Godzilla 1998 Review

[Michele Firmasyah]

Ihad been working on this review for a long while, and I wanted to make sure I get all my thoughts down on it before I posted, and so here it is. There will be minor spoilers in some aspects, so if you don't want any, just skip this review entirely.

It's been a while since I've done some reviews, so I figure I'm gonna review something that I've been getting into a lot as of late; Fallout! I have finally become integrated into the fandom, and I am happy for it, I've been in love with this series more and more as I get involved with it. I've gotten Fallout 4 in honor of the show (which I intend to review at some point after I finish it) and I

Sorry I haven't been checking in as often as I should; rest assured I'm not dead, I'm still here, just been silent as of late. Still working on fics, but also constantly debating with myself on what to focus on next, wanted to make some new stuff that isn't just Shattered or Star Wars. Wanna bring more folks in, do somethin' new.

Hard to believe another year has passed, hasn't it? *sighs* how time has flown by. A lot's happened this year; more stories, more creativity and entertainment has come, and I've learned more about myself, and I am very glad for that.

First thing I want to say, is... and this is completely unrelated. I... love, the Force Awakens. I love the movie, its a pretty great way to bring the Star Wars franchise back. I... HATE, the Lego Force Awakens game... because there are too many bugs that are driving me nuts. The same glitch happened twice now, and the controls are freaking insane. Why do you need to make things overly complicated. And worse, one of the puzzles before with throwing BB8 like a basketball, it worked before... out of nowhere, it decided to give me the finger and say 'Screw you, you're not going to play the rest of the game!'

I am a big fan of Godzilla. I truly am. Sure, giant rubber suits fighting other guys in rubber suits, bad dubbing, its still entertaining to watch! So in 1998, the same guys who worked on movies like Stargate, and the classic Independence Day film, decided to put this movie together. And to their credits, they advertised this movie pretty well. In most of their marketing, you never got a good look at the monster. You only got a few glimpses of the creature's body, but that's it. And there would be some signs that said 'his foot is as long as this bus' or 'his head is as big as this sign'. Those were pretty smart advertising.

So, after getting a physical copy of it on VHS... and then ending up losing it because for some reason we got rid of it. Boo. And then getting a physical copy of it on DVD, what did we get when we saw it? Well it--

Holy crap that was stupid! What the heck guys!? Why!? Why did you do this!? What's wrong with you? This is absolutely terrible! This is... okay its not the worst movie I've seen, I'll give it that, and its not the worst movie in general, but its still bad. Why is this bad? Well, let me explain. This is, 1998's Godzilla.

So 'Godzilla' centers around a wormy guy who's a dork, a reporter lady who's supposed to be his ex-girlfriend, a bunch of totally unlikely heroes, and a bunch of military morons are all asked to do their best to hunt down a giant monstrosity that they believe is supposed be Godzilla but its not.

Let me make one thing clear. I actually knew this was a different adaptation. I found out this was the American adaptation and not the Japanese ones. But still as another adaptation, I expected it to be better than I had hoped. But its not.

First thing I will give credit for is New York. Maybe its me, and probably just my mindset, but I do like how New York is represented, kind of like in Disney's Oliver and Company. Its a tight city, but there's a lot of character. Lots of people working day and night, and tons of pouring down rain. ... Does it always rain hard in New York? I don't know.

Some bits of the action scenes can be entertaining to watch as well, especially when you take in the absolute stupidity that these guys can't shoot zip. I think they cause more destruction than Godzilla here, seriously!

Look, as a stand alone adaptation of Godzilla... this Godzilla sucks. He's absolutely nothing like him. I expected him to be different, but I thought they'd at least know how this king of monsters works. They don't get a single thing right.

That's literally all I've got for him. Oh, and I know that in Godzilla movies there'd be some cool enemy to fight, but this is a stand alone movie so there's no other entity. But it probably wouldn't have been good if he had another monster to fight. This guy is just a generic dinosaur after all. Kind of like the Indominus Rex. Nice creativity there Jurassic World.

Acting, is terrible. Matthew Broderick, I'm sorry, your performance in this just wasn't good. And the same kind of goes to the other actors, I can't really think of one actor or a single character I liked in the entire movie. Not one! None of them are likable in the slightest. The ex-girlfriend to Broderick, and I'm not kidding here, steals top secret government information to boost her ego on the news and doesn't care in the slightest if he gets booted off the assignment. Wow, what a *****.

Oh, but speaking of characters, there's one thing I got to point out. There's two characters in this movie who are obvious spoofs of Siskill and Ebbert (so sorry for not spelling them right!). But, why? Is there a point to doing this?

Oh wait, I forgot. These guys didn't like your past movies, so it only makes sense to make a straw man of them both for this movie. But here's my question. If you wanted to get back at these guys, why not kill them off? If you're going to the trouble of putting them in the monster movie, why not have the monster kill them? They don't do anything in this entire movie, so what's the point in putting them in? Even Siskill himself said and I quote

... You know that's actually a solid point. Here's a chance to get back at these two who didn't like your work in the past, and in a Godzilla move, and you don't even have the monster kill them? That's pretty bad.

Also, one other thing. Not very mature on their part. You're making figures of them in your film that's basically trying to insult them because they had an opinion and didn't like your movie? Geez, and I thought it's bad that Hollywood blames the masses for not liking their crappy films with no effort. Or even Paul Feig's representation of his paying audience in the Ghostbusters 'reboot'. Or how... no, no. Not going there. Promised myself I wasn't going to talk about him, and I only go off on a tangent when I do, lets just keep the hate to this movie.

Oh, and the writing... oh boy, the writing's bad. Somehow, and get this, Godzilla actually manages to hide in one of the most populated areas in the United States. Seriously!? I'm pretty sure a giant lizard would be pretty easy to pick out. Its not like he's a ninja turtle in a trench coat and hat.

And a lot of the scenes, now that I look at it, just rip off other scenes from other films. Some of the flying scenes are pretty much like from Star Wars, and even when there's a bunch of baby Godzilla's running around, its pretty much like hiding from the Raptors in Jurassic Park. Does originality even exists?

Oh our ending... ay-yi-yi... Godzilla gets killed because of course he does, and the movie attempts and fails, trying to make you feel for him. Sure, throw that half-***ed thing at the end, try to make us care when you clearly shown you haven't cared at all!

Honestly, there's nothing much I can say. It bombed, and it bombed big time. None of these people wrote a good story, the special effects are fake, the logic makes no sense, the actors are terrible, and on top of all of that, these guys did no research on why everyone loved Godzilla. This Godzilla is a spit in the face to every Godzilla fan, and quite frankly, it deserved to be killed in 2004 when Godzilla woke from his icy slumber.

I don't have much to say about this film.

Let's see, well I think the girlfriend who stole the government info did go through at least a little character development, her co-workers or whoever motivated her to do it "nice guys finish last" and she did regret it, however a big part of why she regretted it was because someone else took credit for her story.

Lastly I hate that there's a post credit scene (I think) or at least a sequel bait scene where one of the babies survived. If you aren't guaranteed a sequel don't set up for one, even if you have an idea for it, save it for if you get the okay. It's better to tell a complete story than an incomplete one.

The pair's connection to the more obscure aspects of kaiju eiga is actually quite fascinating. In fact, the intro to the Tribune Media version of their show (called At the Movies) from 1982 through 1986 was shot at the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, which later became infamous for its summer screenings of low-quality tokusatsu DVDs. While that may not a direct connection to the genre by any means, it's certainly worth mentioning here.

If we want to find all their references to Godzilla and other kaiju, it turns out that we have to go back at least to the very first show that Siskel and Ebert ever hosted. That show was the November 1975 episode of Opening Soon at a Theater Near You, which was shown on the PBS affiliate WTTW Chicago. In the intro, stills from both King Kong Escapes (1967) and Destroy All Monsters (1968) are included in the opening montage that mostly features images from classic Hollywood films.

Mention should be made that, after all this trashing, the poster for Godzilla 1985 somehow made it into Ebert's office during the 1986-99 intro on the Buena Vista Television version of their program. While I couldn't find a clear view of it on any of the uploaded videos of the intro I watched, you can see the poster much more clearly in this short video of another Roger Ebert review of the movie.

Many years later, Siskel and Ebert would take a crack at the Gamera series, and the results would actually be more positive -- to a point. In his 1997 written review of Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995), Ebert explains:

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