As many of you have probably noticed, I have been spending the entire summer of 2013 watching and writing about every single one of the Godzilla movies, dating all the way back to the 1954 Japanese original film Gojira. All told, there were 28 Godzilla feature films made in Japan, so it has been quite an undertaking which has taken me a full nine weeks to realize. I have to admit that it has been rewarding – mostly. I have enjoyed the old-timey monster mayhem to a degree I did not expect, and I feel that anyone with an active inner ten-year-old will find that a summer-long marathon through the Godzilla movies will encounter a comparable level of enjoyment.
Some of the films, however, have not been as enjoyable as others. There have been three (soon to be four) additional Godzilla films made for American audiences in the past 60 years, and they have actually been the lowlights of the summer. There was 1956’s Godzilla, King of the Monsters! which was, in actuality, a massively re-edited version of the 1954 original with footage of Raymond Burr cut in. This film was actually pretty fun (and was likely the one you saw on TV as a child), but felt shabby when compared to the Japanese original. There was Godzilla 1985, which was a retooled version of the Japanese The Return of Godzilla, again, with footage of Raymond Burr edited in. And then there was the now-infamous 1998 Roland Emmerich film Godzilla, which was the first wholly original Godzilla film made specifically for an American audience. You likely saw this one, and it’s also likely that you still have a bad taste in your mouth.
Emmerich, who had just come off of the ultra-successful sci-fi bonanza Independence Day, was tapped to make Godzilla, and he agreed to do it so long as he could ignore the original films (he was vocally not a Godzilla fan), and do whatever he wanted. The result is a 138-minute mish-mash of extraneous storylines, dumb dialogue, bad characters, maybe a few pieces of spectacular special effects, and a redesigned monster that looks more like a spindly iguana than the upright-walking Godzilla we had known for the previous 40-some years. Emmerich’s film plays less like a Godzilla movie and more like an Irwin Allen disaster epic; it was perhaps the first film in the Emmerich disaster cycle, which encompassed well-attended but poorly-reviewed films like 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow and 2009’s 2012.
Godzilla also has an obnoxiously fluctuating tone, vacillating between broad sitcom-style comedy, somber relationship drama, and outright monster mayhem. There is also a long gap in the film wherein the title monster doesn’t appear at all. Add to all this mess an extended and kind-of dull finale full of running, screaming, and 200 baby Godzillas lurking around Madison Square Garden eating the popcorn and churros, and you have a legitimate pop culture touchstone of awfulness. Revisiting the film will only prove how bad it remains, and that time has not caused it to refine or ripen. The film remains one of the notorious “bad blockbusters” of the 1990s. Even if you didn’t see the film, you likely remember the embarrassingly phallic tagline: SIZE DOES MATTER.
Starring Matthew Broderick as a blank-faced biologist, the still-unknown Maria Pitillo as his cute-as-a-button-yet-harmfully-corrupt love interest, Hank Azaria as a Noo Yawk cameraman, Harry Shearer as a horrible anchorman, a pair of guys who look just like Siskel & Ebert, and Jean Reno as the inscrutable French military guy, Godzilla is an epic mess that needed to be dissected, or, at the very least, marveled at. Armed with a working knowledge of the Godzilla milieu, and a high tolerance for bad blockbusters, John Pavlich of The Sofa Dogs Podcast sat down to look at Godzilla with me, and we recorded it as a commentary track which you can download from The Sofa Dogs Podcast website. See if we made the film tolerable. I can assure you that we provide trivia, analysis, and humor to try to make the film enjoyable again.
If you’re interested in The Summer of Godzilla, you can read all the previous chapters here on CraveOnline:
The Summer of Godzilla Part 1 (Gojira through Godzilla, King of the Monsters!)
The Summer of Godzilla Part 2 (King Kong vs. Godzilla through Invasion of Astro-Monster)
The Summer of Godzilla Part 3 (Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster through All Monsters Attack)
The Summer of Godzilla Part 4 (Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster through Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla)
The Summer of Godzilla, Intermission (Bambi Meets Godzilla, and Godzilla on TV)
The Summer of Godzilla Part 5 (Terror of Mechagodzilla through Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah)
The Summer of Godzilla Part 7 (Godzilla 1998 through GMK)
If you want to hear more of Witney’s commentary tracks with John Pavlich, he has also recorded the following:
Scream (1996) (with The B-Movies Podcast co-host William Bibbiani)
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, co-host of The B-Movies Podcast and co-star of The Trailer Hitch. You can read his weekly articles B-Movies Extended, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind. If you want to buy him a gift (and I know you do), you can visit his Amazon Wish List.
