saw "War of the Worlds" recently, crucial moments where the aliens appear or search out victims also have NO music. Even "Independence Day," with all its heroic music, fell silent when the aliens attacked the cities. And hey, what about "Titanic"? When the ship was standing straight up in the water, you didn't hear music, which meant you could hear people screaming and crying and falling (and people crying in the audience).
And why? Because it's more real that way! If it were actually happening to us in real life, do you think that music would be scurrying away in the background proportionate to the amount of tension or excitement or sadness? Of course not. In a sense, movie music (based hugely on music of the Romantic era) tells us what to feel; it's liberating to feel what you want. And that's what makes the scenes I described above so awesome, in my opinion.
"Godzilla" did not take to this trend--a trend that I argue is one of the most significant developments in moviemaking. (If there are movies from the seventies and eighties that also use this technique, great; that just means that more movies are better for it.) For an example of what I mean in the movie, when Godzilla is baited above ground with the mound of fish, why the heck are there trumpets playing this awkward fanfare? We're supposed to be scared--we're the tiny humans who could be eaten at any moment; I don't think that reverent themes helped to create a sense of fear at all. Not only that, but they really didn't need music at that point at all. Nothing was even happening except Godzilla was chowing down. Whoopee.
There are way more scenes that I could disect, but I won't, you've suffered enough. I still think the scene where the fisherman "catches" Godzilla and there's all the water displacement, is one of the best movie scenes ever. (I don't believe there was any music playing.) So, in short (ha, ha), I realize that this was a popcorn, summer movie, but at some point we need to raise the bar for ALL movies and do what they stress time and again in creative writing: Show, don't tell! |
| Rating | | | Date | August 04, 2005 | | Summary | A monster size slap in the face. | Content
| Sometimes life can be so cruel. There was The Curmudgeon, itching in his cinema seat with excitement at the thought of seeing a mega-bucks US version of Godzilla. I really had high, high hopes.
And then this - one giant Godzilla turd of a movie. Don't get me wrong, the Japanese movies aren't exactly Citizen Kane, but what they lack in coherent plot, effects and script they make up for in spirit, ambition and, dammit, a love for their monster.
This movie looks good (if you can buy this image of Godzilla, anyway). The city being torn to pieces is excellent, but oh man, did they ever screw up the rest.
No-one cares about the characters in Godzilla movies. The star of the movie, the reason people buy tickets - is for Godzilla. So the tedious sub-plot with Matthew Broderick (who really looks like he doesn't want to be here) is frustrating enough, but when they turn the movie into some lame Jurassic Park rip-off, with lots of LITTLE Godzilla's, you're left wondering who greenlighted this crap.
Word to movie producers - Godzilla is SUPPOSED to be almost indestructible (how easily did he die?), he is SUPPOSED to be fearless (don't have him RUNNING AWAY from the army!!) and DON'T replace him mid-movie for lots of little dinosaurs.
Not that hard is it? Well done, America - you just screwed up a perfectly good franchise. This still depresses me so much I can't even make an amusing quip. Deep, deep sigh.
The_Curmudgeon_Hates_You@yahoo.co.uk |
| Rating | | | Date | August 02, 2005 | | Summary | Not as good as the original Toho creation... | Content
| Well, it is a good monster movie, all things considered, but the problem was, right after viewing this, I put in a Toho G-movie, and was just, disappointed! If you're a fan of the original Toho Godzilla, you'll think this movie is average, if not, this will probably be one of you're fave movies. Good SFX, good characters, average show. Two stars. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 27, 2005 | | Summary | Good popcorn movie, despite its massive flaws | Content
| I know this is a bad film in comparison to similar films like Jurassic Park, but for some reason I still find myself watching it over and over. I guess this film is one of those "so-bad-it's-good" niche films. And let's face it, that's what the Japanese Godzilla films were - cheesy niche films with shoestring budgets. Come on, they were movies with guys in rubber monster costumes stomping through a cardboard miniature of downtown Tokyo! So what were you expecting going into this film?
Yes, Godzilla looks like a giant iguana in this film, but would you have really taken the old "guy in a big rubber suit" Gozilla seriously as he rampages through real-life Manhattan? Maybe if they had replaced real-life Manhattan with a Manhattan made from cardboard, Godzilla fans would have been creaming their shorts.
Yes, the "real" Godzilla can't lay eggs, but the Madison Square Garden portion of the film is one of the more exciting parts of the film, although a clear rip-off of the raptors in Jurassic Park.
The CG is good in some scenes, visible cruddy in others. There's a close up toward the end of the film when a CG Godzilla nudges one of his dead babies with his totally fake-looking nose. Big G's nose is colored a bright green, yet the dead baby G's body is a dark green. So fake. And the quick shot of the human characters in the same frame as the gigantic lizard are tell-tale bluescreen shots. And sure, it rains in the real world, but did this film really need so so so MUCH rain? It got distracting. All the rain makes it so obvious that they were trying to cover up the so-so CG effects, and it doesn't work. Ugh...
