Godzilla 2000

It's a new era for Godzilla, the Millennium era. After taking a little break between the death of Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, the giant leezard was put on a brief hiatus and we explored Gamera, Mothra, and American remakes on this blog. But the Millennium era has now come to Godzilla, and we're here until the Final Wars! Takao Okawara, the director for both vs. Destoroyah and vs. MechaGodzilla II returns to usher us into this time, and we welcome Tsutomu Kitagawa to the Godzilla suit after Kenpachiro Satsuma's excellent Heisei era work. The main villain of Godzilla 2000, Orga, is played by Makoto Ito.

Some backstory on this movie: Godzilla's hiatus was initially supposed to last longer than the 4 years between this film and vs. Destoroyah. But after the American remake (simply named Godzilla), Japanese audiences apparently craved a new take on the most famous kaiju in the world. Development of Godzilla 2000 began just two months after Tristar's take on the lizard king and it it not a secret that this is not a coincidence. Another relevant fact about the Millennium era is that every movie follows it's own continuity, acknowledging Gojira and making up its own history of Godzilla since. Godzilla 2000, for instance, doesn't comment much on the exact history of Godzilla but implies that he's been a frequent enough event to require a plan to destroy him and an ability to predict when he will appear next.

If You Haven't Seen it Before

- A girl and her father have been hunting for Godzilla as part of the Godzilla Prediction Network (GPN). They barely escape with their lives as Godzilla destroys a nearby village.

- Elsewhere, an official with Crisis Control Intelligence (CCI) gives an update on "the meteorite." Inside, they discover an ancient UFO, 60 million years old.

- There is conflict between the GPN and CCI because the GPN believes Godzilla should be studied while the CCI just seeks to destroy him. The CCI develops a plan to take out Godzilla at last: a special missile.

- When Godzilla emerges from the sea again, the CCI and JSDF are waiting for him and they unleash everything they can on Big G.

- While this is happening, the meteorite/UFO takes flight and interrupts the battle. After analyzing him, it blasts him with powerful energy that knocks Godzilla off his feet. They exchange fire but the UFO appears to win, Godzilla disappearing. The UFO lands nearby and lies dormant.

- The CCI and GPN join forces to discover that Godzilla's cells contain something they call Regenerator G1, which allows him to regenerate so quickly. They hope to potentially use this to help humans in the future.

- As the sun goes down the UFO awakens again and, despite the military's attempts to contain it, begins to hack Tokyo's supercomputer.

- In an attempt to stop the UFO, the building it is currently atop (housing the supercomputer) is detonated. This (predictably) fails and the UFO begins to change the nearby atmosphere to suit their own conditions.

- The plan is that the UFO wants Godzilla's Regenerator G1 cells so that they can reform their own body, finally taking a shape that's not a UFO.

- Godzilla returns for a rematch and is immediately wrapped in alien tendrils. They have a brief skirmish that ends in Godzilla being smashed underneath several collapsing buildings before the UFO's tentacles reach out and feed on Godzilla.

- Absorbing Regenerator G1, the UFO manifests an alien creature Now it's Godzilla vs. Orga in an epic kaiju duel, with the damaged UFO popping in to help Orga from time to time.

- Orga opens its maw and begins to completely consume Godzilla in an attempt to become a "clone" of Big G, including skin of the same color and dorsal fins which begin to grow. 

- Unfortunately for Orga, putting Godzilla in its mouth really just means Godzilla has perfect aim into its soft tissues, and the dorsal fins light up red before Orga explodes from being Atomic Breath'd from the inside.

- Godzilla approaches our human characters, specifically killing the leader of CCI (who behaves defiantly) while letting the GPN personnel live (who behave deferentially).

- Godzilla wrecks some more shit on his way out of town, but leaves. Ironically, the GPN people claim that Godzilla "keeps protecting us" despite them watching him completely raze the city with Atomic Breath. Literally, the final shot of the movie is Godzilla needlessly destroying several city blocks right after they claim Godzilla keeps protecting humanity. What the fuck?

