Here's what you need to know; when fishing boats start being attacked all over the world, the US government assigns Dr Niko Tatopoulus to study the culprit, believed to be a massive, mutated reptile. But when the monster makes landfall in New York and turns the entire city into its lair, the race is on for Tatopoulus, the US Army and the French Secret Service to find a way to kill it before it can threaten all of civilisation.
The first five minutes of this film are unironically great, opening with suitably ominous and apocalyptic stock footage of atomic tests, accompanied by David Arnold's criminally underrated soundtrack. What follows is a scene ripped almost entirely from the original Godzilla, as a Japanese fishing boat comes under attack from an unseen monster. It's a very effective opening sequence that sets a perfect tone for this new, American Godzilla, while also paying homage to the original, it's a shame then that the film falls apart so soon after. Like the original Godzilla, this film features an ensemble cast, unlike the original film, this one's ensemble cast has no deeper significance to the film's themes, in fact I'm still not entirely sure if the film has themes. In place of the narratively rich heroes of the original, this film has a bunch of scientists, journalists and soldiers that all do the jobs you'd expect them to. Though that doesn't inherently make them bad, they are, for the most part, still pretty bad. I'd like to tell you things about the film's characters but there isn't really much to say. There's Tatopoulus, a dweeby scientist who figures out how Godzilla works and develops a sort of admiration for him, whom it's also worth mentioning is uniquely qualified to study Godzilla, being an NRC scientist studying the effects of radiation on animals. It's also worth mentioning that he is named after the guy who designed the film's titular monster, Patrick Tatopoulus, which would be cute if the joke of his name being so hard to say wasn't run so mercilessly into the ground.
There's Hicks, the no-nonsense Army Colonel overseeing the hunt for Godzilla, followed by Roache, the French Secret Service guy tailing all the Army's Godzilla related operations, who is also the most French Frenchman in the history of French, and Animal, a cartoon New Yorker played by Moe from The Simpsons. The film's characters all fit neatly into their respective genre archetypes, fulfilling their roles in the story while occasionally being entertaining, the expected standouts being Animal and Roache, who are both completely hilarious, even if their cartoonishness doesn't fit very well with the film's gritty and serious tone. None of them stand out in an especially bad way apart from Audrey, Tatopoulus' love interest, who is thoroughly cringe-worthy and unlikable. Played by Maria Pitillo, who won a Golden Raspberry for this film, Audrey is a rare breed of bad character that completely ruins your enjoyment of the film every time she's on-screen. A woman so stupid, ditzy and wooden that it calls into question whether or not the writers actually know any real people. Come to think of it, all the characters in the film talk and act in unbelievable ways, though compared to them, Audrey might as well be a T-800 for how robotic and weird she acts. But where her character goes really wrong is about half way through the film when, while pretending to reconnect with him, she inadvertently gets Tatopoulus kicked out of the operation by stealing classified material from his tent, in a selfish attempt to launch her own career as a reporter.
With this one action, Audrey goes from bad to terrible, though I suppose it is an accurate representation of journalists. I get that the film is trying to give it's romantic subplot a bit more flavour by introducing some conflict, but it's way of doing that makes the love interest a detestable character that the film then never successfully redeems. While Audrey does a lot of harm to the film's enjoyability, there are at least the funnier characters like Roache and Animal to pick the film some of the way back up, as well as the film's Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel parodies, the bizarre revenge of director, Roland Emmerich, who didn't appreciate Siskel and Ebert's takes on his previous films. With no strong thematic foundation to prop them up, these characters must stand on their own merit, and they don't. The film is also crammed full of really poor attempts at comedy that vary from dull and bland to downright uncomfortable, which only serve to rob the film of any sense of tension or drama and make the film feel tonally inconsistent. It feels as though the film is having an identity crisis, as though it wants to be a big, epic blockbuster movie like Emmerich's previous films, but it also wants to be a classic monster movie. The end result is a Roland Emmerich disaster movie that feels uncharacteristically restrained, while still stuffed full of Emmerich's worst traits as a writer and director, though that's not to say aspects of that classic monster movie don't occasionally bleed through.
