by Giganfan » Mon Sep 15, 2014 7:22 pm
With the exception of Godzilla Final Wars, I think all of the Godzilla suits of the Millenium series have a sort of awkward symmetry to them. From one angle, they look really impressive, but from another, it's like "ugh, well that's weird". My least favorite Godzilla costume is the one from Godzilla X Mechagodzilla and Tokyo SOS. In my opinion, it is the ugliest suit design since Son of Godzilla. The suit from this film, along withGodzilla X Megaguirus, however, doesn't bother me too much. I often wonder what it might look like if the dorsal spikes were a little more propotionate with the rest of the suit.But on the whole, Godzilla looks pretty sharp in Godzilla 2000 (no pun intended).
Having recently revisited Godzilla 2000 Millennium on blue-ray, I am at once brought back to the very first time I saw this movie. Back in 2000, cam-corder bootlegs were still very much the norm, and with three months until the film had its' state-side theatrical release, I couldn't help myself. At the time, my faith in Toho to make kaiju eiga had been severely shaken by how dreadful the last two Mothra films had been, so when I saw "G2K" for the first time, the first thought that entered my mind was "well, at least they remembered how to make a Godzilla movie!" On the whole, it's a middle-of-the-road Godzilla movie. Having Takao Okawara direct made sense from a financial stand-point (all three of his Heisei-era Godzilla flicks made money), and at the very least, I affectionately refer to him as "the popcorn Godzilla hack". Not a great director by any means; certainly lacking the talent of Shusuke Kaneko, or the child-like zeal of Masaaki Tezuka, but an experienced veteran who knew how to make a traditional Godzilla movie. His work here is at least as competent as in Godzilla vs. Mothra
I admit, I know nothing about traditional music composition, but one thing I am certain of is this; Takayuki Hattori sucks at it! His music for G2K is just...not good. Not only is the score completely drowned out by the action, but it also sounds like the man was making music for a totally different kind of movie. Hattori's music for Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla was equally inappropriate. There is just something very irritating about those horns. Maybe it's just me, but the music in this film sounds like it was done by a total amateur.
I've always been a moderate fan of Kenji Suzuki's effects work, particularly in this movie. He showed a genuine aim to try new things while blending classic "tokusatsu" with new age, digital animation. The overall effort is shakey, and far from perfect, but who cares, really. The miniature work in G2K is much more refined and detailed than Koichi Kawakita's later Godzilla movies. And the cgi, though hardly Hollywood-grade (or even on par with Shinji Higuchi's Gamera work, for that matter), is still fun and inventive.
So yeah, in the grand scheme of things, Godzilla 2000 Millennium ranks someplace in the comfortable middle of the Godzilla series. Standard-issue, Godzilla-by-numbers, whatever you want to call it. It doesn't break any new ground, but it at least lovingly re-treads some of the old.
"EVERYONE FORGET YOUR TROUBLES! ENJOY YOURSELVES!THERE'S NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT!" - Gigantis The Fire Monster
"It was HUGE...It was...IT WAS LIKE A MONSTER!!! Suddenly the rocks rose...ALIVE!" - Godzilla 1985