Godzilla (1998)

14 years ago, a bolt of lightning cuts through the sky and we see a Japanese fishing vessel powering through the stormy sea. Something bleeps on the radar, the captain takes one look and sounds the alarm. Gojira is here.


The 1998 re-make/re-boot was the first Godzilla movie to be produced by an American studio. In fact, it was the first Godzilla to be produced by a non Japamese company ever, and the initial hype pointed towards something awesome.
Thus was the first Godzilla I ever saw and so I tend to get a little biased when talking about it, but I think we can all agree that this is not a good movie. Even I can say that after watching it yesterday for the first time in over 10 years.

Bad as it may be, it isn't the worst Godzilla movie I've ever seen, that prize goes to Godzilla vs Megalon.

The story actually have a few great points. Like the fact that Godzilla is not in New York to destroy it, he is looking for a good place to nest and we just happened to be in the way.
If the original Godzilla was natures way of getting back at humanity, this godzilla was a product of our arrogance against nature. That almost works better in some ways. He is a generally not aggeessive against humans unless we provoke him and the only reason we see him as a threat is because he is bigger than us.

In that way it plays better on our innate fear of what we cannot control than the original, but...

That is all it does well. The rest of the movie is more or less a disaster. Very fitting since it is the master of disaster himself who both wrote and directed it. None other than Roland Emerich.

The acting is flat and stiff from almost every major actor/actress, the only real exception is Doug Savant as the stuttering Sgt. O'neil and Hank Azaria as news camera man "Animal"

But the worst part of re-watching this debaucle was, except having your childhood beliefs smashed by your own adult sense of critisism, is seeing how badly it has aged. Where the effects in the original still had some dramatic impact, the 1998 version did not wow me at all. The monster looked downright horrible in some scenes.

It only makes it worse when you look at The lost world, a movie that came out the year before and still looks convincing today.

Godzilla 1998 was by all means a failiure, but it doesn't deserve all the hate it recieved. It wasn't the worst Godzilla ever and the franchise had by that time already started to fade away. There aren't that many good Godzilla movies at all if we're going to be brutally honest. The American just had the misfortune to give us false hope and therefore become a scape goat for past sins.