25 Years Ago, 'Godzilla' Taught Me That Movies Could Be Bad

By Alberto Cox Délano | Film | May 31, 2023 |

By Alberto Cox Délano | Film | May 31, 2023 |

You know that meme about how “men will turn X years and base their entire personality off of one of these…”, with X being 4 years old and the these being dinosaurs, trucks, trains, tractors, or planes? Well, and I guess you could add sports, for the ones that will actually get dates during high school. In my case, predictably, it was dinosaurs, with the 90s being the golden decade for us dinosaur kids. However, there is something that trumps dinosaurs in the mind of an 8-year-old kid, and that something was Godzilla. I don’t know how and when I became aware of what Godzilla was; the public channel here broadcasted some Heisei-era pictures, but there were never such things as midnight showings where I could discover the original 1954 movie. Whatever the case, I was well acquainted with the Godzilla mythos by the time I turned nine. He was already a mythical hero in my mind, second only to good old Jesus and… President Salvador Allende? So when the 1998 adaptation was announced, with the promotional material and merchandising flooding every relevant place in my purview, I wasn’t just excited, I think it was closer to what the original fans of Star Wars felt when Episode I came around. This was going to be an all-out, hundred-million-dollar blockbuster directed by the same guy that made that movie that blew everyone’s minds two years prior: Roland Emmerich, which in my mind might as well make him the Holy Spirit to the Father Spielberg and the Son George Lucas. It was going to be a religious experience for the very nerdy, very only child, easily excitable nine-year-old me.

Thing is, I never saw Godzilla 1998 on the big screen. Neither did I see Independence Day, Twister, or even Titanic. See, in the previous year (1997), my mother had taken me to see two of the Star Wars re-releases, and more importantly for my education, The Lost World, and the latter kind of overreved that specific skill in motherly devotion that is accompanying your child to the movies. She never even liked sci-fi. And since I was a polite and shy kid, I never begged her to take me to see Godzilla or any of those other ’90s classics. In fact, I think I finally caught up with it a year or two later on cable, and then I went on to watch it several times every time it came up on TV until I turned 13. But I did devour everything, and I mean everything I could about the movie, which meant never missing a single issue of this TV docuseries on movie VFX, which had a whole episode dedicated to the making of the movie. And my mom did have to take me to KFC just so I could get the Godzilla promotional toy, all concluding on getting the 7-inch toy for Christmas that year, which would become my favorite toy that I keep to this day. The next year, an animated series continuing the story came out, focused on the same characters and a surviving spawn of the movie’s monster, which imprinted on the lead and helped them fight other kaiju. It was awesome, and I watched every episode. I even bought the terrible, terrible novelization, much older than I should’ve.

My fascination and love for Godzilla remain the same. And it’s not something that I hold onto as a way to connect with my inner child or some clichéd thing like that; I do believe it’s one of the most original and compelling concepts ever created. But for all my nostalgia for Godzilla 1998 as a formative experience, I don’t hold the movie in the same regard. To quote the very funny Australians from Mr. Sunday Movies, this was the movie that taught me that movies could be bad because I soon realized this was a terrible movie about something I loved.

The movie came during the peak season for disaster movies, and in a year where Hollywood had a particular zeal for destroying NYC on the big screen. Hollywood had been trying for years to get an adaptation made, and by the early ’90s, they inched closer and closer, after the success of Jurassic Park, with Jan De Bont at the helm and. By 1995, the project fell apart. But with Sony/Columbia having millions of dollars to Toho for the rights and banking on the massive success of Independence Day, they gave the project to Emmerich and his frequent collaborator Dean Devlin. But they had to do it in a two-year framework, and they would discard the vast majority of the previous script by Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, who would later be behind Pirates of the Caribbean and Shrek. Godzilla itself was completely redesigned into a more “realistic” fashion by PD Patrick Tatopoulos. Which meant, in true ’90s fashion, that Godzilla would be made a lot skinnier and a lot nimbler. The result was… well, basically a Jurassic Park Velociraptor and the Xenomorph. But I won’t deny it, it looked cool as hell. It just… it wasn’t scary, it was cute.

Even ten-year-old me realized that Godzilla 1998’s flaws amounted to a piece of shit bigger than the sum of its parts. At least Emmerich succeeded in creating tension and ambiance during the first act. When Godzilla attacks, NYC is experiencing a torrential storm, making everything gloomier, a further symbol of nature’s relentlessness. The actual reason they did this was to better hide the limitations of CGI at the time. They still failed spectacularly because the CGI Godzilla does not hold up. Now we know that two years is an impossible timeframe with our current technology; 25 years ago, those CGI artists were doing… well, Jurassic Park with none of the prep time that team had. Still, Godzilla striking a city in the middle of a thunderstorm was an inspired idea, one which Gareth Edwards kept for the 2014… apology. Also, they did a great job with layering and practical effects, a lesson that maybe the MCU should learn.

The less we say about the performances and script, the better. But let’s do it anyway: Jean Reno and Hank Azaria carry the movie on their backs, and in fact, the supporting ensemble is pretty solid, including Kevin Dunn playing a beleaguered US Army mayor. The problem is the leads: Matthew Broderick is actually a great choice to play a dopey scientist, but the movie wants to turn him into an action hero, and he… he just can’t pull it off. There was one person in the ’90s that could’ve played both roles to perfection, and you’ve already realized whom: Nicolas Cage. Meanwhile, Maria Pitillo, who plays the reporter/love interest, does exude “we wanted Alicia Silverstone or Winona for this, but no A-lister wanted to touch this with a ten-foot pole.” It’s a terrible, terrible role; she probably screams more in a single scene than Laura Dern and Ariana Richards’ characters do in the entirety of Jurassic Park.
Ultimately, the movie was so terrible that Toho, owners of the IP, demoted this Godzilla from the official title, naming it just “Zilla” in their continuity. A bastard, a Fitz that was promptly killed by the OG in 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars.

I could figure out all of this even before I reached puberty, and in a way, it was as foundational in me understanding what makes a good movie as the good movies I actually loved. We underestimate the aesthetic lessons that terrible art can give us. Sometimes, when you only expose yourself to Good Stuff, you can also have a blind spot for what is not working because the overall baseline is so high. But also, it taught me that one single bad adaptation could not ruin something I truly loved, and that’s something half of the Star Wars fandom has failed to understand to this day.

Emmerich and Devlin have apologized for how they developed their adaptation, the former claiming that he didn’t take it seriously enough. That’s always the problem, but more than that, he and most Godzilla directors have failed at the human story. I disagree wholeheartedly with the people (including beloved critics) who claim the human characters should not be the focus of these movies, that they are boring. A perpetual reminder that the original Godzilla (1954) had a DNA that shared more with its contemporary neorealists than with B-Exploitation monster fare. Godzilla should always be a Tragedy first, about nature’s monstrous indifference to… damn, should these movies have been adapted by Werner Herzog all along?

Alberto Cox says: Experience Puff Daddy’s (feat. Jimmy Page) “Come With Me” with me, from Godzilla 1998’s Original Soundtrack: