Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 13 (Godzilla 1998)

THIS IS MY BUILDING NOW

You're goddamned right we're doing this. It'll even be a redemptive reading, to the best attempt possible. It would be hyperbolic to claim that nobody in history has ever taken this movie seriously and critiqued it beyond gatekeeping it out of Godzilla canon or whatever, but it feels like that at times. Maybe it's my unique perspective of seeing this as a teen plus only having seen two or three of the serious Toho Godzilla pictures, but... well, on paper I hardly see a difference. A difference, that is, between a big dumb lizard sometimes referred to as Godzilla smashing the shit out of New York in a 90's summer blockbuster and a big Japanese lizard named Godzilla fighting three-headed dragons, King Kong, and mechanized versions of itself. Maybe I'm wrong and even the goofy goddamn Toho Godzilla movies have more nuance and heart than this American version has in one tooth. Feel free to call me on it, but that's just how I feel sitting here. Does Godzilla 1998 work? It's... complicated. That is to say, it generally works and I don't feel like I sat through the worst goddamn movie ever. At the same time, this movie has a lot of problems behind it. It ain't perfect, but you know what? I revel in that shit. I can make something of it for a post. Let's roll.


The most interesting thing, for me, is the setting. New York. Now, this is about the furthest thing from the more dramatic Godzilla films we've covered... all two of them. Still, trying to run our thoroughline reading of Godzilla leads to something strange and almost prescient. Recall that the original was made due to anxiety over the wound of Japan getting nuclear bombs dropped on it, and the fresh memory of that devastation. Godzilla 1984 was made at a tense moment in the Cold War, and the US/Soviet relations on display in that movie reflect that. So, too, does the Godzilla in '84 become a living metaphor for nuclear destruction. Apply that to the American Godzilla, though, and you don't find an analog... until you use the knowledge of the future. Yeah. Three years after this one is when we had a specific anxiety over buildings in New York getting blown up and trashed. This, of course, does absolutely nothing to improve the quality of the movie. It's just strange in hindsight. Okay, what is the movie actually doing then? It's being transformative. It's taking a bunch of elements from other blockbusters and throwing them into the Godzilla blender. You have not just Godzilla in here, but other big American blockbusters. The early parts of the movie make me think of Jaws, and there is even a recreation of one specific shot from Jaws where the camera zooms but keeps in on an actor in frame. I'm not savvy in film language, but they pull it. Even wilder is the final act of this movie, which straight up appears to kill Godzilla and then become a goddamn melange of Aliens and Jurassic Park, with giant eggs that hatch out baby Godzillas which then run around not at all unlike the velociraptors... and then Godzilla comes BACK and we get a car chase with her! Yes. Her. We've got a giant lizard that lays eggs and is pissed off that her young were killed. I don't care that the movie keeps referring to Godzilla with male pronouns after this reveal. American Godzilla is female. Look, I don't care how much of a blatant attempt at following a trend it is; any movie which is malleable enough to swap out a kaiju plot and say "WE'RE DOING ALIENS/JURASSIC PARK NOW, MOTHERFUCKERS" is doing something under the hood to make me pay attention.


So what doesn't work? Oh, everything else. The effects don't hold up all that well. The characters? Ehhh. They're going for the drama and all that, but it doesn't land. Odder still are the frequent attempts at being funny. Absolutely one funny bit landed with me, and that's Matthew Broderick tipping over things of basketballs and gumball machines to make the baby Godzillas slip and fall so he can get away. Mashing Aliens and Jurassic Park together is one thing. All of a sudden whapping you with a slapstick joke? Good god. Oh, and the military kills this Godzilla at the end. Absolutely off base with the Toho Godzilla, but let's be real; did you expect an American blockbuster that's practically military porn already to show the military as completely ineffective against the big monster? I didn't. Hell, the inciting incident that creates this Godzilla is specifically French nuclear testing. Not, you know, AMERICAN ONES. They bother to pin the blame on the French, rather than take any accountability for this stuff in their movie... but, again, did you expect them to? Oh, and why the hell are Siskel and Ebert in this? It's not really them, but there's Mayor Ebert and his assistant Gene and they look as close to the men as is possible. Well, I looked it up. Turns out Siskel and Ebert gave the previous movies made by these creative minds bad reviews. Wow. How goddamn petty can you get? Christ. Let's bail out of this one. I think I've done enough. It almost kind of sort of works, this one. If you try. Most people don't ever get past "THAT'S NOT THE REAL GODZILLA" so I think I've done what I can here.