And yes, this film is full of cliched characters. There's the nerdy scientist no one listens to but who is always right in Matthew Broderick. (Who, by the way, runs like a girl when the Godzillas are chasing him. I know the Army boots were part of his disguise, but you could have had him bring a pair of Converse sneakers with him so he can run like he did as Ferris Bueller again, damn it.) I don't know if they tried to get Jeff Goldblum to play Broderick's character, since he's played this very same damn character so many times before (The Fly, the aforementioned Jurassic Park, and the previous Rolland Emmerich/Dean Devlin creation Independence Day). Maybe Goldblum was getting tired of being typecasted. Then there's the dim blond in the cute Maria Pitillo. There's the "goomba" Italian couple with the thick New York accents, the guy of the couple played by Hank Azaria. There's the French guys, led by Jean Reno, who all seem to have names starting with "Jean" ("Where is Jean-Luc? Where is Jean-Pierre?")There's the clueless politicians who are more worried about their approval ratings, upcoming elections, and budgets rather than the safety and welfare of the citizens they're supposed to be serving. There's the army, who's solution to everything is "shoot everything we have at Godzilla, even though he doesn't seem to be getting hurt at all." Yes, these are all cliched, by-the-book (and borderline offensive) characters, just revel in the cliches and wait for Godzilla to show up again to crush things.
The dialogue is so-so, with some laughable lines like "How do you lose something so big?" (referring to Godzilla's disappearance 5 minutes after showing in Manhattan), "That's a lot of fish," and the Jaws rip-off line "We need bigger guns." And it's still puzzling to me how people can cheer and pat each other on the backs for "a job well done" after killing a giant lizard who really meant no harm toward humanity and was just following its instincts. How selfish humanity is to cheer and applaud at the destruction of a species just to get our city back...
That's a real problem with the film - you never fully hate Godzilla for what he's doing, and you kinda sympathize for him, but not much. It's like they couldn't decide whether Godzilla should be a threat to humanity or a creature humanity should feel sorry for and in awe of. The film tries to find the middle ground between fear and awe Jurassic Park achieved, but fails.
Like I said, I still enjoy this movie for what it is. Maybe I just like watching New York City getting trashed since I live roughly 20 miles away. And the duo of Emmerich and Devlin seem to love destroying The Big Apple. In Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow, New Yory City eats it each time.
In this film, Godzilla rampages through the Fulton FIsh Market, Madison Square Garden is blown up real good, the Brooklyn Bridge is annihilated, The Chrystler Building gets destroyed AGAIN (this seems to be a running gag in Hollywood films in 1998, since both Deep Impact and Armageddon BOTH laid waste to the Chrystler Building just months before this film's release. And of course, there's the baby Godzilla teaser that the end of the film, setting up the sequel that will clearly never happen.
SO if you can get over the cheesiness and flaws and just drink it in as some fun mayhem and destruction, you'll have fun. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 27, 2005 | | Summary | My Favorite Movie...Don't Ruin It For Me! | Content
| I loved this movie so much, I watched it about 8-9 times (had nothing to do) and rented it about 3 times and watched it in the threatre once. Why are so many people complaining about this so much? How much acting do you want? Are you looking for an actor that acts like a know it all and does everything right? I mean the movie has action from beginning to end and oh what a fantastic, dramatic, and exciting ending. I even cried when Godzilla died, I even told my gf and yes even though she wants to have nothing to do with me now, fact still stands that people should die and make way for a new more superior species on this planet.
This movie was great, I thought the actors were pretty well suited to this movie, you don't need really famous actors to make a good movie, I'm getting fad up with seeing actors like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise etc on the tv anyways. Its nice having a nervous, clumsy, nerdy, dorky sorta guy as the main character, its sort of refreshing and renewing.
Anyhow, Godzilla, I think, is a mutated iguana. Why? Well, it looks like an iguana in many ways and in the beginning, during the nuke testings, you see iguanas running around, therefore giving it an assumption that it was one of the iguana eggs that mutated. However, of course this thing is far from the truth and there are many things that shows that its not exactly an iguana. Iguanas don't eat meat by the way, nor do they lay so many eggs, nor do they run on their hind legs, nor do they like to burrow so much, and many other things.
I guess as it shows, in the end, it is your opinion that counts and not others. I've watched movies that I liked that many others say are bad and I've watched movies that I hate that many others say was great.
I love this movie and who cares what the rest of you think. Its the 21st century, don't expect the old godzilla to succeed any further than it has already. I'm tired of seeing Japanese folks run for their lives and screaming in horror, I think its time to give the Americans and its great nation a chance to do it now. |
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