I actually started writing this review well before seeing the movie. I felt I had to, after watching the original "Godzilla" on Saturday afternoon (Channel 11's Godzilla marathon), and, partially again Sunday evening (Joe Bob Brigg's Monstervision, on TNT). This is the Americanized, Raymond Burr playing the necessary white man in the cut up Japanese film. The little tricks used to integrate him into this film -- tricks that fooled me when I was ten but look laughable now (or perhaps I'm just aware that Raymond is tacked on, and am looking for the visible seams; I can't claim I'm more clever now than when I was ten) -- aren't too far removed from, say, the use of Bela Legosi in "Plan 9 From Outer Space". The actor died part way through the filming, and, for the rest of the movie, they had some guy in a hat, with a dark cape raised high enough to cover his face, stalking around.
The opening of "Godzilla" shows that Raymond Burr is acquainted with some scientist's wife, who comes to him in the hospital. We see the back of her head. A little while late, we see the front of her face, but it's obvious this is culled from a different moment in the movie, and that she isn't really talking to Raymond. Later, Raymond calls the hero scientist, who gets up from his workbench and goes to the back of his lab. Cut to some guy with an eye patch -- I'm not sure the first shot of the scientist didn't show such a thing -- face heavily obstructed by bubbling beakers, flasks and the other props of stereotypical alchemy, who answers the phone and talks to Raymond. Back in the 1950s, they simply didn't have the benefit of our late-1990s ability to incorporate John Wayne in a beer commercial, and Gene Kelly in a spot for Hoover vacuums. Or maybe they just didn't care. (Joe Bob Briggs, who gives a little background to the movies he's showing, mentioned that a couple of Americans were looking at special effects footage for some reason or another. They came across "Gojira", liked what they saw, and made it into an American movie for about $100,000. Well, 1950s dollars, but cheap as far as movies go. Arguably, a few minutes of computer graphics in the new movie cost that much.)
Some recent movie reviews of the 1998 "Godzilla" argue that "Gojira", the original Japanese film, is one of the better Japanese films made, in some sense up there with Kurosawa. I wouldn't go that far, but little models and rubber suit aside, the film is supposed to conjure up a powerful, bleak vision of destruction and despair: Godzilla as the embodiment of nuclear apocalypse. The clips from the original movie that started off this American version does contain hospital scenes that are meant to invoke memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seeing "Gojira" would be interesting -- half the movie was sliced up to accommodate Raymond. I should look for it in Kim's Video next time I'm in the area.
Raymond says such obvious things: "Look at the size of those footprints." Show, not tell.
So, I suppose a new, 1998 version has the benefit of relative seamlessness. No need for the token American when New York is wrecked. On the other hand, Tokyo has a resonance of the fire bombings of World War II -- air raid sirens sound when Godzilla approaches, and the scenes of destruction are informed by these and by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- which New York doesn't. At worst, we've had Disney's invasion of Times Square and Central Park. Granted, it was massive -- Michael Eisner made the rain go away -- but there were no casualties except for the grass on the Great Lawn.
Anyway, yes, the various reviews I read are basically right. The new movie compares unfavorably to its rubber suited predecessor. Fundamentally, the movie is an overgrown "Jurassic Park"/"Lost World" set in New York, and with a much larger monster. There are no innovations in this movie: as noted, the influence of "Jurassic Park" are very clear, though the baby Godzillas aren't nearly as terrifying as velociraptors. We perhaps shouldn't expect them to be: the velociraptors were handled by Spielberg, who once gave us "Jaws"; the Godzilla team gave us the decidedly unscary "Independence Day". Actually, "ID4"'s little tricks with the airplanes are simply repeated in this new movie: the flight scenes are basically the same. [Hint to the Godzilla team: helicopters can fly higher than buildings and large lizards.] Finally, they wreck Madison Square Garden, but it's no worse than, say, Michael Jordan passing through; he can be a wrathful god.
That helicopters, airplanes and tanks can hurt this Godzilla makes it nothing more than a large, overgrown pet gecko. Fundamentally, it's an animal. It bleeds, it can be killed. A couple well placed shots from a tank can do it in. A bigger problem would be flushing it down the toilet afterwards without telling the kids. [A side note: does Godzilla taste like chicken? Being somewhat radioactive, Godzilla steak would certainly be free of e. coli, though there might be other problems.]
