aka Gojira Ni-sen Mireniamu

• Directed by Takao Okawara
• Written by Hiroshi Kashiwabara and Wataru Mimura
• Starring
  • Takehiro Murata
  • Naomi Nishida
  • Hiroshi Abe
  • Mayu Suzuki
  • Tsutomu Kitagawa

So on Saturday, my six-year-old, Alex, and I headed out to the matinee showing of Godzilla 2000. I planned on having at least fifteen minutes before curtain time to find a good seat. I needn’t have bothered; when we got there, there were exactly two other people in the theater. A little after curtain, the number swelled to the final headcount of nine people total. It seems that American apathy may finally do what any number of misshapen kaiju have been unable to do: Kill Godzilla.

(It’s a funny thing, that movie-going public. Australian gladiators? Yep. Super-powered mutants in leather? Sure. Tom Cruise, Secret Agent? Of course. Monsters stomping Tokyo? Hey, what kinda crap is this?!)

On the other hand, the boys at Toho need to step up to the podium and acknowledge their own share of the guilt. This was, by my estimation, the most visually and technically impressive Godzilla yet. Too bad they couldn’t be bothered to come up with a storyline worth the effort.

It began so well, too, with a couple of Spielbergian moments. First, a lighthouse keeper has a close encounter with a ship’s hull held in some toothy jaws, seen dimly in the fog; then the patrons of a small ramen shop (mm… ramen…) find the establishment knocked to kindling around them by a familiar looking tail. And finally, a cool action sequence as dedicated Godzilla hunter Shinoda (Takehiro Murata) and his daughter Io (Mayu Suzuki), with tagalong reporter Yuki (Naomi Nishida) test the top speeds of an SUV’s reverse gear as they outrun a stomping foot. (Murata, by the way, also showed up as different characters in Godzilla and Mothra and Godzilla vs. Destroyer, putting him on the fast track to being the modern version of Akira Kuibo.)

Good stuff, Maynard! So where’d it go wrong?

Oh, about when the scientists at the Crisis Control Institute, a quasi-governmental agency led by young handsome moustache-twirler Katagiri (Hiroshi Abe), takes time out from their busy Godzilla-hunting schedule to discover that the magnetic meteor they’ve discovered under 60 million years’ worth of ocean floor muck is actually an extraterrestrial something-or-other.

Inevitably, this rock-like something or other is looking for a Terrestrial rumble, so it seeks out Godzilla and they start trading energy blasts. This, of course, can only happen after Godzilla wades out of the water for real and starts trashing the Japanese Defense troops. (I can only imagine what the generals actually think. “Damn, I’m tired of these obsolete tanks! I wish Godzilla would show up and smush them flat so we can get this year’s model!”) It’s in this combined action scene that we get to see the technical prowess brought to bear on this latest movie; sweeping helicopter shots of the coastline have Godzilla inserted in a moving matte, giving a range of camera perspective impossible in either limited model landscapes or the traditional static matteing. (I will admit that the FX ambition sometimes outstrips its ability, but I’m a forgiving sort.)

Also, at this point we learn the backstory between Shinoda and Katagiri. Seems that Shinoda once worked with Katagiri in his government-backed organization, but now his Godzilla Prediction Network is at odds with the Institute spooks. (The GPN, by the way, is the fanboy’s wet dream — a network of hackers and hobbyists who use homemade seismographs and such to track Godzilla more effectively than the official types.) The main distinction between the two organizations is that the Institute wants to rub Godzilla out, whereas the GPN wants to study him.

At this point, I should point out that Shinoda is the good guy and Katagiri is the bad guy. That may not be readily apparent from their respective positions relative to the disposition of ill-tempered kaiju. Seems to me that blowing Godzilla to atoms is only prudent, considering the property damage he regularly visits on Japan. While there’s no clue given as to where this film fits into the series continuity, it’s pretty apparent as a background fact that no one’s surprised any longer that Godzilla wreaks havoc with regularity. (In fact, I’m hoping that one of these days, a Godzilla film opens with Tokyo still a post-apocalyptic shambles.) So, we just have to assume that Shinoda is a good guy (mild-mannered, caring parent, etc.) who just happens to support the study of Godzilla, while Katagiri is a bad guy (a power-mongering, cruel government bastard) who just happens to support the eradication of Godzilla. All clear? Good.

