How do you do,
Sometime in 1997, you flipped on the television and saw a skeleton of a T-Rex crushed by a giant foot. Later, it's New Year's and something big knocks down the ball and a voice calls 1998, "the year of Godzilla".
That is the start of the marketing gimmick for Godzilla, which included all the commercializing tie ends for merchandising. Finally, on Memorial Day Weekend, Godzilla came stomping into theaters and then comes one of the infamous reveals in movie history, if not one of the most shocking let downs on one's expectations of the decade.
Plenty of things have been said of this movie already, in blogs and videos. If I were to make a thorough analysis here, I'm gonna need a bigger blog. So, it's best to be brief. For one, this isn't the first Godzilla movie, not by a long shot.
The history of Godzilla goes back to Japan in the 1950s, though the genesis of it is in Hiroshima in 1945. The Atomic bombings left a scar on Japan's psyche and the fears of a nuclear war became global as the US and the USSR underwent a nuclear arms race. The massive destruction, plus the incident with the fishing boat, led to Tomoyuki Tanaka to create the movie that went down in history. In 1954, via the Japanese film making company Toho Co., Ltd, he produced Gojira, introducing the world to the title character as an all destroying monster who is immune to anything the military has to offer. Godzilla lays waste to Tokyo in one scene that recreates Hiroshima. Eventually, a scientist with a weapon of mass destruction of his own decides to use it on the Big G and takes him with him. However, Godzilla wasn't out of the picture for long. From that, all through the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, Godzilla appeared on the big screen in a series of movies, sometimes as the destroyer, sometimes as the hero. The scenes with Godzilla were always done with a man in a suit filmed on a sound stage (which inspired the mecha battles to the "Super Sentai" series, the inspiration to Power Rangers).
The first time Godzilla was introduced to the States was in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, where like in Power Rangers has original footage of an American actor spliced up with Japanese footage and dubbing of extras. From there, Godzilla entered the American pop culture, including a 1970s cartoon where he is given a side kick, Godzookie, while foiling the bad guys. But, it wasn't really until the early 1990s that Hollywood got into work on making a movie to feature the Big G and Tri-Star got the rights from Toho. It was quite a project to make and it took years, and frequent changes to the creature and the story, before we got our finished project. Starring Matthew Broderick and directed by Robert Emmerich, the United States had a film adaptation of Godzilla, in a sort of remake of Gojira, though with many changes. The setting is moved to New York City (one might say, the Big G. has come to the Big Apple). They also decided to recreate Godzilla into a different monster for realism. This meant keeping him from standing erect, mostly, and having animal like movements. One thing Broderick's character, Nick Totopoulas, claims, "it's just an animal." One controversial thing that came out of this making Godzilla more realistic was the subtraction of his atomic breath, which the film makers sought to placate by having him send out gale force winds in a roar, sometimes blowing fire or causing objects to combust in the process, creating the illusion of the said attack. But that isn't the worst of it.
I find the suspense in the early scenes a vital hook, especially since the original movie doesn't always show Godzilla. It's like with the film Them! where you see wreckage and shell shocked people, and hear strange sounds, early in but you don't see the ants right away. They don't show up until we are thirty minutes into the movie. Godzilla does the same, showing almost forty minutes into this one. One term used for this is basically "Jaws affect", named for the 1975 movie where due to mechanical failures of the shark they wound using it less than intended, leading much of the movie having scenes where you didn't see the shark, but you saw the fin and heard the music.
The best moment in my opinion is when Godzilla enters New York. First his yanks on the fishing rod of an old man. Then comes into the fishing market by the dock and wreaks havoc in the streets. For the most part, we don't actually see all of Godzilla in these moments. Just bits of him, such as his feet. As Godzilla walks by, buildings take damage and cars fly, and some people seem to be killed. Now from here is where it begins to deviate (or things begin to go downhill, to some). In the 1954 version, Godzilla would destroy a few buildings and then head back to Tokyo Bay, saving the worst for later in the movie. Here, he stumps around, leaving a mess like a tornado, then "disappears". Logically, there is no way a creature that size could vanish. But he did. Turns out, they gave Godzilla the ability to burrow underground and he is under New York. Noting his taste for fish, Nick suggests they use it as bate to lure him out and it works, thus we finally see the Big G on screen.
