2000 Thoughts About Godzilla 2000
Original publishing date: November 1st, 2023
Hello everybody! Happy Wednesday, happy November, and happy first snow of the year for many people in the northeast US!
My dad and I went and saw Godzilla 2000 in theaters tonight, and I have a lot of thoughts. First, and least importantly, I'm really not sure why they're rereleasing this movie of all movies in the series right now. It's the movie's 24th or 23rd anniversary, so there isn't anything notable about the time that they're having it play. I suppose it could be to drum up hype for the new movie coming out in December, but I would imagine they would have stuck with more classics, or at least more of the movies fondly remembered by the fans or general audiences. It's a weird pick to show in theaters either way, but I'm very glad that they decided to give it a run.
Godzilla 2000 is a messy movie, but it is so rife with charm that I'm willing to look past some glaring flaws. The most notable thing that I chafed against was the fact that this is the most "dated" Godzilla movie of the series - specifically in the visual effects department. This seems to mostly be due to them trying really hard to push the boundaries of what was possible, combined with an incredibly short turnaround time on production (about a year and a half from my understanding) but it can be reaaaaally noticeable in a few places, to the point where it pulled me out of the experience every once in a while. I'm honestly okay with a lot of the straight CGi that they use, with the underwater Godzilla being on screen for a short enough amount of time to not really be too bad and Orga being so alien that I can completely buy it being shiny and stretchy and weird looking like early CG does. It's more the compositing effects done, and more specifically in the daytime CCI attack on Godzilla. His moving across the shore looks so choppy and poorly done that it actively dragged me out of the experience sometimes, and it's jarring specifically because it looks so much better everywhere else in the movie. The first 15 minutes does an incredible job using composite effects to make Godzilla look like he's there, with a stark silhouette effect done to make him look like a sort of divine cataclysm than a simple creature. The fumbling of the day fight is weird, and it's probably the one scene that I dislike the most of the entire movie.
I haven't watched this movie in a dog's age, so I have very fuzzy memories of the plot, but my dad said that a lot of the later sections were actually cut for the original US release, and this may be true for the dub on DVD as well. The focus on Orga hacking the computers and servers to try and grab information was fascinating, and it tickled a primal part in my brain that was so happy that the movie made up a reason to show more 1999 computers. God! The little Sony Vaio that Yuki has is adorable, and I love that it becomes a sort of macguffin by the end of the movie.
The scene where Orga starts hacking all of the computers in Japan is very cool, and also very distinctly similar to Evangelion. I thought it was really funny that the animation they use for trying to pull their building off of the global network was almost exactly the same as the Evangelion plug connection animation - is this like a common animation used at some point? If not, they were not hiding their inspirations very well.
I loooooooooove the bit where Orga has hacked into every computer in Tokyo and starts transmitting imagery onto the screens. It's both eery and incredibly cool - the animations they use look very similar to Serial Experiments Lain's intro, which is really funny. I would love to have a screensaver that has the same effect, with words slowly appearing in several different languages before squashing and sliding across the screen. Maybe I'll ask my friend to code something like that for me!
Orga is one of my favorite monster designs ever. I love his weird body shape and eyeball hole laserbeam thing, and the way his hands are absolutely massive and drag across the ground. It's a great way to make him seem imposing, with the scene of him slamming Godzilla right in the jaw feeling honestly painful. I've been there man, it HURTS to get hit that hard on th ebottom of your mouth.
I'm a fan of Io and Yuki, but I agree with my dad's take which is that they are both pointless in the actual plot of the movie. The script honestly feels like it was the second draft, with maybe a little bit of reworking from the first draft but not enough to consolidate all of the ideas into a really cohesive experience. Yuki, save for a few moments, does almost nothing and her contributions to the movie (having a computer that gets hacked, finding the servers that are getting hacked, taking photos that end up being ruined due to the radiation of Godzilla) could have all been put into other characters. In fact, Yuki's interaction with the servers feels almost entirely pointless! She does find the computers as they're being hacked, but after that point Shinoda shows up and, just, takes over. Like, he's the one there for when the hacking actually completes, and ends up contributing the only substance to that hacking plot.
Io, meanwhile, doesn't do a whole lot of anything? If I were to rewrite the movie, I would have her be the one with the mini-computer that ends up getting hacked by Orga, and would have found a way to work her into the human climax of the movie more concretely (her yelling about her dad feels like a lot of nothing going on for the entire time). Her plot to give the CCI guys bad data doesn't really get resolved, save for a tiny throwaway line which would have been cool to call back to, like, at all. Even just at the end maybe? I don't know - Io seems like a character burned by the script's shoddiness.
There is so much that could have been fleshed out in the relationship between Shinoda, Katagiri and Miyasaka. I like the dynamic they set up, with Shinoda and Katagiri being the two opposing forces with Miyasaka being somewhere in the middle, but there isn't enough done for their relationship to feel real. I would have loved to see some time given to explaining how they used to be friends and drifted apart, or how they all developed such different opinions on the existence and survival of Godzilla. There's a ton of space for some great interplay between the three of them that doesn't get realized.
This is also true for Shinoda's relationship with CCI - it would have been really cool if Katagiri's villainous side had more exposure - for example, if he tricked or strongarmed Shinoda for his old information on Godzilla, that would have made his later request to have Io bring in bad data make more sense. I also think it would have given each of them more of a personality - God I woudl have LOVED to see Miyasaka and Shinoda just shooting the shit in a quick scene after they discover Regenerator G-1, talking about what drove them apart. 90 seconds is all I ask!
Other than that, I really liked it! The music is fittingly otherwordly and ominous, and I love the way that Orga is revealed slowly, with the actual monster only really taking shape in the final fight with Godzilla. Any change to the formula is very appreciated, and I ended up leaving the theaters with a massive amount of appreciation for this movie. I'm definitely going to have it playing on my TV while I'm at work for a little while just to soak in the vibes.
Happy Wednesday everybody!