Godzilla 2000

GODZILLA 2000 (1999)

First, I think just pointing out that Godzilla 2000 was actually released in Japan in 1999 tells you everything you need to Ooo, baby, check out that transition from city to suburb...drool... know about how ineptly the American release is handled: I was just glad that I rented the DVD, so I could switch the annoying American dub job to the more sanguine French dubbing job. In fact, watching a Godzilla movie dubbed in French really tickled the lobe in my brain that parses out the "highbrow/lowbrow" distinctions. Overall, G:2K is an enjoyable guy-in-a-rubber-monster-suit movie, if you can get past its essential duplicitousness. See, while the American remake Godzilla from 1998 was a basic disappointment over here, it did gangbuster business in Japan. So if you think about it, it makes sense for Toho Studios to look at that success and contemplate what it might mean for Godzilla and his future. And by "contemplate what it might mean for Godzilla and his future," I mean "rip it off blind with one hand while snarkily bashing it with the other." Fortunately for me, my favorite Godzilla co-stars return in this movie--the remote controlled tanks, block after block of well-detailed city dioramas, and, of course, the inevitable commuter train. As long as you have these elements, I'm never going to be entirely unhappy with your Godzilla movie.

The range rover: the true hero of 90's action cinema... The first third or so of Godzilla 2000 consists of director Takao Okawara and writers Hiroshi Kashiwabara & Wataru Mimura putting their spin on Devlin & Emmerich's spin--we have various initial encounters with Godzilla where he trashes stuff and is only partially seen by the audience, and Jurassic Park gets ripped off in a scene or two, and Twister is referenced several times by having the big G get chased by a research team in a range rover (in fact, some of the most effective shots are of Godzilla looming in the background of a shot like a tornado, while the sky glows disquietingly red and the range rover drives through the foreground). And Naomi Nishida plays a ditzy lady reporter who, although pretty dumb and a real whiner, is still nowhere as annoying and awful as Maria Pitillo. A lot of emphasis on the characters in the first third; the head of the Godzilla Research Team fights with the Minister of Defense over whether to study Godzilla or destroy him. The Minister of Defense's right-hand man used to be on the Godzilla Research Team and best friends with the head; and the lady reporter and the head of GRT have a bickering relationship that turns into quiet respect. This all comes to a head with a pretty cool sequence where tanks and jets wallop Godzilla with a set of experimental armor-piercing missles ("those missles will go through Godzilla like crap through a goose," is the rather clever way one of the military guys describes it). The cool "Blue Angels" flashy flying patterns of the jets, the POV shots from the missles speeding under a bridge toward the Big G, and the impressive shifting camera angles really marry the best of modern special effects to the basic elemental desire of the audience to watch a guy in a big lizard suit stamp on some impressively detailed dioramas.

From here, we get the establishment of Godzilla's adversary--the spaceship from Michael Jackson's Scream video. Originally looking like a mighty big oyster that has emerged from the sea, the ship eventually sheds its rocky covering, proceeds to pound Godzilla into the ground and then set itself up on the tallest building in Tokyo, sucking up all power and data while infecting every computer it can. Powered by the light of the sun, the saucer goes dormant at night, which is when the Minister of Defense decides to go in and set bombs in the building on which it rests. Both the lady reporter and the GRT leader are put in mortal danger, the Minister of Defense ends up being a dick, the defector defects back to the GRT, and Godzilla, absent but for a short (and very cool-looking) swimming sequence, kicks his way through Tokyo to the big showdown. Buildings are blown up in a way that obviously references Independence Day, the saucer takes Godzilla and creates a gray scaly clone to battle him (which, of course, more than faintly resembles the Devlin/Emmerich version) and the fight is on, with some beautifully detailed buildings stomped on. I also have to give it up for the ending, which has Godzilla essentially dust off his mitts and continue with the destruction of Tokyo--an agreeably ambivalent ending, if you ask me.

Obviously, the movie knows that hardcore G-fans want to see old-school Godzilla wail on the American Godzilla and Toho does its sneaky best to comply with a few snarky references: "It's trying to clone Godzilla!" is the first bit of dialogue we get after the close-up of the grey Hybridzilla. And while I don't have any problem with bashing the D/E 'Zilla, the movie has just spent most of its format ripping off the first third to two-thirds of that movie; the cinematic equivalent of poor sportsmanship. But for those of us who need that primordial itch of giant japanese monsters scratched, Godzilla 2000 should get all but the most-difficult to reach spot between the center of the shoulderblades.

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