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I guarantee you’ll sit through this movie like CRAP THROUGH A GOOSE.
Remember that wave of new millennium-inspired names that cropped up everywhere in anticipation of the year 2000? It seemed like almost everything had to attach the words “2000” or “Millennium” onto the branding. This gave us such gems as “Fantasia 2000,” the “Millennium Force” roller coaster at Cedar Point, and of course, the incomparable “Y2J.” If it was branded 2000, you just knew it had to be AWESOME. Given that it was still 1999, it only made sense that Toho’s rebound effort after lending their prized kaiju to Tristar with disastrous results would inevitably be titled “Godzilla 2000: Millennium.”
Unlike all 27 other Godzilla films I broke down in G60, this time I am discussing the American version instead of Toho’s official Japanese cut. Someone at Tristar decided that there just might still be demand for Godzilla films in American movie theaters following the 1998 debacle, so Godzilla 2000, amazingly, was given a stateside theatrical release with significant revisions and dropping the “Millennium” from the title. When Godzilla films are re-edited for America, the response is usually negative. The recut version often does not take the material seriously or removes substantial chunks of the plot and/or character development. This can turn out poorly (Godzilla Raids Again, aka “Gigantis, The Fire-Monster” and King Kong vs. Godzilla), but it can also work amazingly well (Godzilla, King of the Monsters). Godzilla 2000 is fortunately a case of the latter. So much so in fact, that Toho has even said it prefers the American cut to its own.
So what changes did Tristar make? First they lopped approximately eight minutes off the run-time without removing any important information. Almost all of this came from tightening the pacing by cutting down a ton of needlessly long human character scenes and monotonous shots of inactivity in the kaiju sequences. Toho’s version is derided for being slow and plodding, while Tristar’s clips along at a brisk pace. Additionally, long stretches of film had no music at all and since composer Takayuki Hattori’s score is just as bad as his Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla effort, Tristar brought in J. Peter Robinson to create additional tracks where needed. They also wisely included two of Akira Ifukube’s famous Godzilla tracks.
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Godzilla 2000 started an irritating trend in the Millennium Godzilla Series of weak sound effects. Godzilla’s roar through all six of these films is disturbingly quiet and passive-sounding. Tristar recorded new roars that retain Godzilla’s characteristic sound, yet are much more powerful than what Toho used. The Tristar roar might even be my second favorite of them all after the 1954 roar. It RINGS in your ears, sounding like a heavy iron bell or even an elephant at times, but still unmistakably Godzilla. New monster, Orga’s roar and countless other sounds are replaced or enhanced as well. Not all of the changes are positive, though. The dubbing is generally good, but there are some Tristar-added lines of dialogue that make even the most hardened Godzilla fans cringe (“Crap through a goose,” being the worst offender).
The term “reboot” has become ubiquitous with franchise filmmaking these days. But what does it technically mean? What’s to differentiate a reboot from a remake? I look at it this way: a remake implies that you are in essence making a near-copy of an older film readjusted for the present day. Both King Kong (1976) and King Kong (2005) are remakes. Each of them tells essentially the same story as King Kong (1933). Batman Begins and Man of Steel are reboots. They draw on existing mythology to tell new stories about characters who have already been represented in other films without attempting to literally remake any of them. By this definition, Legendary Pictures’ 2014 Godzilla is a reboot. The Return of Godzilla is also a reboot. So what then is Godzilla 2000? It doesn’t use plot or characters from any prior Godzilla film, nor does it explicitly rely on mythology from any point in the series. We simply deduce that Godzilla exists, has all of the familiar abilities and traits we’ve come to expect, and is a well-known commodity in the world he inhabits. No mention is made of 1954 or any other previous appearance. For lack of a better term, I will call this the “James Bond Approach.” There are exceptions of course (the Daniel Craig films are certainly a reboot), but in many Bond movies we simply pick up with the title character at some point in his career as an MI6 agent without worrying about how exactly he got there and then call it a day. Just because Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan took over from Sean Connery or Timothy Dalton doesn’t mean the series was rebooted. It just carries on and so do we. That is what Godzilla 2000 does.
