TALKBACK: Godzilla (1998)
Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 3:21 pmNot to beat a dead-horse (tangent, isn't that what ANY discussion about Godzilla is at this point?)
and as a first apology, I wasn't quite sure WHERE to post this, since it's not (in my mind) part of the Heisei series...so I figured 'Godzilla in General'
second apology is sorry for the long post
anywho
This movie happened to be on the other day and nothing (I mean, NOTHING) else was, so I felt the need to re-fuel my distaste...
as I was watching it, I sat through the first act thinking to myself "Man, this isn't quite as bad as I remember it being" and then GINO appeared in NY
forget the hundreds of other problems with the film...I noticed two things that I had never noticed before...
#1.) The lazier but somehow less aggrivating of the two - GINO's inconsistent size...one minute, his footprints are big enough to fit probably 20 people from end to end, the next, his foot is barely big enough to crush a cab. Also, one minute his eye is big enough to fill a subway tunnel, the next, he's peering at a taxi stuck in one and his eye looks tiny and his mouth (which one would assume would be bigger than his subway-tunnel-sized eyeball) is barely big enough to hold a car...his weight also seems inconsistent, with his vibrations shaking cars in one scene and then not even causing Hank Azaria to move in another...
#2.) The slightly less lazy but much more maddening and fun-detracting - the movie starts off as a pretty serious allegory for the atomic bomb and the inherent ecological message seems to make itself evident. Then that's all dropped in favor of blow-em up ACTION. I mean, at one point, they're all taking Geiger (sp?) readings on that old man, shaking their heads about how he's gonna die soon from radiation poisoning AND they're all cocerned over how radioactive GINO's footprints are, and the next minute, the Army has no problems blowing him to pieces and scattering his apparently toxic blood all over the place. Not to mention that the main character who knows full well just how toxic the creature should be to touch, scoops up a handful of his blood for pregnancy testing....
I think it just infuriated me to watch and think that really, they could have stuck with the pacing, fears, message, etc of the first half of the movie and actually ended up with a decent, serious flick....
it has nothing to do with whether or not they respected the source material (they didnt), they just did a lazy job (most likely because they got away with it during ID4)
and, bring on the "There's way more worse stuff about GINO than THAT" comments...
or the "Just let this movie die" comments (one that I've always found eternally frustrating as it could apparently be applied to ANY of the crappier G-films but only gets said about this one)
and as a first apology, I wasn't quite sure WHERE to post this, since it's not (in my mind) part of the Heisei series...so I figured 'Godzilla in General'
second apology is sorry for the long post
anywho
This movie happened to be on the other day and nothing (I mean, NOTHING) else was, so I felt the need to re-fuel my distaste...
as I was watching it, I sat through the first act thinking to myself "Man, this isn't quite as bad as I remember it being" and then GINO appeared in NY
forget the hundreds of other problems with the film...I noticed two things that I had never noticed before...
#1.) The lazier but somehow less aggrivating of the two - GINO's inconsistent size...one minute, his footprints are big enough to fit probably 20 people from end to end, the next, his foot is barely big enough to crush a cab. Also, one minute his eye is big enough to fill a subway tunnel, the next, he's peering at a taxi stuck in one and his eye looks tiny and his mouth (which one would assume would be bigger than his subway-tunnel-sized eyeball) is barely big enough to hold a car...his weight also seems inconsistent, with his vibrations shaking cars in one scene and then not even causing Hank Azaria to move in another...
#2.) The slightly less lazy but much more maddening and fun-detracting - the movie starts off as a pretty serious allegory for the atomic bomb and the inherent ecological message seems to make itself evident. Then that's all dropped in favor of blow-em up ACTION. I mean, at one point, they're all taking Geiger (sp?) readings on that old man, shaking their heads about how he's gonna die soon from radiation poisoning AND they're all cocerned over how radioactive GINO's footprints are, and the next minute, the Army has no problems blowing him to pieces and scattering his apparently toxic blood all over the place. Not to mention that the main character who knows full well just how toxic the creature should be to touch, scoops up a handful of his blood for pregnancy testing....
I think it just infuriated me to watch and think that really, they could have stuck with the pacing, fears, message, etc of the first half of the movie and actually ended up with a decent, serious flick....
it has nothing to do with whether or not they respected the source material (they didnt), they just did a lazy job (most likely because they got away with it during ID4)
and, bring on the "There's way more worse stuff about GINO than THAT" comments...
or the "Just let this movie die" comments (one that I've always found eternally frustrating as it could apparently be applied to ANY of the crappier G-films but only gets said about this one)
I've watched each disc once to make sure it actually works and have no foreseeable plans to watch either again.