Godzilla 2000
Godzilla 2000 is a real Godzilla movie. Unlike the recent version featuring Hank Azaria, a soundtrack that included Puff Daddy raping Led Zeppelin (that’s not a typo), and a computer-generated monster that couldn’t kill much more than Matthew Broderick’s career, this Toho production has what all Godzilla fans want: a guy in a big rubber suit stomping model buildings.
Godzilla 2000, or G2K, if you’ll indulge me, starts out like Twister, only without a tornado and with a giant nuclear mutant monster of questionable acting talent. (Were Bill Paxton hundreds of feet tall, the two movies would be virtually identical, save for the tornado.) As the film opens there’s one of those generic Human Protagonists of a Godzilla Film, who, along with his daughter, drives around in an SUV tracking Godzilla’s movements. He’s part of the Godzilla Prediction Network, an organization only slightly more accurate than the Psychic Friends Network.
Despite the Network’s best efforts, Godzilla appears from the sea to destroy Japanese civilization approximately every thirty seconds, which prompts some ill-mannered Japanese to actually wish him destroyed. The bland fellow from the Network thinks this is just awful, since Godzilla is a wealth of scientific knowledge, if only he’d let us study him completely before interrupting to stomp our cities flat.
There’s an annoying Japanese reporter woman tagging along for at least part of the film, and she manages to get the folks from the Network chased and nearly flattened by the Big Green when she snaps some ill-conceived close-up flash photos of ‘Zilla during his nightly walk to crush Tokyo. Later, she complains to her editor that he promised to let her do “hard news” if only she’d take some shots of the monster. I understand Godzilla has been periodically destroying Japan for several decades, but since when is this not “hard news?” It’s difficult to imagine the heading “Cities Destroyed By The Radioactive Thundergod Who Haunts Our Dreams And Seeks The Genocide Of the Japanese People” mixed in with puff pieces about Madonna’s wedding and the Spice Girls’ comeback album.
This brings me to another observation: you would think, after years of having their freshly rebuilt civilization destroyed, that the Japanese would never, ever, ever mess with any large asteroid-sized rocks or eggs that pop out of volcanic mountains, fall from the sky, or appear from the bottom of the sea. Yet these same people send legions of technologically advanced air, land, and water craft to retrieve just such artifacts whenever they’re discovered. Predictably, the Japanese find another Giant Society Destroying Death Rock, and darned if the Giant Death Rock doesn’t produce a space monster of some kind.
There’s been a lot of talk that Godzilla represents Japanese society’s collective fear and trauma over nuclear war. The truth is simpler. Godzilla is Japan’s abusive ex-boyfriend, who was never good to her and was always beating her up and then telling her it wouldn’t happen again. The problem for the alien space-monster is that abusive ex-boyfriend Godzilla figures only he has the right to beat on Japan, and he’ll damn well take a baseball bat to the Chevy Camaro of anybody else who tries, then show up outside Japan’s trailer at three in the morning next Saturday, drunk and rambling about how they really can work things out this time.
I will pause now for my weekly visit from the extended metaphor police.
Anyway, the giant space monster turns out, at first, to be a giant flying saucer. The giant flying saucer first attempts to hack into Japan’s computer network, in which it expends its incredible processing power in hundreds of thousands of America Online chat rooms pretending to be several hundred thousand sexually active teenage girls. This gets old fast, though, and the saucer eventually generates a giant Godzilla-style space monster.
The space monster tries to suck out Godzilla’s DNA to become a Godzilla clone, and the giant saucer has the audacity to whack Godzilla in the head. Big Green, who doesn’t take this kind of grief, blasts the saucer into debris with his nuclear breath. The space monster opens its giant maw like a snake, intent on swallowing Godzilla; ‘Zilla, ever direct, jumps right in. He fires up his Monster Halitosis one more time, blowing the space monster into smithereens.
Given the regularity with which Godzilla gets interrupted destroying Tokyo by other monsters trying to destroy Tokyo, then destroys the interlopers, you would think Japanese weather reports include the Daily Probability That You Will Be Inundated With Flaming Monster Guts. No mention is made of this in G2K, but it’s fun to suppose.
I should add that I really like the Godzilla monster of this film; unlike the ugly American creature that no doubt haunts Matthew Broderick’s dreams, this Godzilla is cute, especially when he’s shown swimming through the depths of the ocean like a giant, ornery sea lion.
The film ends with Godzilla stomping through the flaming ruins of Tokyo yet again, with Godzilla Music playing in the background. The militaristic, haunting Godzilla Music is a constant throughout the many movies featuring Big Green, and it is always a delight. One suspects that the music is also a favorite of Japan’s road crews and building contractors, who enjoy endless job security if they’re only quick enough to avoid being flattened by Godzilla or his playmates.
Godzilla 2000 is a classic monster movie that does not pretend to be anything other than what it is. Given movie critic Leonard Maltin’s habit of awarding three and four stars to terrible movies, I’ve no doubt he nominated this one for an Academy Award. I’d tend to agree.
The fun part would be Godzilla’s acceptance speech.