Godzilla (1998)
The Godzilla films originated in Japan during the 1950s as an allegory for the deadly destruction of nuclear weapons, embodied in a creature created by massive radiation imbued with cataclysmic powers. Its production house, Toho, called the monster “Gojira”, a mix of “gorira” and “kujira”, Japanese for gorilla and whale, respectively. Toho’s Gojira films typically featured a man in a rubber monster suit wreaking havoc on a small-scale city on a movie set. In 1956. Joseph E. Levine imported and repackaged Godzilla for an American audience, translating its Japanese title to “Godzilla”.
Flash forward to 1992. Hollywood studios hotly sought properties with franchise potential. Former talent agent Cary Woods, assistant to Sony Pictures president Peter Guber, was looking to break in as a film producer. Guber put him under the wing of Rob Fried, who’d earned an Oscar for producing the live-action short film, “Session Man”. Woods and Fried began producing smaller projects: the heartwarming sports flick, Rudy, and the hip Mike Myers comedy, So I Married an Axe Murderer. They pursued the rights to Mr. Magoo from licensing guru Henry G. Saperstein as a potential live-action vehicle for Myers. In their negotiations, Sapertstein mentioned he also controlled the American merchandising rights to Godzilla and had been trying unsuccessfully to negotiate a deal between Toho and a major studio for some time for a Hollywood remake. Ishiro Honda, the director of the 1954 original, had just passed, removing its leading voice against Toho signing a deal.
Like Batman, Godzilla was internationally known and beloved, and with Jurassic Park expected to dominate 1993’s summer box office, a resurgence in dinosaur-related properties erupted at video stores, including for Godzilla. Unfortunately, the producers met resistance from executives at Columbia Pictures upon hearing that Toho wouldn’t license more than one movie at a time and place restrictions on merchandising rights. TriStar also passed, claiming Godzilla was a campy relic to today’s audiences whose last American effort, Godzilla 1985, bombed miserably.
Woods’ wife suggested he take it to his boss, Peter Guber. Woods feared admonishment for bugging Guber with something beneath his station, the window of opportunity for this potential gold mine was closing. Woods flew to Florida where Guber was scheduled to deliver a speech. Luckily, Guber was ecstatic; Godzilla was an international pop culture brand with major profit potential.
Guber set up the deal with Sony’s TriStar over protestations from its president, Mike Medavoy. Guber negotiated the finances and international distribution rights except for Japan, which remained Toho’s domain. Toho also received $1 million plus a profit share, plus veto power over Godzilla’s design as detailed in their voluminous booklet of Godzilla do’s and don’ts. Toho also acquired rights to Sony’s version of Godzilla when the agreement lapsed. TriStar footed the $400,000 upfront dollars for the deal and cleared the schedule for a release around Christmas 1993.
Toho wanted the antinuclear theme preserved and not a silly, spoofy take. Preferably like Jurassic Park, a fun romp with serious threats. Woods and Fried searched for a screenwriter to treat Godzilla with a fresh approach. After weeks of combing through sample scripts and meeting with writers like Clive Barker (too dark) and Predator‘s Jim and John Thomas, they hired a team known by Woods when he worked as a talent agent, Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, whose prior efforts included the Fred Savage vehicle, Little Monsters, and Disney’s Aladdin.
Elliott and Rossio’s preconceptions about Godzilla were of schlock unworthy of adapting except as parody but they needed the work so they accepted the offer. They watched Toho’s movies for ways they might entertain modern audiences, highlighting what worked to make Godzilla seem awesome and scrapping what him goofy. Godzilla is most awesome, they observed, when he is subdued by a deadlier menace before becoming Earth’s savior in a battle royale across landscapes and cityscapes. They determined King Ghidorah, the three-headed dragon, made the best nemesis but Toho excluded that character from their contract and wanted double to add the rights. The writers decided to create an original monster with similar powers.
