Godzilla 1998 Review

 

Godzilla 1998

-Nicola Johnson

 

When Godzilla entered the disaster-era movie scene of the late 90s/early 00s, it was almost guaranteed to be a blockbuster hit.  Instead, the content of the movie landed it squarely in the land of The  Worst Movies Ever.

What makes a movie a good movie?  It has a great plot, actions make sense, and number one, it has to be possible, if not even remotely plausible.  This is where Godzilla fails royally.

First, the monster is simply too big to exist on Earth.  For whatever reason, Godzilla appears, seemingly out of the depths of the unexplored ocean for no reason whatsoever.  The opening scene features iguanas, and the theory of how Godzilla came to be is that he is an overgrown radioactive iguana.  The island of the iguanas appears to be in the South Pacific.  Then we move to Japan, where we see the work the giant did on a Japanese shipping boat. 

Naturally, the powers that be immediately recruit a biologist famous for studying earthworms that were exponentially bigger 12 years after the Chernobyl explosion.  They. Get. A. Worm. Expert.  They don’t find the world’s leading herpetologist.  Nope they go recruit Dr. Niko Tatopoulos, an expert in invertebrates that live underground.  Played by Matthew Broderick, Dr. Tatopoulos is as inept as one would think a biologist studying earthworms would be in the situation with an extraordinary-sized lizard. 

When Godzilla make an appearance in New York City, the audience is left to marvel exactly how quickly the monster was able to get from Japan to New York.  An evacuation is called, and the military is called in.  Not only do the writers make the United State military look completely incompetent, with the exception of Doug Savant’s Sergeant O’Neal, the soldiers act like complete idiots. 

Just when you want the monster to be destroyed, he leans down and meets Dr. Tatopoulos face to muzzle…and then walks away, showing that Godzilla just may not be a bloodthirsty monster after all.  Halfway through the movie we find out that not only is Godzilla not bloodthirsty, she is pregnant.  But, since there is only the one monster, how is that even possible?  The writers used the idea of a mutated iguana as the basis for Godzilla.  However, iguanas do not reproduce asexually, as explained by Broderick’s character.  He also explains that the reason she traveled from Japan to NYC is to nest…

First, there are many animals who can reproduce asexually, including an actual lizard.  Whiptail lizards are all born female, but they reproduce.  It seems like the writers of Godzilla could have done a tiny bit of research and chose a lizard that was not an iguana.  But, then again, that would require a herpetologist to be on set, a much-needed factor that was missing everywhere in this movie. 

Then there was the unnecessary French component that featured Jean Reno, playing his usual stereotypical role of the smoking French agent. 

When Dr. Tatopoulos announces that Godzilla may have laid eggs somewhere in the city was one of the most incredible statements the worm-expert made.  Since when do lizards migrate from a very warm climate like the South Pacific to the very cold and rainy New York City?  And why would a lizard, whose eggs need to incubate, lay her eggs in the air-conditioned Madison Square Garden arena? Because eggs apparently incubate faster in cold are, possibly?

Not particularly fond of Matthew Broderick, save for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and adult Simba in 1994’s The Lion King, he proved to be the awful, unconvincing actor expected of him. 

Overall, the movie was horrible.  The lizard was too huge, showed compassion that made one wish there was some place on Earth she and her eggs could be relocated to, but unfortunately, they were all destroyed. As the movie ended the audience waited with bated breath as, predictably so, one egg remained untouched, leaving room for a sequel.