OFF: GODZILLA REVIEW

[Matthew Braun]

Jean Lansford <lansford at VNET.NET> writes:
[that Nick English wrote]
>>I'm by far not the most P.C. dude out there, but this movie also
>>takes a serious stab at the French.
>Hmm.  I took much of it as stabs at the plastic, prepackaged American
>culture. At least the French were shown as taking responsibility for their
>actions.
I agree.  Yeah, the Frenchmen are shown as fussy about the food and coffee,
but they're shown as clever and very competant operators--in fact, the most
competant in the film.

Most folks I know complained about the US armed services being painted with
a gigantic Stupid Brush--everything from "There wouldn't be a colonel
running that operation", to "Heat-seeking missles?  Why not fly-by-wire or
radar-guided or...  They just wanted an excuse to blow up buildings, I guess."

Nick English <nick at THECAMPUS.COM> rants on:
>BTW, I hate to just sit here being totally negative and whatnot...but
>if anybody else has seen this movie, please back me up. It REALLY IS
>HORRIBLE.
Sorry--nope.  Sure it wasn't high art, but it was better than "The Lost
World", and possibly even "Jurassic Park".  (I still laugh when I think of
those baby 'zilla's slipping on the gumballs.)

>On the one hand, it truly defames Godzilla in the eyes of the Zilla
>fan. It takes everything we love about the ol' guy and jettisons it
>for a total 90s big-budget Hollywood blockbuster feel.
Ummm...what were you expecting?  This has been hyped for a long time as The
Big Summer Movie, and they're merchandising the living daylights out of it.
For the last few years, The Big Movie has been more about money,
merchandising, and tie-ins than about cinema.  That's the way the summer
movie biz works these days.

>But on the other hand, if this weren't a Godzilla movie, it would still be
>piss-poor. And rest assured, if you renamed it 'Big Green Lizard Attacks
>New York' and changed the creature's name, I'll bet more people would
>compare it to Jurassic Park than to Godzilla.
(As if they're not comparing it the way it is...)  But it also wasn't bad
in the right ways to be a "traditional" Godzilla movie.  Truth to tell, I
don't think the vast majority of the audience cared how faithful it was to
the old movies--they just wanted this to be a good movie. Sort of like
Kubrick's "The Shining".  Was it the same as Steven King's version?  No, but
it was good on its own merits, so that's okay.

I mean, if they wanted to do a faithful adaptation, they could have started
by removing all subtitles in the movie.  All foreign dialog should have been
dubbed.  Badly.

>Again, I sincerely believe there's actual merit to a Spielberg lawsuit!
...and they took the eggs from 'Alien'.  And 'zilla even looked like an
alien a little.  And they got the weather from 'Blade Runner'.  And the
submarines came from 'The Hunt For Red October'.  I can see where Spielberg
might be mad that they did some of the scenes better than he did...

>Anyway, I'll shut up about it unless I can add more to the dialogue
>than just THIS MOVIE SUCKS THE BAG!
I don't know--it was certainly no worse than JP or TLW.  While this had plot
holes you could drive a truck through, I'll take them over the colossally
stupid characters with which Spielberg populated both of his dino movies.

                                m@

                                (who thinks the scene in "Lost World" where
                                 Gymnast Girl(tm) does her swings on the
                                 parallel bars and kicks the raptor in the
                                 chin should have been replaced with one
                                 where she loses her grip, and falls to the
                                 floor, where she's quickly mauled by the
                                 raptors, and Jeff Goldblum muses, "I guess
                                 now we know why she didn't make the
                                 gymnastics team...")

OBCD: Francis Dunnery, "Let's Go Do What Happens"