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The characters and story strike a much more grounded tone than anything in the Heisei series. Gone is G-Force and its fantastical technology, psychics, and time travel. We now follow a humble father/daughter/non-romantic, semi-“not really a surrogate mother figure” team known as the Godzilla Prediction Network (GPN) and a branch of government that deals with all kinds of weird incidents called CCI (Crisis Control Intelligence). If the Heisei Series took place in a heightened universe, Godzilla 2000 takes place in our universe.
The “father” part of GPN, Shinoda, is played by Takahiro Murata, a likable actor who previously appeared in Godzilla vs. Mothra. He and his teenage daughter, Io, use mostly homemade equipment to track and monitor Godzilla’s whereabouts. I have no idea how they are funded or what purpose any of what they do serves, because they don’t report to CCI and their whole operation is incapable of actually doing anything once they ascertain Godzilla’s location. They usually can’t even figure out where he is until he has already made landfall, so they’re more like storm-chasers who study Godzilla than any kind of viable warning system. Newspaper photographer, Yuki, follows them around to get shots of Godzilla and later puts her investigative skills to work once an alien UFO shows up and hacks into Tokyo’s computer mainframe.
Head of the CCI is the villainous Katagiri (Hiroshi Abe), a man with fractured ties to Shinoda and the GPN. Katagiri is an interesting character for all the wrong reasons. He’s entertaining as all hell, but his bad guy antics are so over the top that they become a distraction from the events of the film. We know he’s mean dude because he wears a black trench coat, smokes cigarettes, perpetually scowls, and utters lines like, “Your organization’s history. I’ll send flowers…” The odd part is that everything Katagiri does is for the good of the Japanese people. He wants to stop Godzilla and the UFO to save peoples’ lives. This brings up the question of whether or not human villains even have a place in kaiju films. If the monsters are supposed to be the opposing force (even though we root for them) then why is a character like Katagiri necessary? My argument is that he is not. Films like Invasion of Astro-Monster have plots that demand the presence of human villains (aliens are still people in this sense), but that’s not the kind of movie Godzilla 2000 is. It aspires to be something more grounded and serious. In these films all that is necessary is that the characters driving the plot have differing viewpoints. The inherent conflict stemming from that creates all the human drama we need. Gojira, The Return of Godzilla, and Godzilla vs. Biollante are the clearest examples of this and a template for what Godzilla 2000 probably should have done.
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“To the millennium!”
The story Godzilla 2000 wants to tell is a good one. When an ancient meteorite is discovered under the ocean, beams of light from the submersible investigating it awaken an alien intelligence within that prompts the meteorite to rise to the surface. Seeming to draw energy from light, the meteorite flies out of the water and makes a beeline for Godzilla. Why is it interested in Godzilla? That’s what GPN has to find out. A battle with Godzilla burns off the rocky meteorite surface, revealing a metallic flying saucer. The saucer settles over Tokyo and hacks into any and all files containing information on Godzilla. Shinoda and Yuki learn that it has selected Godzilla as a viable organism to extract genetic material from to help an alien life form inside adapt to Earth’s environment. A subplot has Shinoda figuring out the secret to Godzilla’s legendary invulnerability. His cells rapidly regenerate, healing damage within a short timespan. Essentially, Godzilla is Wolverine. Regeneration is something that has been part of Godzilla from the beginning, but has never been directly addressed on film until now. The alien life form inside the UFO intends to use Godzilla’s regenerative properties to grow itself a new body on Earth. When it does so, the result is Orga.
Orga joins Destoroyah and SpaceGodzilla as conceptually awesome kaiju let down by piss-poor suits. The Orga suit is inflexible and stiff compared to Godzilla, but due to Takao Okawara’s direction and Tristar’s re-editing, the final battle between them turned out great. Godzilla and Orga fight both hand-to-hand and at distance with energy weapons, avoiding the “beam wars” trope that grew to define the Heisei series. Tsutomu Kitagawa assumes Godzilla’s mantle from Kenpachiro Satsuma for the new series and his first performance is a good one. Kitagawa makes Godzilla a methodical, yet highly emotional character who visibly figures out his every move against Orga. Godzilla has plenty of personality with Kitagawa inside for this film, something that unfortunately won’t be duplicated in all of the subsequent entries.
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