Godzilla 2000
AKA
Godzilla 2000: Millennium
(1999)
Page 2
His loss.
Maybe it's the fact that this is the only Godzilla film I've had the proud experience of going to the theaters to see that is clouding my judgment, but I love this movie. And even after nearly a decade of listening to indifference by the Godzilla fanbase, I watched it today and discover that I still love it.
It's a flawed film, but an exceedingly fun one. The cast of characters is the most enjoyable the Godzilla series has had since the early Showa series. While the film does go through patches without giant monster action, these folks were more than entertaining enough for the scenes to just fly by. The story isn't fleshed out a whole lot, but it provides enough for the characters to be running around and trying to do something. I probably would have found this movie amusing had it not featured Godzilla.
The new, reimagined Godzilla design is breathtaking. Toho takes cues from the TriStar films attempt and tries to make Godzilla more reptillian than he has been in most recent incarnations. However, the design is still destinctly Godzilla. His features are reminisant of an aligator, and his spines are considerably larger and impressive. Godzilla's opponant, Orga, is also quite cool. Looking like a shapeless lump of clay desperate for a form, the creature tries to clone itself into Godzilla (an in-joke, seeing how it's facial features are loosly based on the design of the American Godzilla). His prominant form in the film is ape-like, with massive forarms laying a beatdown on our green hero.
Where the film flunks is that Toho is obviously trying to catch up with the visual achievements of not just the American Godzilla, but Deiei's recent Gamera films (Gamera: Revenge of Irys had come out the same year as Godzilla 2000). Godzilla 2000 is overly ambitious in the visuals department, but it gets an A for effort. The film features a lot of blue screen work and CGI, which made the film a fresh visual feast for the Godzilla series back then, but as it ages, it's seams begin to show. The blue screen work, while attempts at some breathtaking looks at Godzilla's massive size, are largly unconvincing. The CG has it's ups and downs. Godzilla's atomic breath has never looked so amazing, and every time his spines blaze up, chiles run down my skin. However, the majority of the UFO shots look pretty bad, and an all CGI scene of Godzilla swimming underwater, while it drove fans wild back in the day, is comparible to one of the 3D Godzilla models in the video game Godzilla Unleashed.
The film has it's fair share of logic lapses as well. A scene at the end where Godzilla and Kataguri have a staring contest atop a rooftop takes the cake in WTF moments (Godzilla wins, in case you're wondering). So, Godzilla walked all the way over there just to face off with one of his human enemies, a tiny Asian man whom Godzilla has never seen before and all reasoning should imply he shouldn't know exists? It's one of those camp moments that is very hard to swallow. The Sony dub isn't that terrific either, and since this was before the time where including Japanese soundtracks on G-discs became an in thing with Godzilla DVDs, the dub is the only way to view it in the US. In defense of the dub, it's not as bad as Toho's international dubs which plague most of Sony's other G releases, it's just everybody is overacting it a bit. However, it could be argued that the people who pieced together the dub were hoping to recreate the charm of the old Showa series dubs, which were much similar. In that regard, they succeed.
Stuff like this may suck a lot of viewers out of the experience, but Godzilla 2000 keeps sucking me back in. This movie is just plain fun. Pure, silly, escapist fun. A throwback to stuff like Godzilla vs. Monster Zero and Destroy All Monsters. After the tight continuity and stone serious face of the Heisei series, can you really blame me?
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