The Rossio/Elliott script finds a scientist killed while investigating a nuclear accident that unleashes a dinosaur-like monster that had been preserved in a red-black amniotic fluid. An author on dinosaur/dragon folklore dubs the creature “Godzilla” after a Japanese legend. The author is recruited by a top-secret government project led by the scientist’s widow to hunt Godzilla in what the screenwriters called Moby Dick if Aliens’ Ellen Ripley were Ahab. Conventional weapons prove ineffective, but the government agents neutralize Godzilla with residual amniotic fluid, transporting it to New York headquarters for study.
An alien crashes down in the rural U.S. This alien can fuse with animals it encounters, forming its ability to fly from bats, ferocity from mountain lions, and stamina from cows. The media dubs it the “Gryphon”. The team soon learns that the Gryphon is a doomsday monster created by an alien race seeking to conquer the universe. Godzilla was created by an ancient but technologically advanced humanoid race using dinosaur genes to stop it. Godzilla escapes when it senses the Gryphon, but is weakened by the amniotic fluid connection to its body. The showdown occurs in Manhattan, up to the World Trade Center. After humans remove the amniotic fluid source from Godzilla, he’s restored to full strength, demolishing the Gryphon. Humanity decides to leave Godzilla alone to protect Earth from any other foes that may arise from outer space.
The primary list of potential directors included James Cameron, Tim Burton, David Fincher, Robert Zemeckis, Ridley Scott, and Roland Emmerich. Most turned down the offer outright. Cameron was only interested in producing. Talks with Burton stalled because his ideas were too skewed toward humor. They moved next toward Joe Dante, Sam Raimi, Barry Sonnenfeld, Joe Johnston, and even the Coen Brothers (which Sony nixed outright due to their less-commercial track record). Their search ended with rabid Godzilla fan Jan de Bont, hot off of Speed, and a new target date of Christmas 1994. De Bont foresaw his film as fun and funny as the Japanese films but with more realism in its visuals. Industrial Light and Magic declined an offer to provide visual effects because they were too busy with other projects to handle such a tall order. Sony’s in-house effects team, Imageworks, was offered but De Bont preferred the costlier Stan Winston’s Digital Domain. Set construction portraying a Japanese fishing village began in Oregon and location scouting took place in other areas of the United States.
Toho was content but Sony grew concerned that Americans didn’t connect with Godzilla enough to justify a huge budget unless he were fully ‘Americanized’. Making Godzilla resemble a dinosaur could help it ride Jurassic Park‘s coattails. In addition to De Bont’s $4 million salary and points deal, he wanted 500 effects shots estimated to push the budget between $130-150 million, and they still hadn’t cast any A-list stars. De Bont felt stars weren’t necessary; Godzilla was the star. Informal negotiations began with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt for the leads. Sony, financially suffering from recent box-office fiascos like Last Action Hero and Geronimo, pressed to reduce the cost below $100 million. Sony suggested removing the Gryphon and reducing Godzilla’s appearance, plus adding a sidekick character that younger kids could be entertained by that could continue a spinoff series that did not carry sequel licensing requirements from Toho. De Bont refused to cooperate with major alterations. Production halted when no one wanted to make any decisions for fear of firing.
Woods and Fried moved to new projects while De Bont and his intended cast and crew jumped ship to Warner Bros. to make Twister instead. Without pushback, Sony employed script doctor Donald Macpherson to revise the Rossio/Elliott screenplay to darken the jokey tone, amalgamate the characters, and reduce expensive effects and redundant action sequences. Godzilla wouldn’t be shown to build mystique and lower costs, while his attacks moved to dry land to avoid costly water effects. Sony showed the Macpherson script to several directors, nearly securing David Fincher, who wanted a Chicago setting. However, Sony was skeptical Fincher would deliver and continued looking while McPherson made further revisions.
