Godzilla Movie Review:


A massive effects budget does not automatically a great movie make. Did no one tell Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich that?

After Independence Day, flushed with success on a huge scale, they practically could have made any movie they wished, why then did they make this movie, which had been passed over by Jan De Bont?

Surely there were enough warning signs, a perfunctory read of the script and they would have been able to tell it was a virtual rewrite of King Kong, creature comes to big city, wreaks havoc and is destroyed.

Doesn't exactly get you thrilled really as we all know the plot of Kong quite well so why would anyone want to see it again, after several versions have already been made.

Yes, the teaser campaign for Godzilla was absolutely perfect, even better than the one for Independence Day, a film that at least had a plot and something to say. Does Godzilla have anything to say other than being an effects movie?

Yes it has some interesting ideas but these are never fully explored to a satisfactory conclusion. The plot ,what there is, in Godzilla is extremely simple, huge creature comes to New York, creates havoc and is destroyed.With a mixture of several other movies great bits thrown in to sweeten the mix.

Take the baby Godzilla's, do they not look suspiciously like the raptors from Jurassic Park, and the eggs they came from did they not look a bit like the eggs from Alien? Now I am sure the filmmakers had no intention of wanting these parts of the movie to look like other movies, but why did they not make sure they looked completely different, it wasn't as if they didn't have enough money or people working on it.

Back to the plot, in movies such as these, while we accept that they are not going to be the most intelligent movies ever, we do at least demand a few twists in the story to help keep us interested. So what were we served up in Godzilla, a creature created from a French nuclear experiment and the French government try to cover it up.

Now while the idea is a great one and could have allowed the filmmakers to really have a go at the testers etc, it was only used as a plot device to allow us to believe that such a creature could "realistically" exist. And to allow Jean Reno to run about and try and cover everything up. And he was one of the good guys. Should he not have been the bad guy of the piece?

Even Godzilla wasn't the baddie. Are we so PC nowadays that we cannot even have something to rail against in a movie. While I must concede that a huge effort must have been put into the effects work, as you will see in my editorial comment, they were not stylish and could have been done with much more flair.

Drama was sadly lacking in this movie, Godzilla spends most of the movie hidden underground, why?

A creature of that size, is the New York subway system really as large as that. A case of creative licence used, but when you put it up against the fact that they tried to make Godzilla look as real as possible, it didn't exactly mesh together all that well.

And how could the creature avoid detection for so long, did the US government forget about infra red detectors?

Overall I must say this movie was a bit of a disappointment, it had so much potential, but on all levels while not being a complete travesty failed to live up to its potential and when you spend as much money on a movie as they did with Godzilla surely you should do that?

Gary Gray

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