Off To See The Lizard

Regular readers of this site (both of you) have noticed my unabashed love for all things Godzilla. The Mean Green holds a special place in my heart. Maybe it’s happy memories from my childhood. Maybe it’s the sci-fi. Maybe it’s because I like seeing cities stomped flat by a fire-breathing mutated iguana. Regardless, Godzilla’s cool.

So thanks to an unlimited Blockbuster pass, I found myself renting the last American version of GODZILLA. This is the circa 1996 version that came out, starring Matthew Broderick, Hank Azaria, and probably nobody else important.

Broderick should have retired after FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF. That was a role of cinematic genius that he has never topped. After seeing THE STEPFORD WIVES, I am thoroughly convinced of this. Hank Azaria is a pretty decent character actor. Jean Reno is Jean Reno. Everybody else was lizard chow.

This movie was pretty awful, even by my standards. What’s funny is that the things that made this movie awful were things that normally would be considered hallmarks of success in Hollywood.

To begin with, there were pretty high production values. You probably could have made ALL the previous GODZILLA movies for what this sucker cost. The sets were good, the film quality good, they paid decent actors (though not great ones), and it had cool trailers.

The movie was made by the movie team of Devlin and Emmerich, who brought us such cinematic triumphs as STARGATE and INDEPENDENCE DAY. Note the sarcasm. I must admit I actually liked STARGATE, and the tv series isn’t all that bad. Nevertheless, they have a reputation for big flash and little substance. A perfect recipe for Hollywood success, right?

Godzilla himself was mostly computer-generated. Allow me a moment to rail against CGI. CGI has become Hollywood’s stopgap measure. If there’s any doubt, CGI the scene. Granted, special effects have become much cheaper to make now, but I think the coldness of CGI has drained movies of some of their hearts and souls.

Take STAR WARS, for instance. No purist can watch Episodes I-II without wanting to kill George Lucas. Most fans think one of the great things about the original STAR WARS was that everything in it looked, well....real. The Mos Eisley cantina looked gritty, dirty, and scary. You could almost smell the carious alien lifeforms in there. The vehicles moving through the streets actually looked real. That’s because they were, they were actual solid objects on a screen. They were not digital pixels dancing on a computer screen. There’s just something about using physical props, as opposed to digital dots.

I won’t even digress into the travesty that Lucas allowed his masterpiece to become. He ruined, and I mean RUINED the remade special editions of the first three STAR WARS movies. He’s got one shot at getting all this right, and we’ll find out if he nailed it in May. At any rate....

Hollywood needs to learn that we need less CGI and more old-fashioned special effects. I would direct the reader’s attention to AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. That transformation was one of the scariest in movie history, and none of it was computer-generated. It looked awfully real. By comparison, look at the transformations in AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS. Too fake for words.

The creature in GODZILLA looked too friendly. It was a big scary lizard, but there was a certain cuteness to it. Godzilla ain’t cute. I don’t care how you try to spin it, but a giant lizard tearing up a city is not cute. Ever. It’s like having an elephant in one’s living room. I don’t care how much one might love elephants, when the damn thing squashes your big-screen, flattens the dog, and messes on your new carpet, all you want is for it to die. Trust me on this one. Don’t ask why, but just trust me. A cute Godzilla just doesn’t work.

One of the things that made Toho Studios’ Godzilla was the way the thing looked. Godzilla just looked like he was created to smash buildings and spew radioactive fire. His face looked plain mean. It added something to the whole proposition. The newer version just doesn’t have the fear factor going on. Godzilla in the old movies just looked so...alien. There was nothing on the planet that looked anything like him. The new Godzilla looked like a big lizard. I think that if you can find something real to relate it to, then the thing becomes less scary. Let’s face it: we go to monster movies to get scared, at least a bit.

The CGI Godzilla moved like the dinosaurs in JURASSIC PARK. This is all well and good, but it just didn’t move like a guy in a big rubber suit. I know that sounds weird, but there is just a certain organic element to the Japanese movies that is completely lost with CGI.

At least they kept the great Godzilla roar. I have to give them props for that. It was one of the great movie-trailer moments in history. When the audience heard that roar back on the screen for the first time in the previews, I can guarantee there were some excited movie freaks out there.

The film-makers throw a rather dysfunctional love story in the mix. The love interest in this movie is one of the most evil women in movie history, and one of the most annoying. Broderick’s character, had he been real, would have probably done everything possible to feed her to Godzilla. I remember seeing this in the theater, and everyone there was in agreement on this issue.

There was also little or no homage to the greatness of Toho Studios’ classic monsters. How hard would it have been to throw in some Japanese tourists getting eaten or something? A little respect should have been shown here. Maybe a Raymond Burr cameo?

At any rate, a serious student of Godzilla must watch this movie, just to appreciate the finer points of the Japanese movies.