Godzilla

Image credit: Wikipedia

I’ve mentioned before that one of my (of the many I have) favourite things about cinema is the fact that there is a certain level of enjoyment and satisfaction one can get from watching a bad movie and then analysing why it’s bad. When it’s brought up in conversation, a ripple effect starts and fantastic discussions ensue, bringing more thoughts, opinions, and analysis to light.

We had such a discussion the other night after revisiting 1998’s Godzilla.

This American monster movie (that completely misses the notion of metaphors) tells the story of a giant, dinosaur-esque monster, the product of French nuclear testing, who travels to New York to nest and threatens to overrun the city with miniature monsters. Those trying to defeat it are the unlikely team of the US Army, the French secret service, a reporter’s assistant trying to forge a career, and a biologist.

I’m sure, back in its day, this movie was something cool, but nowadays it’s just become a really annoying and cringing piece of cinema with a laundry list of personality disorders. The first being that the filmmakers really didn’t grasp the point of Godzilla, or indeed the concept of metaphors, full stop. Upon discussing this with friends, one person came out with the best response to this: “the ‘90s didn’t metaphor.” A large portion of the film’s problem is that it’s a monster movie where there is no deeper point to the monster. Just a big animal doing animal things: not very engaging.

As more scenes play out, it really becomes apparent how much the film takes from Jurassic Park (and one scene from Jaws). While cinema is all about reflecting what’s trending, there’s a difference between referencing other popular blockbusters and straight up plagiarising them.

Image credit: Vulture

Then we have the immaculately boring characters and a completely ridiculous romantic story. The central romance between the reporter and the biologist really is like a man’s fantasy that his gorgeous, blonde ex is still totally hung up on him (even though she broke it off) and will some day come back. Even in cinema today it’s apparent that some screenwriters cannot write female characters, but back in the ‘90s it must have been like learning a whole new language. The central female character in this movie is weaker than a biscuit that’s been left out in the rain, her role being solely for the writer to live out his own ‘romantic’ daydreams.

While Jurassic Park did it better, a polite round of applause still needs to go to the monster design team because Godzilla was still pretty cool, though how he could vanish completely and then sneak up on the army so silently really requires you to suspend your belief.

At the end of the day, this movie really doesn’t hold up (if it ever really did).

Director: Ronald Emmerich, 1998

Cast: Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Kevin Dunn, Michael Lerner, Arabella Field, Vicki Lewis, Doug Savant, and Malcolm Danare