GODZILLA 2000 on Compact Disc

By: Randall D. Larson
Date: Saturday, July 01, 2000

GODZILLA music has grown up over the years, as has the character and the film series. For its initial three or four incarnations, the creature was a malevolent gigantis, and treated seriously by its composers as well as its writers and filmmakers. Ifukube's original score for GODZILLA and GODZILLA VS. THE THING, and Masaru Sato's music for GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN (aka in US: GIGANTIS THE FIRE MONSTER) were dynamic, straightforward action/horror/ adventure cues. But as the series became more juvenile, so did its music. Silly cartoon songs and jangly, childlike melodies accompanied the foolish antics of the giant monster as it punched out a series of enemy alien and mechanical monsters fed to it by increasingly strained screenwriters. With GODZILLA 1985, however, a renewed acquaintance with the franchise led to more serious undertakings, highlighted by then state-of-the-art effects and a powerful, dynamic musical sensibility.

The music for this latest and by all appearances most technically ambitious Toho Godzilla rampage, GODZILLA 2000, is composed by Takayuki Hattori, who previously wrote the music for GODZILLA VS. SPACEGODZILLA (1994 a suite of its music is available on GNP's Best Of Godzilla Vol. 2). Hattori's music is orchestrally based, intricately orchestrated. It has a much fuller dynamic than Akira Ifukube's thin-sounding but archetypal original Godzilla music (his 'Godzilla March' is reprised on the CD in a crisp new orchestral recording). Hattori's music is well developed, texturally interesting, with an effective use of synths and a massive choir to give the score a stunning dynamic range. It's powerful stuff.

Like Ifukube, Hattori merges orchestral crescendos with a militaristic percussion base, contrasting the endless battles between Godzilla and the Japanese military that are so prevalent in these films. This is not a theme-dominated score but rather a textural one, with various resilient orchestral patterns used to create a thrilling dynamic that generates in the music a powerful thrust. There is one powerful theme, a rather heroic chordal assembly associated with Godzilla, but otherwise the score relies on unrelated musical developments, sonorities, and crescendos. Most cues on the CD merge into one another without a break, which further enhances the music's listenability.

But Hattori's percussive dissonances also create some terrific sonic textures with the orchestra, as in 'Giant UFO Approaching' and 'Before the Explosion.' Hattori keeps his large orchestra well in hand, with woodwind-driven orchestrations building large blocks of music that successfully enliven the threat of the giant reptiles whose battle forms the thrust of this film. Action cues like 'The Encounter With The Mysterious Object' and 'Astonishing Resurrection' are massive, surging music, the electronic instruments enhancing the symphonics to a heightened effect. Pianistic patterns create rushing waves that drive the music forward, while violin filigrees and sustained melodic strains drift gently over even the most dissonant underpinnings, creating a melodic loveliness even in the midst of battle, while plaintive flute melodies ('Thinking of My Dad') and harmonic oboe soliloquies ('Miraculous Survival') also humanize the events transpiring during the destruction. A quiet choral motif even lends a degree of sympathy to the opposing monster ('Orga: Irony Of Fate'). Mysterioso cues like 'Eerie Silence' and 'The Wonder of G Revealed' are intricate patterns of harp and woodwinds, furtive and enigmatic, with a splendid choir added to give the latter cue an effective and wondrous quality.