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Coasting on reputation
Jul. 17th, 2004 12:52 pmSam and I just saw the 1995 movie Godzilla vs. Destoroyah on the TiVo. This was the last in the '80s/'90s series of Godzilla movies that began with the one marketed in the US as Godzilla 1985. Since it was a prominent part of the movie's marketing, I don't think it's too spoilery to say that Godzilla dies in it (his son lives on, but never really got to carry the torch, because after this they started rebooting the continuity with every film, sort of an "Alternate Legends of Godzilla" deal).
Stomp Tokyo liked it, but to us, this one seemed ramshackle and incoherent even for a 1990s Godzilla flick. Mind you, what we saw was a dubbed pan-and-scan version that might have been badly recut, but the movie seemed so sloppily edited that it was often difficult to tell precisely what the story was supposed to be. Even the Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah that involved time-traveling Terminators and a complete rewrite of Godzilla's origin story made more sense.
It was a good thing that we'd recently seen the revival of the 1954 Godzilla. Of all the latter-day Godzilla movies, Godzilla vs. Destoroyah is the one that tries the hardest to lean on the legacy of the original film; there is a short return appearance by Momoko Kouchi playing the character she played in the original movie, several of the characters (including this film's adolescent Kenny) are supposed to be related to characters from Godzilla, and Godzilla's adversary this time is apparently supposed to be a pre-Cambrian microorganism mutated into a giant transforming monster by a vaguely described effect of Dr. Serizawa's oxygen-destroyer weapon that killed the first Godzilla. The monster itself can destroy oxygen, though the writers seem to alternately remember and forget this depending on which scene they're writing.
There are even several long inserts of clips from the first movie. This is usually a bad idea—you really don't want to spend a lot of time reminding the audience of another, much better movie that they are currently not watching.
Godzilla's death scene is handled better than I expected: the A-plot is that he's becoming more and more radioactive for some bogus reason, and is going to either explode or melt down, and destroy the world unless the effects can be mitigated somehow. When he finally goes, it's almost as if the massed laser-tanks and Godzilla-fighting super-plane are helping put down an ailing and beloved pet. Still, it's awfully weird that the human characters' compassion for Godzilla and his kid seems to cause them to completely ignore the gigantic human body counts that must be associated with the urban carnage going on all around them. Not even Dr. Yamane in the first movie went that far.
Stomp Tokyo liked it, but to us, this one seemed ramshackle and incoherent even for a 1990s Godzilla flick. Mind you, what we saw was a dubbed pan-and-scan version that might have been badly recut, but the movie seemed so sloppily edited that it was often difficult to tell precisely what the story was supposed to be. Even the Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah that involved time-traveling Terminators and a complete rewrite of Godzilla's origin story made more sense.
It was a good thing that we'd recently seen the revival of the 1954 Godzilla. Of all the latter-day Godzilla movies, Godzilla vs. Destoroyah is the one that tries the hardest to lean on the legacy of the original film; there is a short return appearance by Momoko Kouchi playing the character she played in the original movie, several of the characters (including this film's adolescent Kenny) are supposed to be related to characters from Godzilla, and Godzilla's adversary this time is apparently supposed to be a pre-Cambrian microorganism mutated into a giant transforming monster by a vaguely described effect of Dr. Serizawa's oxygen-destroyer weapon that killed the first Godzilla. The monster itself can destroy oxygen, though the writers seem to alternately remember and forget this depending on which scene they're writing.
There are even several long inserts of clips from the first movie. This is usually a bad idea—you really don't want to spend a lot of time reminding the audience of another, much better movie that they are currently not watching.
Godzilla's death scene is handled better than I expected: the A-plot is that he's becoming more and more radioactive for some bogus reason, and is going to either explode or melt down, and destroy the world unless the effects can be mitigated somehow. When he finally goes, it's almost as if the massed laser-tanks and Godzilla-fighting super-plane are helping put down an ailing and beloved pet. Still, it's awfully weird that the human characters' compassion for Godzilla and his kid seems to cause them to completely ignore the gigantic human body counts that must be associated with the urban carnage going on all around them. Not even Dr. Yamane in the first movie went that far.