GODZILLA 2000: Return of the King - Film Review

By: Steve Biodrowski
Date: Thursday, August 17, 2000

It's been fifteen years since a new Godzilla film was last released on U.S. shores (the 1998 American production does not count), and the American distributor TriStar seems to have gone out of its way to rekindle unpleasant memories of Godzilla 1985. As with that misbegotten New World release, the latest effort from Toho Studios has been treated with what can only be called contemptslapped with an English dubbing job that attempts to render the film as a piece of ridiculous camp, instead of presenting it as a piece of lightweight, fast-paced, colorful entertainment (which it most assuredly is, if you can turn off your ears to the verbal assault).

To be fair, Godzilla 2000 has not lost as much in the translation as some past Toho efforts. No new footage (a la Godzilla, King of the Monsters, King Kong Vs. Godzilla, and Godzilla 1985) has been inserted; the re-editing is minimal; and much of the actual story remains intact. Still, there is no reason at this date for such incompetent voice work. The recent Jackie Chan imports may not have been perfect, but the new music, voices, and editing were at least an acceptable compromise in exchange for seeing the film on the big screen; even TriStar's own video release of Godzilla Vs. Destroyah (to take one example) provided American viewers with a film that was virtually intactthe dubbing may not have been inspired, but the English dialogue clarified some points left unclear in subtitled versions, and there was no attempt to undermine original intent with campy performances and bad jokes.

In its original, Japanese-language form, Godzilla 2000: Millennium is an honorable attempt to update the King of the Monsters for contemporary audiences. It is also a knowing riposte to the misguided TriStar production of 1998 and a sort of commentary on the place the Godzilla holds in our collective consciousness. Avoiding direct continuity with any previous G-film, G-2000 nevertheless presents Godzilla as a familiar, longstanding threat; likewise, the film assumes that audiences are already familiar with the character, so little time is wasted on introducing him or setting up a back story. The advantage of the approach is obvious; unlike the Devlin-Emmerich abomination, which wasted time reintroducing us to a new version of an old character, this film hits the ground running, piling on effects and action like some kind of Jan DeBont extravaganza before settling into a slow midsection and finally jump starting the action again for a spectacular, knock-out, drag-down battle that should thrill not only hardcore kaiju fans but also lovers of comic book-type fantasy action (think Superman versus Doomsday or Wolverine versus Sabretooth).


The resemblance to the work of Jan DeBont is no doubt intentional. As G-Fans well remember, DeBont was the director originally slated to film the Americanized Godzilla. When that version fell apart (due to budget restrictions), DeBont went on to direct Twister instead, and many viewers have seen hints in that film of what his Godzilla might have been. In particular, the two scientists played by Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt have been seen as models of the lead characters for the aborted G-flick: enthusiastic thill-seekers whose quest for knowledge leads them to race towardsrather than run away fromthe awesome force of destruction they are studying.

Well, guess what? That's a big part of the story in G-2000. The script by Wataru Mimura and Hiroshi Kashiwabara posits the existence of the Godzilla Prediction Network, a collection of scientist who use sophisticated surveillance equipment to track Godzilla's movements in the hope of minimizing damage by predicting his appearances. The parallel with the plot of Twister is obvious, but more important is the point this makes regarding the lead scientist's attitude toward Godzilla: attempting to destroy this mutated force of nature is hopeless; the most one can achieve is damage control.

This cuts to the core of what Godzilla has always been about: a living nuclear nightmare, an embodiment of the horrors of Hiroshima, Godzilla (as initially conceived) was not merely some large menace that could be easily dispatched if only he would come out into the open where we could get a clear shot at him. If the plot of the original Godzilla film, Gojira/Godzilla, King of the Monsters, provided no explanation for the monster to attack major urban centers, it was because the explanation was in the metaphor, not the monster. Godzilla was a walking harbinger of Doom, of nature's judgment upon humanitya judgment that could not easily be rescinded.

The biggest problem with the TriStar's 1998 production of Godzilla was not a redesign that made the monster look like John Carradine in an iguana-suit; it was the complete psychological denial of the metaphor within the monster. Take that away, and all you have left is an oversized, clumsy animal, with no real resonance, no ability to inspire awe. Clearly, a big part of G-2000's goal is to restore that sense of awe, to show viewers how Godzilla can be updated for modern audiences without losing this essence. In a way, the film reads like a blue print for what TriStar should have done.

The problems inherent in recreating Godzilla for today's audiences involve familiarity with a forty-six year old icon that has had numerous ups and down, from heights of horror to depths of camp. Just what do you do with a new G-flick? A sequel? A remake? Do you make Godzilla the threat he was originally, or do you envision him as the defender of the Earth from the '70s kiddie films? These sorts of questions were advanced as the reason for the complete rethinking of Godzilla in the American version, but G-2000 sidesteps them easily, even triumphantly. But it definitely helps your enjoyment of the film if you are aware of the problem being overcome.