Sequences like the opening ship attack and the scene where Godzilla makes landfall are very effective moments, dripping with the kind of atmosphere and tension that the rest of the film could desperately use. The fish trap scene where Godzilla is finally revealed in full is outstanding as well, building in tension until he finally arrives, and creating a sense of awe for the creature that feels very much like those classic monster movies, making these scenes easily the best parts of the film. It should be apparent that this film is not like the original, it doesn't have any of the strong themes or messaging of the original, nor is it trying to be anything deeper or more sophisticated than what it is, which is a good thing and a bad thing. With how poorly the film portrays its characters, I'm relieved that it never tries to be anything more meaningful than just a big, epic blockbuster, and that also frees it up to have fun with its premise of a giant monster setting up shop in the middle of New York. The downside is that without anything more meaningful to say, it loses a core aspect of what makes Godzilla who he is, though as we'll get to, the problems run a bit deeper than that. The 1998 film prioritises being fun over being artistic and on that front, the film actually does quite well. The scenes of Godzilla rampaging through New York are all great. The scene where he makes landfall shows as little of the monster as it can get away with, while showcasing his incredible size and the chaos his presence causes.
After that, we have sequences of the Army trying to kill him, which all devolve into Godzilla playing Pac-Man with attack helicopters in the concrete jungle. These sequences all have a great amount of speed and energy as Godzilla outmanoeuvres and outwits the pursuing helicopters. The climactic taxi chase is also great, as our heroes try to lure a very pissed off Godzilla into a trap. For as wrong as the film gets it's interpretation of Godzilla, it's monster does get plenty of moments to shine. Ironically, Godzilla is simultaneously the best and the worst thing about this film; he's a great monster, but a terrible interpretation of Godzilla. The film changes Godzilla's origins, having him be an Iguana, mutated into a giant monster from exposure to atomic testing, no doubt as part of a push to make Godzilla more 'realistic,' which is also why he isn't indestructible and doesn't have his atomic breath anymore. The problem here is that by making those changes, you make this monster no longer Godzilla; the clue is in the name, Godzilla is a god, a physical manifestation of the unstoppable power of the atom, but by taking that away, all you're left with is a big dinosaur. Things get worse with the monster's characterisation, as this film's Godzilla doesn't act like Godzilla either. One very simple rule of Godzilla's character that this film breaks is that he never backs down; Godzilla is never afraid of a fight, he always moves forward, regardless of what he's fighting or if he's winning or not. The Japanese Godzilla never shied away from reminding his fellow monsters who was King, a trait the Monsterverse Godzilla very proudly shares.
This Godzilla is not a fighter, he's not even especially hostile, he never attacks first if he attacks at all, preferring instead to either outmanoeuvre his attackers or to just run away. Godzilla's personality was a reflection of his power, but when looked at in the same way, this film's Godzilla is just weak. This culminates in the infamous scene where Godzilla dies, not from a superweapon equal to the atomic bomb, nor from the sheer uncontrollability of his own power, but from getting hit by some missiles. After a chase through downtown New York, our heroes lure Godzilla onto the Brooklyn bridge where he gets left open to attack by getting tangled in the suspension cables. This is probably the single best example of how the film just doesn't get Godzilla, by having him be killed by conventional weaponry, you make him more 'realistic', but you remove the thing that makes Godzilla more than just a monster, you take the god out of him. What's worse is that this self-destructive reinventing of Godzilla was all very deliberate. Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich only wanted to make Godzilla their way, and didn't believe that the classic Godzilla design would be accepted by the audiences of the time. Their vision was to make Godzilla sleek and modern, but their vision was backwards; they saw Godzilla's strengths as weaknesses that needed to be changed to make him cooler, and so genuinely believed that their interpretation of the monster was innovative, when all they did was completely fuck it up. What makes this even more tragic is that the film's monster is actually really cool.
