A messed up picture that is not in the true spirit of Godzilla, this American redo version is overlong and on the whole just isn’t right. Director Roland Emmerich (the director of the much more popular Independence Day) helms this disappointing summer blockbuster.
The scenery is switched from Tokyo over to New York, which only thins out the rubber band. Godzilla is a mutated iguana, who is going on a rampage across New York, causing the evacuation of the city. It ends up that he (or, as is later revealed, he/she), wants to reproduce its own young, as it is born pregnant, to make the new Godzilla species the dominant species on Earth. And to add to it, a team of French elite commandos are watching the Americans’ every move (the French turn out smarter than the Americans).
Poorly casted and weakly scripted, though the direction of the film wasn’t so bad, there isn’t much special about Godzilla. Matthew Broderick is just plain lazy. As the film progressed, I constantly saw actors and actresses who were in the wrong places.
The movie has one powerful scene, where the US military lures Godzilla out into the open by stockpiling a lot of fish. Godzilla pops out of the ground, but the scene is portrayed as strong and forceful, introducing Godzilla to the audience not in any ridiculous way.
After that, it becomes one giant hunt for the mighty beast, which comes down to big explosions mixed with a redo of Jurassic Park.
Afterwards, Emmerich somewhat regretted making Godzilla; indeed, it could have been so much more. I would have been more satisfied with a setting in Japan and a plot more similar to the original 50s black and white film, and with an actual Godzilla that didn’t feel so much as Jurassic Park’s T-Rex.
**/5
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