In fact, the whole film works best when viewed from a sort of post-modern perspective. (I know I'm risking serious derision for even using that phrase in a review of a Godzilla movie, but bear with me.) Some early viewers have complained about G-2000's minimalist approach to characterization and storytelling (expressing a preference for Daei Studio's ambitious but overrated Gamera 3). These complaints totally miss the point. This Godzilla film is not set up to function primarily as a traditional narrative structure; the entertainment value comes not so much from identifying with sympathetic characters and watching them achieve their goals. Instead, the film works as a sort of running commentary on what could and should be achieved in a Godzilla film.

Consequently, the film is filled with everything you want and expect to see, served up in healthy doses with only a minimum of plot to tie the big set pieces together. To a certain extent, things happen not because the story demands them but because the audience demands them. This is what we paid to see after all: tanks, planes, bombs, crumbling buildings, running crowds, radioactive heat beams, etc. In one of many amusing moments, the military reveals another in their endless line of weapons: a new super missile able to penetrate any surface and, presumable, kill Godzilla. As a plot development, the sequence has no impact, because we know it's not going to work. But as a commentary directed toward the audience, it's a wonderful, crowd-pleasing moment. We all remember those four missiles that felled Iguanazilla two years ago on the Brooklyn Bridge, so we enjoy the new scene not in suspense over its inevitable outcome but in eager anticipation of seeing Godzilla restored to his proper stature, shrugging off mankind's weapons with nothing more than an angry roar. It's a perfect movie moment, divorced from the strictest narrative concerns but nonetheless effective for it.

Of course, this approach is not without its pitfalls. Director Takao Okawara is an old, sure-hand at this kind of thing, but he's not quite up to the demands of sustaining a film on nothing but kinetic energy for an hour and a half. He takes the work seriously and delivers the goods, especially when working from a strong script, but when the script is sketchy, he's not going to fill in the gaps with any strong stylistic flourishes.

The barebones characterization leaves the actors mostly functioning as mouthpieces for exposition, explaining the actions of Godzilla and his newest opponent; inevitably, therefore, the human scenes tend to drag whenever the threat of the monsters is not imminent. Easily the actor who comes across the best is Hiroshi Abe as Katagiri (head of the government forces dedicated to destroying Godzilla); he makes a memorable impression because he is used in an almost iconic way as an authority figure. Often motionless, framed by Okawara's camera with his long coat flapping in the breeze while he delivers dialogue with a minimum of expression, Abe clearly resembles nothing so much as a live-action incarnation of an anime or manga character, and the effect works perfectly. He also gets one of the film's few truly dramatic moments, a face-to-face confrontation with Godzilla near the very end: he refuses to run for safety, shamed by the realization that this thing he wants to destroy is the only thing that could save the Earth.

In any case, the lack of human characterization serves to emphasize what fans already know: the truly important character is Godzilla himself, plus whatever new opponent he faces in each film. There is a story of sorts here, but the humans are mostly spectators. The antagonist is the mysterious (and apparently sentient) UFO that rises after lying for eons in the depths of Earth's ocean, and the anti-hero of the piece is Godzilla himself.

Not that Godzilla is a good guy: as in the Hesei series, he aggressively protects his turf against invaders; if humans benefit from that, it is mere coincidence. During the final battle, the collateral damage shows Godzilla's profound indifference for mankind, and during his initial attack on land, he wipes out an electrical power station for no apparent reason (although GPN director Shinoda [Takehiro Murata] speculates that he may be intentionally destroying mankind's energy sources).

In a nutshell, the dormant UFO (apparently an alien spaceship that crashed into the oceans before mankind existed) reactivates (rather like the one in Quatermass and the Pit/Five Million Years to Earth), then sets about leaning how to adapt to life on this planet. After scanning both humans and Godzilla, the intelligence guiding the craft decides that Godzilla is the dominant species on the planet; in order to take over, this alien lifeforce must assume that form. As luck would have it, the reason for Godzilla's apparent invulnerability is his tremendous healing power (dubbed Regenerator G-1), and if the new alien organism captures this power, it will be as unstoppable as Godzilla ever was, capable of establishing a thousand-year reign on this planet (hence the word 'millennium' in the Japanese titlea plot element dropped in the English version). This sets the stage for the final confrontation between the two supersized opponents, with the humans watching helplessly from the sidelines while the fate of the Earth is decided by powers beyond our control.

The battle benefits from considerable improvement in the level of Toho's special effects department, now under the direction of Kenji Suzuki. All the action and impact missing from the '98 travesty are on view here, achieved with an enjoyable exuberance even if the technical polish falls occasionally short of American effect efforts. Godzilla is still portrayed by a man-in-a-suit, but this simple approach is combined with more modern techniques, and the results are often impressive. Numerous composite shots combine the beast with live-action footage, inserting him into real locations instead of keeping him confined to an indoor stage with a painted sky for the background. Particularly noteworthy are some early moving camera shots, with Shinoda's jeep in the foreground racing with Godzilla in the background. Clearly filmed on location, not in front of a blue-screen or a rear-projection screen, the shots are wonderfully impressive and truly like nothing seen in the previous films. Not all the effects are up to this level (many of the UFO shots fall short), but the batting average is good enough that you tend to forgive the less spectacular moments.

The new suit is also impressive. Immediately recognizable as Godzilla, the new design nevertheless incorporates many elements (such as the bigger, spikier dorsal fins) that update the creature with a leaner, meaner look. The detailing is superb, helping to convey the necessary sense of size, and there are some nice touches like the eyelid that snaps open just before the opening title flashes on screen. If the head and face lack expressiveness, the film makes up for it with a judicious use of camera angles: from straight ahead, the new Godzilla design looks almost inquisitive; viewed from a slightly low angle to the side, the angry snarl is more clearly visible. In short, the beast has some personality. It somehow comes alive as a character in a way that the more sophisticated CGI creation of the American film never did.

Like the recent, rival Gamera series, the new film also makes judicious use of computer-generated effects. The familiar attacking planes sequences are quite enhanced by this technique, which is also employed to create morphing that portray the regenerative power absorbed by Godzilla's opponent, who continually heals after each attack. (The alien invader is called 'Orga,' short for 'organism,' in the Japanese version; the name still appears in the U.S. credits, even though the word is never spoken in the English dubbing.)

Finally, computers are used in one brief but brilliant moment, creating a wonderful CGI version of Godzilla swimming up from the depths of the ocean and passing the camera like an immense Imperial Destroyer in the Star Wars films. Unlike the side-to-side motion of Devlin and Emmerich's oversize lizard, this Godzilla swims with a whale like up-and-down undulation of his body (which is appropriate when one considers that his original Japanese name, Gojira, is a combination of the English word for gorilla and the Japanese word for whale, kurji). It's a moment that conveys the mystery and majesty of the character, another element sadly lacking from the American film.

With all this going for G-2000, it's a little hard to see why distributor TriStar opted to go for the cheap laugh with their dub job. Perhaps there is some resentment involvedan attempt to drag this film down to the level of their own highly criticized 1998 effort. (In some of the worst moments, it's easy to imagine Devlin and Emmerich getting the revenge by supervising this terrible reworking of a film that, in its original form, was quite superior to theirs.)

Obviously, subtitles were out of the question; to reach the widest possible audience, dubbing was a necessity. It's easy to see why some 'Americanization' of the dialogue would help viewers get into the experience, and lines like 'Quite your bitchin'!' actually do draw easy laughs that don't detract from the film as a whole. To be honest, some of the inside jokes are quite funny (a general says 'I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed,' like George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove; a newspaper editor cries out, 'Great Ceaser's Ghost,' like Perry White in the Superman comics).

But overall, the attempt seems to have been to reduce the film to the level of a Saturday science-fiction matinee from the '50s. The scientific exposition becomes bad movie dialogue; the occasional emotional outburst is awkward and strained; and worst of all, the new dialogue sometimes flies in the face of the visuals. In the worst example, near the conclusion, one character wonders aloud, 'Why does Godzilla keep protecting us?' At this particular moment, Godzilla is on an unimpeded rampage through the city stomping and torching everything in sight; protecting humanity is clearly not his concern. (Again, the Japanese dialogue made it clear that Godzilla was motivated by an instinct for revenge: he's mad about the beating he took during his first encounter with the UFO.)

Also on the down side for the U.S. release: the credits and titles look cheesy (again, aiming for a bad '50s feel), and the final shot is tagged with a hokey 'The End?' (like in The Blod) that makes no sense, because the image clearly tells us that the saga is far from over.

At least the music isn't quite the disappointment one anticipated. Although some of the original music by Hattori has been replaced by J. Peter Robinson (who re-scored some Jackie Chan films for recent U.S. release), many of the new musical passages consist of familiar themes by Akira Ifukube from previous Godzilla films. Thus, instead of Americanizing the soundtrack, the additions make G-2000 sound even more like a traditional Godzilla film. (The Japanese version of Godzilla 2000: Millennium contains only one brief excerpt of Ifukube's Godzilla theme, while the creature wades through a bay toward land.)

So, what's the bottom line? For dedicated fans, Godzilla 2000 is the perfect antidote to TriStar's Godzilla. The film falls far short of the ambitions on display in Gamera 3; on the other hand, it is not weighted down by the heavy-handed approach and internal contradictions that prevented that film from fully achieving its goals. So the two just about balance out in a way (despite what you may have heard elsewhere).

As for the more generalized fans of fantasy and science fiction, they should find something to enjoy as well in a film that eschews the big-budget excess of most American efforts in favor of a more old-fashioned hand-made approach, mixed with some newer techniques. Children will get a kick out of it, too, and their parents (when not groaning at the camp) will get a giggle out of some of the funnier lines. Even in its original form, G-2000 is not all it could or should have been, but it is a solid attempt to update a familiar icon who shows every sign of surviving well into the next millennium. The English-language bastardization is frequently embarrassing, but don't let that deter you from seeing the spectacular action on the big screen. You just might want to consider bringing a set of earplugs.