His design looks like what someone who'd never seen Godzilla before would imagine after hearing a bad description, but when not looked at as Godzilla, but just looked at on it's own, it's a great design that perfectly fits the monster's character. He's a fast monster, effortlessly able to bob and weave between densely packed skyscrapers, his body reflects this by being long and lean, being believably capable of such manoeuvrability and speed, his skinniness also helps him to disappear by squeezing into tiny tunnels and burrows. His appearance helps to sell that this monster is designed for running and hiding, which is all he does for most of the film. The posture is more in line with modern interpretations of dinosaurs, which isn't just a reaction to the 'realistic' dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, though that's undeniably a factor as we'll see later, it's also another part of this reinterpretation. This Godzilla isn't a vengeful force lashing out against humanity from the bottom of time, it's an animal; he's not interested in whatever sins humanity has committed, he just wants to be left alone to raise his kids. He only ever attacked the fishing boats for food, he only ever went after helicopters because they wouldn't stop chasing him. In the film's finale when he goes after our heroes, he's out for revenge after the deaths of his young, he may be a monster, but he's never depicted as one in the film, he's explicitly shown to be intelligent, but never to be cruel.
There is absolutely a way of looking at this film where Godzilla is the good guy and the humans are evil, because Godzilla never does anything wrong, while the humans relentlessly try to wipe him out, partly for their own self preservation, but arguably also to put themselves back at the top of the food chain. There could have been an ending to this film where the death of Godzilla isn't seen as a victory, but as a necessary evil, as a miraculous creature that wasn't meant for this world had to die so humanity could live. Instead, the humans cheer and celebrate, having vanquished the monster and saved New York. This was what I meant earlier when I said the film's lack of depth is a good and a bad thing, because while it's not a Godzilla story, there is potential here, not that I'd trust Emmerich's ability to fulfil that potential. Another thing that really bugs me about this film is how it blames the French for Godzilla's creation, which sounds daft, I know, but bear with me. The original film never explicitly said it was America that created Godzilla, but it didn't need to because that was never the point, the moral of the story is that all nuclear testing is bad. But by making it clear it was the French whose testing created Godzilla, it absolves America of guilt for its own nuclear testing, which misses the entire point of any anti-nuclear message this film might or might not have. It comes across as them wanting to keep Godzilla as the product of nuclear testing, but also wanting to make it clear that it wasn't America's fault, which is hideously American, isn't it.
Their redefining of Godzilla doesn't stop at his appearance, personality and origins, however, because there's one more thing they did with Godzilla in this film, something that's arguably just as instrumental in the film's failure as Godzilla himself. In the film's second half, Tatopoulus hypothesises that Godzilla is laying eggs somewhere in the city, and with Godzilla seemingly defeated by the Navy, a huge chunk of the latter half of the film is dedicated to finding and destroying the nest. They find it in Madison Square Garden but the eggs hatch before they can destroy them, and now our heroes have to run for their lives from human sized Godzilla babies. It's been said a thousand times that this entire sequence is just a ripoff of the raptor scenes from Jurassic Park, and it's hard to argue otherwise because that's exactly what the Babyzillas are. Just as they failed to adapt Godzilla, they fail to rip off the raptors too for a very simple reason; the raptors were scary and the Babyzillas aren't. Jurassic Park's raptors weren't just mindless monsters, they were smart, they could open doors, they worked as a pack, using patience and tactics to outsmart their prey, they were scary precisely because they didn't act like simple minded animals, they were skilled hunters that you couldn't hide from. Now contrast that with the Babyzillas, who aren't smart, who can't work as a pack or open doors, and who only seem to use their superior speed and strength against people who aren't main characters.
On top of looking really derpy, the Babyzillas just aren't threatening because of how easily our heroes can get around them, they immediately become clumsy and slow whenever they're close enough to our heroes to catch them, and unlike the raptors that use cunning to hunt their prey, the Babyzillas are idiots, easily breaking through some doors but not others, and getting incapacitated by bouncy balls. The entire Madison Square Garden sequence feels like a giant detour from the rest of the film, it feels out of place and isn't what we're here to see, though on the plus side, it does show off some of the film's better special effects. Godzilla's visual effects are a mixed bag, to put it mildly, some of the CG shots of Godzilla still look amazing, and the chase sequences all consistently look great, but other shots, including many shots from the Babyzilla sequence look terrible. It's honestly impressive that this film can have both the best and the worst of 90's CGI, but what this film never gets credit for is it's practical effects. Spliced into the CGI shots are a tonne of really impressive practical shots, making full use of miniature sets, miniature vehicles, animatronics, puppets and, yes, rubber suits to help bring its monsters and scenes of destruction to life, and while it's not on the level of the Gamera films that were coming out of Japan around the same time, it's still impressive and very nice to see. To be completely fair, there is a lot that works in this film, I just talked about the visual effects which sometimes look really good. David Arnold's soundtrack is also great, though that might be nostalgia talking.
I also like how the film portrays New York as a massive jungle of steel and concrete, permanently shrouded with thick fog and sheets of rain, and I love the atmosphere of the city after Godzilla's attack, with the quiet, empty streets and massive buildings, now little more than hiding spots for a giant monster, it really makes Godzilla feel like an occupying force in the city, a city that was already cold, wet and miserable. On another bright side, for as much of a misfire as this film was, I do think it's ultimately had a positive impact on the Godzilla franchise, as odd as that may sound. Thanks to the 2014 film, this is no longer what people first think of when they think of the American Godzilla, and I think this film was a painful lesson that Hollywood needed to learn when it came to Godzilla, so when it came time to try again, the franchise and its legacy were treated with a lot more respect, and as a result, Godzilla made his resurgence. This film hurt the Godzilla brand, but not only has the brand healed, it's grown stronger and I believe that the extent to which this film fucked up is part of the reason why, as without the mistakes it made being learned from, Godzilla would be in a completely different place today. And as for the film's monster, he's remembered a lot more fondly than the film itself. He appeared in an animated series that followed the events of this film, and it's a good series that a lot of people have nostalgic memories of. Toho rebranded the monster as Zilla and featured him in Godzilla Final Wars. Though that was the last time Zilla would appear in a film, he's since made appearances in IDW's Godzilla comics and the prequel novels to the Godzilla anime trilogy. It's a shame that this monster will always be tied to this film, because he genuinely is a cool monster that could have been something special if he wasn't supposed to be Godzilla.
That's a lot of fish
I feel like I've said this a thousand times over the years, but the 1998 Tristar Godzilla is a failure. It was a film where the people making it thought they knew better, creating a reinvention of the King of the Monsters so radically different as to be unrecognisable, completely missing the point in the process. I wouldn't even say that the film holds up as a film, even when divorced from the series it's supposedly an adaptation of, because it's a complete tonal mess with characters that vary from admittedly pretty funny to utterly hideous. Being a Roland Emmerich movie, it has nothing important to say, but doesn't deliver in the way a Roland Emmerich movie typically does, and every flaw in the film not only draws attention to all the others, but to the big one, it's monster just isn't Godzilla. All that being said, however, the film does have good things going on, like it's use of practical effects in some of it's monster sequences, it's soundtrack still holding up, as well as some of its CGI. But in a strange twist, the thing that holds up most from this film is the monster itself, an instantly likable, sympathetic and fun creature that, were it not supposed to be Godzilla, could have had the chance to join the classic movie monsters, but is instead forever doomed to be remembered for this misfire. While my views on the film's quality haven't really changed in recent years, how I feel about it has changed a lot; where I once saw it as an abomination, I now see it as an unfortunate but important step in the history of Godzilla, one that the franchise probably needed so that it could be reborn as the cinematic juggernaut it deserves to be, so thank you, 1998 Godzilla, you still mostly suck, but thank you.
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