In 1996, Sony took a $3.2 billion write-off, clearing their American division of high-salary execs including Peter Guber. Guber wanted to move Godzilla to his new venture, Mandalay Pictures, but Sony, who funded Mandalay, felt it was too risky for a first effort. Counterintuitively, Sony Japan wanted a big project to turn around its fortune, pitching to Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, whose Independence Day was anticipated to become a blockbuster success. They turned it down again. Devlin felt Americans associated Godzilla with dopey things like the 1992 Nike commercial featuring Charles Barkley playing basketball against Godzilla. Emmerich associated Godzilla with cinematic turkeys he’d seen at the matinee as a kid, sandwiched between Hercules flicks and spaghetti Westerns. No way would today’s audiences take a Godzilla film seriously.
Besides, they already had a follow-up to ID4, an adventure with shades of The Right Stuff where a meteor strikes Earth called Ground Zero. Despite four refusals, Sony was tenacious, and soon made an offer they couldn’t refuse: a three-picture deal giving the duo 20% of the first-dollar grosses. Suddenly, the concept of a monster destroying a city had appeal. The current script was a no-go, but it offered ideas for making a respectable Godzilla film.
TriStar asked Rossio and Elliott to revise the script to Emmerich and Devlin’s satisfaction but the new team decided to write their own on spec, take it or leave it. After Sony approved the offer, Devlin joined Emmerich at his Puerto Vallarta home. They rewatched the original 1954 film on laserdisc, finding it surprisingly less campy than anticipated. They watched several Godzilla sequels before stopping because they grew redundant. They loved Godzilla’s look when shot in rain or at night, something they could emphasize in their feature. They moved to other monster properties for story ideas, including 1933’s King Kong and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.
They wanted to replace Godzilla’s Michelin Man-like appearance with one that was swift, smart, evasive, and agile enough to burrow and leap like a real lizard. They wanted Godzilla to behave more like an iguana than an anthropomorphized, heroic monster. Godzilla wouldn’t destroy cities without rationale, or breathe radioactive blasts. It should have an animal’s logic and survival instinct. A city isn’t a place to destroy, but a nest for hatching babies, which is its true threat to humanity.
They’d cap costs by using their own effects team employing models and puppets, interspersed with CG. They faxed Toho’s Godzilla design details to Patrick Tatopoulos, who’d designed the aliens for them on Stargate and Independence Day, but he never received it. Tatopoulis proceeded with his design of what a”fast Godzilla” might look like. He also gave a prominent chin to give the appearance of nobility, inspired by the jawline of Shere Khan from Disney’s Jungle Book.
Emmerich and Devlin worked out their initial script over the course of three weeks, naming their main character Nico ‘Nick’ Tatopoulos in honor of Patrick. Emmerich has wanted to cast Matthew Broderick in Stargate but he was doing Broadway. This time they asked first if Broderick wanted the part; he said yes, so they wrote Nick for him. They brought the origin of Godzilla back in line with Toho. A series of nuclear explosions in the South Pacific creates a titanic lizard monster that’s born pregnant and destroys Manhattan. With over 200 eggs laid, humanity faces extinction if a biologist, a couple of reporters, the French Secret Service, and the military can’t stop their existence before they overrun the Earth.
They knew Tatoupolis’s two-foot-tall prototype maquette of Godzilla they were set to reveal to Toho’s executives violated nearly every design requirement. But what little enthusiasm they’d mustered for Godzilla had also dissipated after the conceptual phase. As suspected, Toho’s brass audibly gasped upon first sight of the new design. Emmerich stood his ground, half-hoping Toho would cancel and he could go back to the meteor movie. He insisted that his Godzilla must be quick and lean, with a color scheme for camouflage with buildings. If they didn’t like it, they’d have to find another director. Toho needed a day to consider. They’d made millions distributing Emmerich’s Independence Day in Japan and there were no hotter creative teams interested. They resolved that Emmerich’s Godzilla maintained the right spirit, and was so divergent that it wouldn’t interfere with the Japanese film series. They gave their blessing, though Emmerich felt mixed about the pitch’s success.