Kaiju Notes 

- Millennium Godzilla is a bit smaller than the Heisei era, but the jagged teeth of the Heisei era are even more pronounced so this design retains the animalistic aspects of the previous. It also appears that his dorsal fins are larger and more uneven, giving an added sense of asymmetry (instability? unpredictability?) to the big guy.

- Orga, in its fully developed form, is ugly and a bit overdesigned. It's not by any means a "bad" design, and Destoroyah (who I love) could be argued to be overdesigned as well. The difference, I think, is that Destoroyah had a theme (demon) while Orga seems more "Godzilla clone but make it complicated."

- Orga's abilities are relatively few and far between, mostly seeming focused on trying to turn itself into Godzilla rather than being able to truly fight him on even ground. The expandable jaw is an awesome addition and should be seen in more kaiju, but was an obviously terrible idea and Orga otherwise had very little to really fight back with. The UFO version was possibly stronger than the monster.

The first thing to note about this movie is that an over-reliance on CGI plagues it visually. Suit action Godzilla (and Orga) looks cool, but CGI shots are often awkward. The most notable of these shots is when the military attacks Godzilla near the beginning of the film and Godzilla is pursuing a helicopter. The crutch of CGI also harms the special effects and there are several notable instances where practical effects would have looked much better but instead we get cheap VFX. When Orga first manifests its "alien" form is just an ugly CGI squid looking thing which really could have been left out of the film entirely (and should have been). It's only about 20 seconds, but it's really ugly and unnecessary CGI when just letting us see Orga (suit) would have been more effective and saved money in the budget.

Another note that distinguishes this film is that the script is super weird. Everyone is hyper aggressive with each other, with one of the characters constantly being called an imbecile with relatively little reason other than every other human just hating her for no reason. She's not the only one, of course, as the main father/daughter pair is primarily characterized by the pre-teen age daughter consistently implying her father is incompetent in everything except Godzilla tracking matters, and still seeming to believe she's better at that than him anyway. Bosses hate workers, workers hate bosses, coworkers hate coworkers, executives hate their fellow executives, and families hate each other. It's just a really strange social dynamic that doesn't get enough exploration or explanation, especially given how common it is.

This last bit is really only a commentary on the dubbed version that I was initially watching, but there's an especially terrible choice in the final 60 seconds where we watch Godzilla intentionally Atomic Breath the city but one of the characters comments on Godzilla's constant "protection" of Earth. While I typically prefer subtitled versions of my kaiju movies, I already owned the dubbed version so just rolled with it. That was a mistake! In the original version, this is simply a comment that humans created Godzilla, and followed up by "Godzilla living in the hearts of all of us." But a genuine question is why the dubbers decided to completely change this line and make all of the characters look like idiots rather than embrace the message they seem to be trying to send which is that Godzilla's destructive tendencies originate with humans.

That last sentence does seem to be the idea behind this film: humanity's insistence on destruction. Perhaps that is why this movie is so thoroughly contentious with all of the characters? The humans all hate each other and the various forces antagonize one another as a message about the nature of Godzilla and why he is such a devastating force of nature? It's not 100% clear, but if I could draw anything out of the script that would probably be it. The bit near the end where the leader of CCI is killed by Godzilla (specifically) because of his refusal to be harmonious with the big guy. Combined with the fact that the human element of the story is resolved by GPN and CCI deciding to actually work together rather than against each other, I'd say the lesson of Godzilla 2000 is a little underdeveloped, but likely about cooperation and unity as the solution to the naturally destructive and antagonistic nature of humanity.

At the end of the day, Godzilla 2000 is a mixed bag. It does not earn a place as the most boring or worse kaiju film by far, but without knowing what to expect from the others I would not be surprised to find this one to be the worst of the era. The buildup to Orga was long and slow, and the creature itself actually stood very little chance against Godzilla so all of the time spent building up to it was kind of meaningless. On the other hand, the human story is functional and complementary of the kaiju bits. The worst visual are often due to the usage of CGI, but the suits and other special effects (even some of the CGI, I'm sure) work very well. It's a truly mixed bag, which leads to this very mixed review. If I had to choose a "yes" or "no" on this one being worth it? No.

Next: Godzilla vs. Megaguirus!