TALKBACK #23: Godzilla 2000

[goji4ever]

Looking back on this film it has aged quite well...though not perfect, many parts of this film have aged very well.
If anything perhaps the stiffness and lack of maneuverability of the Orga suit is irritating, though solid staging of the final battle keeps things moving along.

[MekaGojira3k]

[Hybrid Gojira]

G2K is vastly overrated. Orga sucks. The SPFX have some very terrible moments. The story is boring.

Meh, I just don't get the appeal. Katagiri? Not enough to carry this movie on his own. The characters are fine, but the monster stuff really sucks for the most part. Also, Godzilla just looks derpy. For every shot the suit looks really cool, it looks doubly awful in others.

[MekaGojira3k]

I really don't know that it's overrated. For the longest time I never heard anyone say anything about this film. Nobody hated it, but nobody really liked it that much either.

[jellydonut25]

[walshiam]

I think the "storm chaser" angle was a fine approach. Boring it was not.

[Dr Kain]

[king_ghidorah]

DAMN this movie is so uneven. Rewatching it now and it's so frustrating. Like G 14, I feel like every scene Godzilla is in is gold. Love the Godzilla design, and I love the personality on display here. It's also my absolute favorite version of the atomic breath on screen to date.

The human cast is probably the best we've had since the 60s in my opinion. The minatures look great...about half of the time.

But that CGI is so damned ugly. Horrible. The film also has a incredibly boring middle section.

I have no idea how to rate this film. It has one of my favorite intros to a Godzilla film ever and I really dig the final fight, but there's a lot of bad in this film too which can be pretty much summed up with that horrible swimming Godzilla.

[jellydonut25]

The CGI is bad...but it's scarily on roughly par with the 1998 film (or at least, the MSG sequence of the 1998 film, where the overall effects went completely to hell).

I can forgive the bad CGI though, given the general nature of shaky effects throughout the franchise. There is a lull in the middle, but like you said: the Godzilla stuff is gold and I really, REALLY like this cast, so it doesn't bother me too much.

It's a top 10 film for me, though just barely so (I usually put it around 9 or 10).

[lhb412]

I can still hardly believe how much less I liked the Japanese version when I first saw it a few months ago. Sony and Mike S.'s tinkering (improved pacing, some tongue in cheek humor, beefed up sound effects and music) helps the film tremendously. The U.S. version is a highlight of the Millennium series for me, but if I was limited to just the original version I'd find the film pretty forgettable.

[jellydonut25]

[XvGojira]

And the endless waves of choppers and tanks. Yes we get it, they are amassing a lot of fire power. We don't need to see every single tank roll into position.

[lhb412]

It makes me wonder how many Millennium and Heisei Godzilla films could have benefited from similar tinkering to what G2K got. A big problem most modern Godzilla films have is that they're just too padded and have subplots that don't go anywhere.

[jellydonut25]

[DannyBeane]

[XvGojira]

[Jared]

GODZILLA 2000 is just a plain, generic Godzilla film - which is exactly what I enjoy about it. It's completely without pretension and is aware of its modest goals, and mostly succeeds, particularly in the far superior US cut. Still, some of the effects are among the worst of the entire series...the CGI in particular, as Toho's tech just wasn't up to the task in those days. Also, I feel like there's a lot of unexplored potential in the script, particularly the dynamic between Shinoda, Miyasaka and Katagiri.

[Dr Kain]

[H-Man]

[Gman2887]

[lhb412]

[lhb412]

... the bad thing about the bad compositing being distracting is that it distracts from some fantastic miniature work with the city in the finale. There are some gorgeous models in there.

[Outkaster]

Still a favorite of mine.