Although Devlin and Emmerich wanted a serious Godzilla, they committed to comic relief with human characters. The actors did no screen tests. Renee Zellweger turned down the Audrey role. Among the handful of others they met with, Maria Pitillo won them over. The French component was because France did the most testing near the Fiji Islands and they liked Jean Reno best among prominent French actors. Three voice actors from TV’s “The Simpsons” appear because Devlin was a major fan of the show – Harry Shearer as a douchy news anchor, Hank Azaria as a cameraman nicknamed Animal, and a cameo by Nancy Cartwright. The characters of Mayor Ebert and his partner Gene were placed in the movie because film critics Siskel & Ebert gave both Stargate and Independence Day two thumbs down on their show.
The month-long location shoot in New York proved difficult because they could only shoot late evenings. They recorded on empty streets for Godzilla and his destruction to add digitally in post-production. Actors and extras relied on their imagination for reactions. Some seven-foot-tall animatronic Godzilla suits with remote-controlled heads were used in certain scenes to show part of Godzilla, but they hadn’t come up with the final look throughout the production. The team struggled with how Godzilla’s movement appeared too human. Andy Jones was freed from work on Titanic and assisted the animalistic animation process so Godzilla became 90% CG.
Even with their effects film experience, the challenge was daunting. Independence Day had about 15 minutes of effects shots within a 2.5-hour movie. Godzilla‘s required more because its main character was a special effect. Sony didn’t want a rush job, offering to postpone the Memorial Day release to Independence Day but Emmerich and Devlin declined, hoping to get ahead of the summer movie pack.
Woods and Fried retained producer credit, as did Elliott and Rossio for their story, but none participated in the Emmerich/Devlin endeavor. Woods claims that the executive team that took over was the most incompetent he’d witnessed in his career. Fried said were taking a jewel and grinding it into dust. They had no understanding of the property or the possibilities, and just gave Emmerich and Devlin the keys to a potential major franchise just because they lucked out with Independence Day.
Despite a $50 million ad campaign, the marketing was botched. Promotional footage showed Godzilla’s body, but not his head, which wasn’t settled until the end of postproduction. Licensees weren’t allowed to see Godzilla’s design early so they weren’t available until the film’s release. Reportedly, a variety of Godzilla designs were sent to toy manufacturers; if they leaked, Sony cut ties with the offending companies. Nearly half of merchandise sales come before a movie’s release date, yet few were allowed for Godzilla, wasting a golden opportunity.
Because effects were being worked on 24/7 until the May 18 premiere, there wasn’t ample time for test screenings prior to release. When Sony execs and theater owners finally screened it, they knew it was a dud. John Calley reportedly asked for a number of alterations, including got Maria Pitillo’s voice to be dubbed by someone less annoying, but it was too late. To get ahead of bad reviews, their marketing strategy shifted toward a pre-released ad blitz and opening in a record-setting 7,363 theaters, roughly a quarter of all available. Sony also negotiated with theater owners to take a higher percentage than customary for the first four weeks. Theater owners reluctantly agreed because they were hyped that this would be the event film of the summer. Despite the critical drubbing, returns were enough for Sony to pay Toho $5 million to option sequel rights for five years.
Godzilla topped the box office for its first two weeks of release. However, the giant lizard had small legs, tumbling out of the top 10 after five weeks, upsetting theater owners expecting a huge run. Compounding the plummeting attendance, no other big movies were released to pick up the slack. Godzilla took in a disappointing $136 million in the US but performed better internationally, adding another $242 million, assuring the endeavor was not a flop financially.
Fingers pointed in every direction as to why the film didn’t perform better. Emmerich blamed the marketing. “Size does matter” seemed a funny promotional line, but not when it’s on every billboard and poster. It seemed Sony viewed it more like a project than a movie. Devlin felt that casting without screen tests was the issue. Broderick felt miscast, while many did not enjoy Maria Pitillo, who took the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress of 1998. It also shared the award with Psycho and The Avengers for Worst Remake or Sequel, but lost its bid for Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Screenplay. The only bright side was its soundtrack, which went platinum, though it was off of songs mostly not in the film.