As you would expect, the military gets a little trigger happy and open fires while Godzilla is eating, and the communications are messed up. Godzilla does take the bullets and tank shells as though he were made of titanium, but he ducks as missiles come at him. Then he runs about the streets with helicopters in pursuit. One thing everyone has caught on is that it seems Godzilla is running away from the military and most of the damage is done by the helicopters (sometimes coming across where the US military is idiotic in the process). To me, it seems he is actually leading the helicopters into a trap, as evidenced by the way he defeats them. When they fire a building and think they got him, he comes out from behind them as though to say, "on the contrary, I got you!" The military tries again, but Godzilla doesn't fall for the same trick twice. Instead, he withdraws and ducks into the bay, allowing us to see underwater battles. The US Navy comes in with submarines that seem to get Godzilla with their torpedoes. However, Godzilla is revealed to be playing dead and appeared again. Before that happens, Godzilla spends about twenty minutes of screen time absent.
A subplot is added to make Godzilla more menacing, though it seems to have backfired to some, which has him laying eggs that hatch out into little Godzillas. When we see the little monsters, they show that they are dangerous in that they can kill people for smelling like fish. Of course, they are vulnerable and are dispatched with. If there are other things to bring in, it's that the sequences with the babies seems too much like the velociraptor scenes in Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Once they are taken out, Godzilla returns and we get a climactic chase through the streets of New York (Matthew Broderick, by the way, is husband of Sarah Jessica Parker who was about to be made famous in Sex and the City, which aired in June of 1998, but I won't say the setting of New York in this movie and that show was anything other than a coincidence)
The chase becomes confusing, with Godzilla cornering everyone in the Park Avenue tunnel and then attempt to swallow them. Then they dash onto the bridge with Godzilla right behind them. Now, most see the climatic scene and think that this Godzilla was brought down by conventional weapons (considering it took twelve missiles from fighter jets that could sink a ship to bring him down). However, I disagree. It wasn't the missiles that killed Godzilla. They did hurt, but not kill. Hearing how he was letting out painful roars when he got caught in the suspension cables suggestions the bridge was tearing something inside him. Then, he falls over in a final attempt to crush the car, which is enough to break a few bones and something else (like his windpipe). Noting how earlier in the chase that Godzilla slipped and fell at one point shows that it did hurt, adding evidence to it. That is logical since a creature Godzilla's size, if it was knocked over the way the Japanese version was by another monster, would have broken every bone in his body.
There is plenty of things said about the movie and its depiction of Big G. It's a fact Toho was also displeased with the product that they (not the movie) took God out of Godzilla and renamed the creature as Zilla, or sometimes American Godzilla, and made a lot of pop shots at it. The term GINO has also been coined (meaning Godzilla In Name Only), which is something I never understood until I saw Avengers: Civil War and how it portrayed Spiderman. Back in 2014, Hollywood made another movie on Godzilla, only this time they made him resemble the Japanese counterpart and got rid of some of the taints from the 1998 movie. However, they also made Godzilla go from all destroyer to protector while having the Muto for the antagonist (might work better if this was a sequel instead of reboot, like with T2: Judgement Day).
But, so much is said about how it treats Big G that we almost never bring up the humans. I could never tell if Nick is supposed to be the hero or a comic relief, because he switches between them frequently. I also don't need to mention that Emmerich has replayed the nerd trope in his other movies. In each, he has a nerd hero who is goofy and awkward, often given words that are ignored. But, at least in Independence Day and Star Gate, their nerds actually do something in the film's climax, while Nick finds the nest and tells the military to roast it, before going on a chase to avoid the Big G. His former fling, Audrey, is a single woman working in New York as a journalist yet is not taken seriously by her boss. It's the standard plot line where a working woman tries to be treated in a serious manner and it doesn't happen from the start, all because of her quirks, or because she's a woman. Audrey complains of it to her friends, who are the standard married couple filling in for female friend and gay guy trope, while showing double standard abuse in another scene. When Audrey sees Nick, she tries to win him over by stealing her bosses tag and sneaking into a secret tent to see him at work, then comes upon the video not seen by the public and uses it for a report. The last gets Nick booted off the team and Audrey loses her story to her sleazy boss, anyway, and it ruins her reconciliation with Nick. Then we have Philippe, a French agent. The French are added as a third country, which one could imply were put there to avoid guilt of nuclear testing. Of course, Philippe mentions how his country makes mistakes that are costly, which is something that speaks to anyone. The military is given characters, such as Sergeant O'Neal, though not fleshed out. Plus, there is Mayor Ebert and his aid, Gene, who are obviously parodies of the film critic dual, Siskell and Ebert. I always find the mayor annoying. He shows no care for his people or the servicemen who die trying to kill Godzilla and makes a fuss about some building destroyed by the military.
Though we can learn from Godzilla how media hype is not what it's cracked up to be, the human characters will always be secondary to Big G, and even if you don't see this monster as the actual Godzilla, even saying this movie was wrongly titled, I do believe this movie can be comparable to many anti-nuke films of the past. Though parts of the film seem like rip offs of movies not related to Godzilla, the movie as a whole has aged well. The special effects are much better looking than some of things used in the 2014 movie (though the babies do seem fake) and the tension is really high when necessary. Will conclude that there is a good move in reducing Big G in this movie some. If Godzilla had his speed like in the movie coupled with his indestructible skin and atomic breath, imagine how great trouble it would be for the humans in the movie.
Plenty of things have been said of this movie already, in blogs and videos. If I were to make a thorough analysis here, I'm gonna need a bigger blog. So, it's best to be brief. For one, this isn't the first Godzilla movie, not by a long shot.
The history of Godzilla goes back to Japan in the 1950s, though the genesis of it is in Hiroshima in 1945. The Atomic bombings left a scar on Japan's psyche and the fears of a nuclear war became global as the US and the USSR underwent a nuclear arms race. The massive destruction, plus the incident with the fishing boat, led to Tomoyuki Tanaka to create the movie that went down in history. In 1954, via the Japanese film making company Toho Co., Ltd, he produced Gojira, introducing the world to the title character as an all destroying monster who is immune to anything the military has to offer. Godzilla lays waste to Tokyo in one scene that recreates Hiroshima. Eventually, a scientist with a weapon of mass destruction of his own decides to use it on the Big G and takes him with him. However, Godzilla wasn't out of the picture for long. From that, all through the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, Godzilla appeared on the big screen in a series of movies, sometimes as the destroyer, sometimes as the hero. The scenes with Godzilla were always done with a man in a suit filmed on a sound stage (which inspired the mecha battles to the "Super Sentai" series, the inspiration to Power Rangers).
The first time Godzilla was introduced to the States was in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, where like in Power Rangers has original footage of an American actor spliced up with Japanese footage and dubbing of extras. From there, Godzilla entered the American pop culture, including a 1970s cartoon where he is given a side kick, Godzookie, while foiling the bad guys. But, it wasn't really until the early 1990s that Hollywood got into work on making a movie to feature the Big G and Tri-Star got the rights from Toho. It was quite a project to make and it took years, and frequent changes to the creature and the story, before we got our finished project. Starring Matthew Broderick and directed by Robert Emmerich, the United States had a film adaptation of Godzilla, in a sort of remake of Gojira, though with many changes. The setting is moved to New York City (one might say, the Big G. has come to the Big Apple). They also decided to recreate Godzilla into a different monster for realism. This meant keeping him from standing erect, mostly, and having animal like movements. One thing Broderick's character, Nick Totopoulas, claims, "it's just an animal." One controversial thing that came out of this making Godzilla more realistic was the subtraction of his atomic breath, which the film makers sought to placate by having him send out gale force winds in a roar, sometimes blowing fire or causing objects to combust in the process, creating the illusion of the said attack. But that isn't the worst of it.
I find the suspense in the early scenes a vital hook, especially since the original movie doesn't always show Godzilla. It's like with the film Them! where you see wreckage and shell shocked people, and hear strange sounds, early in but you don't see the ants right away. They don't show up until we are thirty minutes into the movie. Godzilla does the same, showing almost forty minutes into this one. One term used for this is basically "Jaws affect", named for the 1975 movie where due to mechanical failures of the shark they wound using it less than intended, leading much of the movie having scenes where you didn't see the shark, but you saw the fin and heard the music.
The best moment in my opinion is when Godzilla enters New York. First his yanks on the fishing rod of an old man. Then comes into the fishing market by the dock and wreaks havoc in the streets. For the most part, we don't actually see all of Godzilla in these moments. Just bits of him, such as his feet. As Godzilla walks by, buildings take damage and cars fly, and some people seem to be killed. Now from here is where it begins to deviate (or things begin to go downhill, to some). In the 1954 version, Godzilla would destroy a few buildings and then head back to Tokyo Bay, saving the worst for later in the movie. Here, he stumps around, leaving a mess like a tornado, then "disappears". Logically, there is no way a creature that size could vanish. But he did. Turns out, they gave Godzilla the ability to burrow underground and he is under New York. Noting his taste for fish, Nick suggests they use it as bate to lure him out and it works, thus we finally see the Big G on screen.
As you would expect, the military gets a little trigger happy and open fires while Godzilla is eating, and the communications are messed up. Godzilla does take the bullets and tank shells as though he were made of titanium, but he ducks as missiles come at him. Then he runs about the streets with helicopters in pursuit. One thing everyone has caught on is that it seems Godzilla is running away from the military and most of the damage is done by the helicopters (sometimes coming across where the US military is idiotic in the process). To me, it seems he is actually leading the helicopters into a trap, as evidenced by the way he defeats them. When they fire a building and think they got him, he comes out from behind them as though to say, "on the contrary, I got you!" The military tries again, but Godzilla doesn't fall for the same trick twice. Instead, he withdraws and ducks into the bay, allowing us to see underwater battles. The US Navy comes in with submarines that seem to get Godzilla with their torpedoes. However, Godzilla is revealed to be playing dead and appeared again. Before that happens, Godzilla spends about twenty minutes of screen time absent.
