I swear, Toho's Godzilla output post-1984 was designed to trip me up and confuse me. The movie titled Godzilla vs. Biollante isn't a big dumb campy monster brawl movie, but a thoughtful introspective look at Japan's changing times and its spirituality. Godzilla 2000, a title that doesn't promise much other than Godzilla in the year 2000, is the kind of campy monster movie. This is also, somehow, Toho's "response" to the 1998 American Godzilla. Which is a movie I actually kind of like, for nostalgic teenage reasons. Yeah, according to the history, Toho was kind of done with Godzilla in the 90's and they let Roland Emmerich and Tri-Star play with him in the hopes they'd do something interesting. Given that Godzilla 1998 is about as beloved as, say, Castlevania II, Toho was pressed into giving the big stompy boy another shot. What they crafted ended up going for another six movies, a whole "Millennium Series" if you will that culminates in some sort of goddamned 50th anniversary special where Godzilla fights all of the monsters. I hear things about it, so we won't tread there. Instead let's see what we can make of Godzilla 2000.Well, it fires on all cylinders from the word go. No slow burn, no thoughtful human drama setting it up, just... HEY FUCKERS IT'S GODZILLA! TWO THOUSAAAAAND!!! I should clarify, the original version was released in 1999 but it was still called Godzilla 2000. This will be important in a moment. What have we got here? A bunch of Godzilla trainspotters, in a sense, called the Godzilla Prediction Network, who go out hunting for Godzilla so they can warn people to evacuate or whatnot. It's interesting, then, that the trio here kind of slot into the same roles as people from the 1998 Godzilla? You've got the sciencey guy, his science colleague, and his reporter friend. Sure, the science colleague role is his daughter instead of a potential second love interest, but you can see the parallels. In doing more research, it's strange to see that certain plot elements from later episodes of Godzilla: The Series (the Saturday morning cartoon that was the sequel to the 1998 film, for those of you keeping score at home) show up here. Hmm. For all the Internet will rally over yelling that the 1998 film "doesn't count", a lot of it sure did show up in proper Toho Godzilla, huh? Hmmm. Anyway, I gotta give props to the opening bits here. We've seen Godzilla attack by night before, but this is a foggy night. The hazy half-formed glimpses of a giant thing attacking from a veil of fog? Holy fuck. This is atmospheric as all hell. It's definitely something I've never seen before.
Speaking of things I've never seen before, A GIANT FLOATING ROCK! That's Godzilla's nemesis in this movie. A giant floating rock that gets lifted out from under the sea by a research team, and is actually some sort of alien spaceship which lay dormant underwater for millions of years until science re-activated it with light. There's a line from the scientist who led that team where he laments his folly, and I'm like... Wait, that doesn't quite track with me. A folly is when you go against Japanese spirituality to play God and put your daughter's essence into a giant plant monster. You were just like, exploring the ocean and found a cool meteorite. Not quite the same. It's when the alien ship hacks into Japan's computers to assimilate data on Godzilla and Earth and whatnot that we get our window into the current anxiety within this movie. It's so cute, this. You probably got it already, but like... a movie made in 1999 that has all of the computers going berserk and freaking out. It's Godzilla taking on the metaphor of anxiety over fucking Y2K! The shit where we all thought every computer was going to self-destruct because they'd roll over to 1900 or some shit! Oh my god! That's such an of its time concern, and it only adds to the charm of this movie. It really just wants to be a fun sort of "don't take it too seriously" romp with alien spaceships and the Y2K bug as alien infection (and indeed, the aliens' goal is to kickstart a new 1000-year empire, right at the cusp of the year 2000, so add in a bit of era changing only for the calendar year). Oh, and think of this too: th ship eventually assimilates Godzilla's DNA and mutates itself into a Godzilla-like creature with amazing regeneration powers. Kind of like the movie drawing inspiration from 1998's film? God, even the design of the monster, Orga, kind of looks like the Amercian Godzilla if you stare hard enough. It's wild, it's gonzo, it's a little visceral near the end... and it's actually kinda fun. I wouldn't call it my favorite Godzilla film, but you know what? You can have a good time with it. I think that's enough talking about giant monsters for this year.
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