Others felt reducing Godzilla to just a giant animal took its many special traits away with explanations rooted in incomprehensible science. Some called it “Godzilla in name only”. Were it just a giant dinosaur running amok in New York City, it would be a passable fine effects feature, but “Godzilla” carries a higher expectation. Godzilla has a soul and a purpose. It should be more than just an overgrown lizard randomly destroying things out of some genetic impulse. Critics were merciless, citing that it failed to live up to the entertainment value of cheaper Japanese releases. Devlin took responsibility for Godzilla‘s failings, complimenting Emmerich for a great job directing a bad script.
Astounding special effects are the real show here, with convincing bone-crunching sound, it’s a videophile’s wet dream. The problem here? There are many.
1) Whether Godzilla is destroying New York, killing seamen like Jaws, or the baby lizards are going after the heroes Alien–style, you won’t feel fear. This is mainly the fault of problem #2, which is:
2) The cheesy comedic tone undercuts dramatic tension. It goes for laughs, yet fails to be funny. Nothing horrific will happen to anyone who doesn’t deserve it.
3) The 140-minute runtime is too long when it’s padded with an hour of gratuitous effect shots like Godzilla running between the buildings doing a whole lot of nothing.
4) Matthew Broderick. For this film, he’s all wrong. It’s annoying to observe a dweeby biologist standing around telling military personnel what to do, like remove manhole covers. His character is barely necessary, serving as an annoyance rather than a hero.
5) If $100 million is spent on special effects, they can afford $3 million for a top-notch writer to deliver a good script.” This film feels like it was written by a 10-year-old for others his age. Indeed, in marketing materials, the demographic target was stated as boys 4 to 11 years old. Most children’s animated features will interest adults more.
6) We have no rooting interest in Godzilla, as friend or foe – it’s merely looking to survive and build a nest to have its babies. Humans want to wipe out Godzilla and all offspring created by rampant nuclear testing, yet we’re supposed to root for ourselves to wipe out the by-product of our hubris and learn nothing about the danger of tinkering with mother nature.
The list could go on. Blockbusters in the 1980s were entertaining while striving to fill audiences with a sense of wonder. In the 1990s, the goal shifted toward dumbing down blockbusters so even a brain-dead person could follow what was going on. Special effects alone aren’t enough to fill another generation with a sense of awe. You can dress up a pile of dog crap however you like…sprinkle glitter on it, and add a ribbon…but it’s just a prettier pile of dog crap.
Upsetting Godzilla fans, the character is the nemesis of humanity but also dies. Japanese Godzilla aficionados mostly disown it as lacking the requisite spirit of the franchise. Sony shut down the user forum on the film’s official website because it was overwhelmingly cutting against them.
The sequel possibility comes from the last-minute hatching of its generic offspring. TriStar began an animated TV show, “Godzilla: The Series” in 1998. A sequel was discussed. Tab Murphy was tapped halfway through post-production by Emmerich and Devlin to write a follow-up script that introduced a half dozen other monsters on Monster Island after a jaunt in the Australian outback with the baby Godzilla that Nick Tatoupolis saves and releases into the wild where he eventually grows to hatch younger versions. Audrey would be gone and a new interest forms with a Dian Fosse-type in Australia. The nemesis monster looks like a cross between a winged termite and a wasp and has been abducting humans to feed her young.
However, Devlin and Emmerich found themselves in a financial dispute with Sony and abandoned it. Sony contemplated exercising their sequel option as a reboot when Toho rebooted its Godzilla franchise with Godzilla 2000 in 1999. TriStar distributed it in the US as a palate cleanser after the 1998 film. Wisely, Sony let its rights revert back to Toho in 2003. Toho, with tongue in cheek, introduced the American Godzilla, dubbed ‘Zilla’ because there was nothing godly about it, into their 2004 film, Godzilla: Final Wars, where the Japanese Godzilla bests it easily.
An attempt to turn the Rossio/Elliott script into a comic book was undertaken by Todd Tennant.
Qwipster’s rating: D
MPAA Rated: PG-13 for sci-fi monster action/violence
Running Time: 139 min.
Cast: Matthew Broderick, Hank Azaria, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Harry Shearer, Kevin Dunn
Director: Roland Emmerich
Screenplay: Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich