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September 11, 2000
THE TIMELESS APPEAL OF GODZILLA
I can't help but wonder at some of the unexplainable mysteries of life. For instance, why is it that a country that is one of the world's leaders in technology, automation and robotics still produces movies with a man walking around wearing an ugly rubber lizard suit, thrashing scale models of cities?
| "Gojira Ni-sen Mireniamu" (literally, "Godzilla Millennium 2000") actually picks up where the first film left off. |
Granted, the quality of both the rubber suit and the model city have improved since "Gojira," the Japanese pronunciation of the monstrous dinosaur-like creature, first stomped through Tokyo in 1956. The details of the movie set, down to the lights inside office buildings and the miniature trains running along miniature tracks, is painstakingly realistic -- so much so that it's a shame to destroy them all. And the costume is much more frightening now than it was half a century ago. The skin is much scalier (scenes where Godzilla is attacked by tanks and missiles show bits of his flesh flying off like prehistoric shrapnel), and the monster's face is downright fierce.
But with the rise of computer animation and digital special effects, it seems such a throwback to an earlier age of clunky, old-fashioned fright features.
That's exactly the point, I've decided.
"Godzilla 2000," like most of the other Godzilla movies -- this is the 24th starring the 300-foot lizard -- is meant to be just a little bit tongue-in-cheek and clunky on purpose. It's not supposed to be all big-budget blockbuster production values with seamless special effects and modern technology. Go rent "Jurassic Park" if that's what you want.
Or, you could go rent the 1998 American-made "Godzilla," which was a big-budget blockbuster with all the flashy effects, but which still failed at the box office. Sure, Godzilla looked more realistic in the '98 model, and the monster was a lot scarier and violent too. But as it turns out, people don't want a scary, violent Godzilla, ripping through New York City the way the aliens in "Independence Day" did. They want Godzilla to be an actor sweating it out in a heavy suit, destroying a toy version of Tokyo which everyone knows will be rebuilt for the next go-round.
Hollywood misjudged Godzilla. But Toho, the Japanese studio which made the first Godzilla and has owned the series of films since '56, understands that corniness and camp have become two of the important ingredients in the success of the Japanese film audience's love-affair with the monster. Toho made a lot of money off the 1998 failure because Hollywood licensed the character, and then re-licensed it in everything from lunch boxes and toys to a series of Taco Bell TV commercials co-starring a Chihuahua dog. But Toho was smart enough to continue owning the rights. Even if the American version flopped -- which it did -- the studio knew that Japanese audiences would come back for more of the same formula that's been used for decades.
I guess the lesson here is, "Don't fix it if it ain't broke."
"Gojira Ni-sen Mireniamu" (literally, "Godzilla Millennium 2000") actually picks up where the first film left off, as if the years of cataclysmic battles with such outlandish other creatures as Mothra and Gidra have never occurred, never mind the invasion of New York City. In the first film, where nuclear testing in the Pacific awakens the long-dormant Godzilla -- "Gojira," by the way, is a combination of the Japanese words for "whale" and "gorilla" -- and the monster threatened Japan with its indiscriminate carnage. "Godzilla 2000" has the movie-star reptile rampaging through the cities of Japan again, starting with Nemuro but going up and down the coast, primarily destroying power supplies such as electric utility companies.
The plot isn't well explained, and is full of holes, but the story doesn't have to make sense for the movie to be enjoyable. After Godzilla starts picking on Tokyo for the umpteenth time, a newcomer arrives on screen: a comet which turns out to be an alien spacecraft which later spits out a horrific creature which takes on Godzilla's likeness and powers. The alien needs Godzilla's molecular structure to adapt to the Earth's atmosphere and take up permanent residence, so Godzilla unwittingly becomes the world's savior with a somewhat anti-climactic battle to the end. (The earlier scenes of Godzilla advancing on Japan from the sea are frankly more fun and suspenseful.)
Even a slightly flat ending didn't stop me from enjoying "Godzilla 2000" enormously. Because Toho understands that Godzilla isn't about gore, it's about the silliness of a 300-foot monster that keeps coming back to Japan year after year only to be beaten back into the sea. I don't know if the Japanese script is as funny as the US dubbed release (I suspect some of the hilarity is unintentional), but the English translation had some quite funny moments.
My favorite was when Shinoda, the obsessed scientist who follows Godzilla around with his daughter as the "Godzilla Prediction Network" is tolerating the accompaniment of a newspaper photographer, Yuki Ichinose. When Shinoda asks sarcastically while chasing the monster if Ichinose has film in her camera, her terse reply is "Bite me." I cracked up because it struck me as a very non-Japanese response, and wondered what the original script had her saying.
That type of cross-cultural gap isn't new to this year's Godzilla. The original black-and-white 1956 version, which by the way has little camp and is fraught with melodramatic moments about ethical choices between science and conscience, was released in the US in a version that was 15 minutes shorter despite the fact that the American producers had (mostly skillfully) inserted Raymond Burr as an American reporter covering the Godzilla story, with a few English-speaking Japanese Americans thrown in to make the scenes a little more seamless. I've never seen the original, uncut Japanese version but I'd love to, just to avoid some of the sillier scenes where Burr is shown speaking to a renowned scientist about Godzilla, but the scientist if only shown from the back because he's not played by the same actor as in the Japanese scenes.
Still, I understand why the film was changed this way for American release. With Burr's narration, the story made sense and was appealing to US audiences (this was a time when all monster movies had corny costumes and special effects were all low-tech, remember). Without this manipulation, Godzilla may have remained merely a Japanese phenomenon, and not a worldwide ambassador for a peculiar but enjoyable type of Japanese culture.
The Godzilla Index to Kaiju - DIRECT! is a huge -- and fascinating -- list of links to Godzilla fan tributes, official and unofficial Web sites, reviews and even sites that mention Godzilla. It's obsessive... and fun to click around.