A subplot is added to make Godzilla more menacing, though it seems to have backfired to some, which has him laying eggs that hatch out into little Godzillas. When we see the little monsters, they show that they are dangerous in that they can kill people for smelling like fish. Of course, they are vulnerable and are dispatched with. If there are other things to bring in, it's that the sequences with the babies seems too much like the velociraptor scenes in Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Once they are taken out, Godzilla returns and we get a climactic chase through the streets of New York (Matthew Broderick, by the way, is husband of Sarah Jessica Parker who was about to be made famous in Sex and the City, which aired in June of 1998, but I won't say the setting of New York in this movie and that show was anything other than a coincidence)
The chase becomes confusing, with Godzilla cornering everyone in the Park Avenue tunnel and then attempt to swallow them. Then they dash onto the bridge with Godzilla right behind them. Now, most see the climatic scene and think that this Godzilla was brought down by conventional weapons (considering it took twelve missiles from fighter jets that could sink a ship to bring him down). However, I disagree. It wasn't the missiles that killed Godzilla. They did hurt, but not kill. Hearing how he was letting out painful roars when he got caught in the suspension cables suggestions the bridge was tearing something inside him. Then, he falls over in a final attempt to crush the car, which is enough to break a few bones and something else (like his windpipe). Noting how earlier in the chase that Godzilla slipped and fell at one point shows that it did hurt, adding evidence to it. That is logical since a creature Godzilla's size, if it was knocked over the way the Japanese version was by another monster, would have broken every bone in his body.
There is plenty of things said about the movie and its depiction of Big G. It's a fact Toho was also displeased with the product that they (not the movie) took God out of Godzilla and renamed the creature as Zilla, or sometimes American Godzilla, and made a lot of pop shots at it. The term GINO has also been coined (meaning Godzilla In Name Only), which is something I never understood until I saw Avengers: Civil War and how it portrayed Spiderman. Back in 2014, Hollywood made another movie on Godzilla, only this time they made him resemble the Japanese counterpart and got rid of some of the taints from the 1998 movie. However, they also made Godzilla go from all destroyer to protector while having the Muto for the antagonist (might work better if this was a sequel instead of reboot, like with T2: Judgement Day).
But, so much is said about how it treats Big G that we almost never bring up the humans. I could never tell if Nick is supposed to be the hero or a comic relief, because he switches between them frequently. I also don't need to mention that Emmerich has replayed the nerd trope in his other movies. In each, he has a nerd hero who is goofy and awkward, often given words that are ignored. But, at least in Independence Day and Star Gate, their nerds actually do something in the film's climax, while Nick finds the nest and tells the military to roast it, before going on a chase to avoid the Big G. His former fling, Audrey, is a single woman working in New York as a journalist yet is not taken seriously by her boss. It's the standard plot line where a working woman tries to be treated in a serious manner and it doesn't happen from the start, all because of her quirks, or because she's a woman. Audrey complains of it to her friends, who are the standard married couple filling in for female friend and gay guy trope, while showing double standard abuse in another scene. When Audrey sees Nick, she tries to win him over by stealing her bosses tag and sneaking into a secret tent to see him at work, then comes upon the video not seen by the public and uses it for a report. The last gets Nick booted off the team and Audrey loses her story to her sleazy boss, anyway, and it ruins her reconciliation with Nick. Then we have Philippe, a French agent. The French are added as a third country, which one could imply were put there to avoid guilt of nuclear testing. Of course, Philippe mentions how his country makes mistakes that are costly, which is something that speaks to anyone. The military is given characters, such as Sergeant O'Neal, though not fleshed out. Plus, there is Mayor Ebert and his aid, Gene, who are obviously parodies of the film critic dual, Siskell and Ebert. I always find the mayor annoying. He shows no care for his people or the servicemen who die trying to kill Godzilla and makes a fuss about some building destroyed by the military.
Though we can learn from Godzilla how media hype is not what it's cracked up to be, the human characters will always be secondary to Big G, and even if you don't see this monster as the actual Godzilla, even saying this movie was wrongly titled, I do believe this movie can be comparable to many anti-nuke films of the past. Though parts of the film seem like rip offs of movies not related to Godzilla, the movie as a whole has aged well. The special effects are much better looking than some of things used in the 2014 movie (though the babies do seem fake) and the tension is really high when necessary. Will conclude that there is a good move in reducing Big G in this movie some. If Godzilla had his speed like in the movie coupled with his indestructible skin and atomic breath, imagine how great trouble it would be for the humans in the movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment