Godzilla
(1998)
Critics and audiences roundly trounced
Roland Emmerich and his then writing/producing partner Dean Devlin for their
follow-up to Independence Day, but I never
really got what was supposed to be so terrible about it. It’s a competently
made monster movie. Sure, they’ve given him a curious redesign (as if they
wanted their lizard to give off a gumby vibe of not being that bright really,
and with a strangely humanoid gait to enable him to run really fast). And
they’ve shifted the focus away from the monster while constructing every plot
beat according the Spielberg Handbook for the Devoid of Inspiration. But it’s
no worse than Independence Day,
surely?
Well, it’s certainly no dumber. And it
displays either a sense of humour about the perceived artistic failings the duo
are guilty of or a bit of spiteful payback, depending on your perception (given
Emmerich’s movie legacy, I find it hard to believe he lacks an extremely
well-developed funny bone); the mayor and his assistant are named after critics
Siskel and Ebert, who eviscerated their previous pictures. And they stuff the
film with in-jokes and references (just one instance; Broderick’s character
listens to Danken Schoen in the lift, the tune he performs karaoke to in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). And the glee
with which the director destroys American landmarks is infectious; it’s
especially amusing, as he never seems to tire of such obliteration. That said, it’s
curious to behold the mass destruction of New York in a post 9/11 environment.
But the displeasure that greeted Godzilla
must have been partly down to the filmmakers’ lack of reverence for the titular
character. Who knows if original writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rosio (the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) were
more respectful since, although they received a credit, Devlin and Emmerich
reportedly started from scratch. Much like J. J. Abrams and Star Trek, the director is said to have
not much liked the original. In that sense, Abrams got lucky with the response
to his divergence from lore. I have to admit, I’m sympathetic with Emmerich. I
can’t see what the big deal with monster movies is past the age of seven
anyway. Apart from anything, how do you crack the nut of making them work
plot-wise? Peter Jackson certainly came a cropper with King Kong. And all Abrams and co did with Cloverfield was to redo Emmerich’s Godzilla with a found footage gimmick and added nastiness. There’s a vague attempt to show a bit of
sympathy for the beast at the end, and they make him out to have a fair bit of
grey matter, but mainly he’s just a giant scaly wrecking ball. Pacific Rim is the latest to tackle big
monsters (with big robots to boot); it will be interesting to see how it fares,
not least in terms of whether the story goes anywhere interesting.
Emmerich and Devlin’s solution to plot
problems is to take the formulaic approach. They copy Spielberg. There are
numerous shout-outs to Jaws and Jurassic Park here, even to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the
stranded shipwreck in an early scene). The old man fishing on the pier is a
comedy riff on the shark movie, of course. As is the mayor’s denial of the
dangers of the monster. Meanwhile, rain-drenched New York is a direct steal
from the sodden breakdown of Jurassic
Park. Emmerich isn’t stupid; he saw how much better the T-Rex looked when
battered by the elements, so he puts Godzilla in a permanent downpour. Indeed,
Godzilla looks like one of the wettest films ever made to be set on dry
land (the cast wore wetsuits throughout – Matthew Broderick unknowingly sported
his back-to-front until Hank Azaria set him straight). And, when you see the
monster swimming, your mind can’t help but reference the previous year’s
aquatic xenomorphs in Alien Resurrection.
And what are the baby Godzillas, if not a unsubtle recreation of Jurassic Park’s velociraptors?
It’s difficult to fault Emmerich’s approach
to special effects. There’s a reason he pays attention to Spielberg; both are
adept at integrating them with the main action, ensuring physicality and suspension
of disbelief. He goes for practical work
as often as not (including extensive use of models) and his choices tend to pay
off. Although, revisiting the film, it was surprising how extensively he uses
back projection (another film “recent” film its use has been very obvious is Aliens).
The duo play lip service to the atomic
origins of the monster with a credits sequence showing archive footage of
nuclear testing, and then they show Broderick investigating giant earth worms
(if only!) at Chernobyl. But having organised
the threat and scale of their monster, I completely get the decision to switch
focus to the baby ‘zillas in the latter half of the film. They are able to interact
directly with the human cast, and you can see that Emmerich is much more engaged
with their dramatic potential than daddy/mummy’s stomping round the streets of
the Big Apple. Basically we see a stir-and-repeat of the climax of Jurassic Park, with more cheesy jokes. Ironically
it’s easily the best section of the movie, and it also yields the bigges laugh
(Broderick’s lift scene).
The assembled cast includes some curious and
offbeat choices. Broderick makes an affable lead, coming on in Richard Dreyfuss
in Jaws mode as the dedicated boffin.
Jean Reno is endlessly watchable no matter what he does, and sportingly takes a
role that blames the French (not America; it’s lily-white!) for nuclear testing
run amok. Azaria brings an appealing comic sensibility, while Maria Pitillo is
cute but lacks presence. It doesn’t help that she is foisted with an
unsympathetic character; it seems that the reward for dumping your boyfriend in
favour of your career, then screwing him over for a big break, is that you get
promoted and he readily takes you back. Michael Lerner’s enjoyably bombastic as
the mayor, while Kevin Dunn adds colonel to his CV.
David Arnold’s score isn’t all that; it’s as
formulaic as the plot and character beats. But Godzilla’s greatest sin is that it’s called Godzilla; it isn’t a truly lousy film. Really, the Golden Razzie
nominations seem like hyperbole based on fan response, rather than reflecting a
big pile of crap. But then, I admit, I don’t think I’ve seen a Roland Emmerich
movie that hasn’t entertained me. I haven’t seen one that’s very good either,
of course.
Godzilla was expected to be the biggest movie of 1998, but it only came in
ninth in US. Worldwide, it was third, which suggest popular perception of its
failure is not the whole story. Nevertheless, on a cost vs profit scale this was
no monster smash. Like the Planet of the
Apes reboot, this was one where fan indignation outweighed reasonable box office
returns. I suspect that if there had been plaudits all round follow-ups to both
would have been forthcoming. In Godzilla’s
case there were plans for two sequels. Godzilla
reboots in 2014…
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