Its animal nature, its mortality, makes this Godzilla less mythic than the original Gojira. Gojira, this invincible incarnation of nuclear horrors, shrugs aside the army on its way to Tokyo. Godzilla 1998 can hardly take it on the chin, and has to get away from the army through fancy footwork instead of simply wading through they guys with rifles. A fence of 300,000 volt high tension wires proves more a curiosity than an obstacle to Gojira. Godzilla is hurt by this little electrical cable that Matthew Broderick can hold in his hands. Gojira is an embodiment of existential bleakness, a force of nature for the atomic age, a legendary dragon with nuclear breath. Godzilla is a pest.
Regarding Matthew Broderick, I'm convinced that for the first hour of the film he plays an idiot. The second hour shows him as an idiot being chased by monsters. His dialog is painful to hear. Real clunkers, not unlike Raymond Burr's observations. But even more painful to hear is what his girlfriend says during the film. [As a counterpoint to Idiot Broderick, I'm one of the maybe four people in the country who saw "Infinity", this neat little film about the physicist Richard Feynman. Broderick's roles have therefore proceeded from Genius to Idiot in the past year. Career trajectory?] Oh, furthering a theme that's been in Hollywood movies for far too long, it takes a disaster to reconcile relationships. "Lost in Space" was really about the father-son thing. "Deep Impact", which I have yet to see, is apparently about solving family crises before they killer comet hits; doomsday as a therapy session. In "Godzilla", it's the boy-girl thing. At long last, they take an interest in each others work, and it only took being chased by ersatz velociraptors to do it. Oh, and she gets a fulfilling job along the way, too.
Godzilla having offspring isn't a new idea. Back in the late 1950s, early 1960s, we had Godzookie, who was more like that short chubby kid the bullies beat up on than a carnivore. [Actually, reading the summary for that movie -- it's been ages since I'd seen it -- the story isn't badly constructed. In this world, a little school kid is beat up by bullies. In his mind, in his fantasy world, he travels to Monster Island, and finds that Godzookie is similarly beaten up on. Godzilla comes by, instills courage and confidence in Godzookie and, by proxy, the school kid. The school kid overcomes the bullies. I like this story and construction better than the chase through mazy hallways by velociraptors.] How Godzilla's procreation mechanics work is explained in neither film.
Bizarrely, there are Frenchmen in the movie. Jean Reno, who I think I first saw as the Cleaner in "La Femme Nikita", plays some secret service guy who's there to clean up this Godzilla mess. He's there with a dozen Frenchman, all of whom smoke. They're hampered in their mission because they can't get a smoking table at a restaurant. Anyway, the whole thing is sort of bizarre. Perhaps they were there to drive away Godzilla by acting rude? A side implication, most definitely missing from "Gojira", is that these little nuclear messes can be cleaned up without much fuss. The teams next mission, I assume his next job is propping up some African despot.
Lastly, some NYC notes. You know, those moments when suspension of disbelief fails because the film implies it's easy to get a cab in the rain. Yes, it's nitpicky to note that the Fulton Fish Market isn't that far south of Wall Street for the big guy to clearly walk up Broad Street, stomping investment bankers along the way. The Brooklyn Bridge is also not the closest bridge to the Park Avenue tunnel at 33rd Street; the Queensborough is. [Side note: the Park Ave tunnel the heroes are stuck in is right next to my former office. I'm sure that Godzilla, sweeping its tail around, probably did severe damage to it. I have to compliment the location people: they got the stores on the west side of Park dead on. That "hey, I bought a smoothie in that store!" feeling was there.] Oh, Manhattan bedrock isn't so deep for Godzilla to borough around in. It's actually relatively shallow -- that's why we have sky scrappers. Similarly, the Hudson can't accommodate a submerged sub. An even more devastating gaffe is the debate on how to get uptown/downtown when they're in the cab. Everyone knows the FDR construction near 23rd St. will cause havoc. There are other things, but pointing out these locational, uh, inconsistencies should be a communal activity.
Just before writing the 1998 portions of this review, I went to see the New York Philharmonic give a free concert in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It was a really long line, wrapping around two long blocks. There was no such line for Godzilla, but then I realized that, say, next year, there won't be really long lines for the new "Star Wars" movie. The bonding, formative experience of standing in a long line to buy tickets to a Star Wars movie will have been done away with by the modern multiplex, which can show Ewan McGregor making light saber sounds every hour, has killed the line. Sometimes old things are better.
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