Anyway. What happens next? Godzilla disappears from the film until the last fifteen minutes, that’s what happens. Instead, our unfolding drama has to do with the otherwordly thingie shedding its shell and showing itself to be a round-edged CGI spaceship with a cannon on one side.

Alex looked at me and said, “That’s stupid! Where are the monsters?” And I had to agree. I didn’t want to see the majority of the footage of a Godzilla movie taken up with a ship piloted by a twelve-year-old from the Carter administration. (A big no-prize to everyone who got the Flight of the Navigator reference.)

But alas, that’s what they do. The derailment is complete; we follow all sorts of escapes and chases and pensive-looking Japanese officials as the ship perches atop a skyscraper, a la Independence Day, and starts sucking data from the city’s computers. Seems it’s trying to find out as much as it can about Godzilla, who’s been discovered to have a unique regenerating agent in his cells (euphoniously dubbed “Regenerator G-1″ by Shinoda); if the ship can mimic that ability and create its own kaiju, it’ll be able to terraform the earth’s biosphere to its own specifications! Mwah-ha-hah!

As usual with these movies, all of the actions of the human characters really mean nothing, because they spend the entire last act standing around watching the kaiju duke it out. No exception here. It’s a kaiju-riffic showdown, pitting the spaceship’s creation (dubbed “Orga” for merchandising purposes) against the Big G in downtown Shinjuku. Lotta destruction, lotta breath weapons, and guess who wins?

We’ve been doing pretty well with dialogue so far, but Shinoda topples that particular house of cards when pontificating as to why, after having been created by science gone wrong, Godzilla keeps coming back to “save” them: “Because Godzilla is inside each one of us.”

The little Godzilla inside me laughed out loud when it heard that clunker.

In a novel ending, Godzilla doesn’t end up asleep at the bottom of an ocean or inside a volcano. No, our final vision is of the unopposed Godzilla still rampaging through Tokyo, torching apartment buildings right and left (which makes one wonder how exactly Shinoda defines “save”). My vision of a future movie set among the rubble may be that much closer to reality.

Now, in opposition to the merciless treatment this movie has received in the mainstream (read: “unenlightened”) venues, let me point out some of the positives:

• The redesigned costume is a knockout. Without committing the damage to the character that our own American yahoos did, this fresh Godzilla is meaner looking by far, with a mouth that opens wide enough to show the ridges on the roof of the mouth. No friend to children, here.
• As mentioned, the opening scenes were wonderful.
• The travelling matte shots were also a breath of fresh air to the visual presentation kaiju normally receive. The miniature work was up to high standards, too.
• Shinoda’s daughter Io is only marginally “cute.” She runs the household and business matters while he obsesses about Godzilla; she’s actually shown as being smart enough that, when she constructs schemes that run rings around adults, it’s not just another case of SuperSmart Urchin syndrome. And not once does she say, “Thanks, for saving us, Godzilla!” (Though it did come close, once.)
• The score was excellent, with the Akira Ifukube’s traditional theme being gradually worked in near the end (which, by that time, I treated as an old friend).

But in the eyes of American audiences (and, to a smaller degree, in my own eyes), these pluses didn’t balance out the huge minus of having no flipping monsters through the entire second act. No one plunked down money to see Godzilla vs. The Navigator, and the appearance of Orga at the end, while welcome, almost felt like it was tacked on just to satisfy union rules regarding Kaiju Free-For-Alls.

My recommendation for Toho? Well, since they’ve shown no shyness about remaking the older movies in the new series, I’d vote for an updated Destroy All Monsters – a movie brimming with big-ass creatures from start to finish, with urban centers the world over crumbling under their varied footfalls.

Unfortunately, with the reported box-office failure of Godzilla 2000 in Japan, and the certain signs of it doing the same here, it seems that this movie has conclusively curtailed the budgetary resources to pull off a really good movie next time.

Folks, go out and see Godzilla 2000; lackluster as it may be, I’m willing to wager an extra-large (2-cup) popcorn that this is the last opportunity you’ll have to see a Godzilla movie in theatrical release.

Some Notable Totables:

I didn’t feel like scribbling notes in the theater, so I didn’t keep a Notable Totables tally. I will probably end up buying this one when it hits video, though, so I’ll update those scores at that time — and given the poor box office take, that day probably isn’t very far away.