Godzilla 98 is neither a good film, nor what most people would describe as an animated film. Why include it here? First, the star of the film is computer-animated, just as the stars of Small Soldiers were, and the live-action/animation combination is in the Harryhausen tradition. Secondly, the film features Matthew Broderick, whose career has gotten toonier and toonier, even to the point of playing a live-action version of Inspector Gadget. Thirdly, the film spawned a short-lived animated TV series. Finally, the original Toho Godzilla series was part of a larger genre called kaiju, which is of considerable appeal to many anime fans who particularly enjoy TV shows and movies featuring giant monsters and robots.
Godzilla 98, despite the title, plays like a remake of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Many of you are probably familiar with that title. Beast was a mid-1950s Ray Harryhausen sci-fi film in which a giant prehistoric monster lays waste to sections of New York City. In fact, some might argue that the entire Godzilla series was inspired by Beast. The Godzilla that appears in Godzilla 98 bears quite the resemblance to Harryhausen's Rhedosaur (a fictitious creature that resembles a Komodo Dragon). While this may seem like biological minutae, both creatures are clearly more reptilian than dinosaurian. Whereas the Toho Godzilla is a fire-breathing Tyrannosaurus Rex-inspired creature clearly identified as a dinosaur, the Godzilla of Godzilla 98 is a giant iguana and looks appropriately lizardlike. The rejection of Toho's dinosaur in favor of a lizard makes Godzilla 98 seem that much closer to a Harryhausen remake.
Like most big budget remakes of nearly forgotten B-movies, Godzilla 98 loses a lot of soul. Not even the most rabid sci-fi fan could claim with a straight face that Beast (or Them! or Attack of the Crab Monsters or any other giant monster film of the 1950s) was a crowning achievement. However (and I never enjoyed Beast), those films contained a childlike, wide-eyed sense of wonder. Maybe it was the insular American mindset of the 1950s, or maybe it was having a pioneer like Ray Harryhausen goggling in amazement at his own animation skills - but those films were just plain fun for their audiences. Godzilla 98 - like many current remakes - gets tedious very quickly, due to a cynical condescending attitude. We're given explosions and mass destruction, but we aren't given any reason to care. Poor scripting robs these scenes of their potential impact. No one ever claimed that the original Godzilla series was skillfully and artfully scripted, but the best of those films featured competant (if simpleminded) comic book storylines. Unlike the B-movies of the Baby Boomer generation, Godzilla 98 was made to sell toys and other memorabilia; there's almost no attempt to tell anything remotely resembling a story.
I can't honestly comment on Godzilla 98's deviations from kaiju filmmaking, since kaiju is not my specialty. However, the animators did a fine job of bringing Godzilla and the various mini-Godzilla spawn to life. While the animators don't seem to have looked beyond Jurassic Park for inspiration, their Godzilla is an interesting life-like creature that's frequently appropriately menacing. I could believe in Godzilla the same way I could believe in the Rhedosaur. And, even at the animators' weakest moments, Godzilla still seems more alive than Matthew Broderick.
Godzilla 98 is, in the final analysis, just another overbudgeted
Hollywood blockbuster of the likes of Men in Black, Independence
Day, The Phantom Menace, or Starship Troopers. This is
the sort of stuff that gives sci-fi a bad name, and saddles Hollywood screenwriters
with a stereotype of being not only illiterate but likely dyslexic and
submoronic as well. There are enough good scenes to redeem this film as
popcorn fodder, but little more. I'm enough of an otaku to sit through
virtually anything Japan-related more than once, and I think that
some of this website's younger readers might enjoy parts of this film.
If
Godzilla 98 gets some people interested enough in science fiction
that they move on to more challenging and serious works, then we owe Godzilla
98 a great deal of credit. Otherwise, Godzilla 98 is simply
big bread and an atomic circus.
 |
Other NonAnime Reviews Prince of Egypt Review* Gotham Girls Review* Jackie Chan Adventures Review * Space Jam Review Tex Avery Screwball Classics Review* |
Get your ownFree Home Page