Monster of the Day #911

You wonder what Roland Emmerich thinks of the new Godzilla movie, which is basically already a hit. Emmerich’s film made money, although given the HUGE advertising blitz Tri-Star put into it, not enough to inspire a sequel. This decision was probably made easier by the fact that pretty much nobody liked the movie.

That was Tri-Stars’ own fault, though. This goes back, like John Carter, to studios making massively-budgeted movie that they have no faith in the central idea of. Disney was afraid to market John Carter as taking place on Mars, but spent $250 million on a movie that, you know, takes place on Mars. (And was meant to kick off a recurring tent pole franchise that, you know, takes place on Mars.) Since the initial trailers were hellbent on avoiding the M-word–thus explaining why it’s not in the title, ala the rather more evocative John Carter of Mars–the trailer was more confusing and generic-seeming than it needed to be, which certainly didn’t help the box office.

Tri-Star paid Toho all this money for the rights to Godzilla–and the movie, made 16 years ago, cost nearly as much as the new one, and again spent a staggering amount on advertising–but then didn’t appear to think that audiences really cared if they got a Godzilla movie or not. I will never understand that sort of thinking. So rather than trying to get somebody who would make the best Godzilla movie possible, as the new people sought to do, they went the (supposedly) safe route and worked to hire people who had made successful movies before.

This despite the fact that Dean and Emmerich repeatedly turned down the assignment, and publicly talked about their disdain for the character’s “cheese factor.” This from the guys who made Independence Day. Eventually Tri-Star threw enough money at the guys that they took the job, and then basically had to leave them completely in charge.

And so the guys made a Godzilla movie that had basically nothing to do with the things that define Godzilla. Hell, they didn’t even want him to have any sort of atomic breath weapon, again presumably because it was ‘cheesy’. (Like Superman flying, I guess.) If you look close at the few times their ‘Godzilla’ shoots flames, he’s simply blowing stuff, and they overlaid flames later when they finally figured out that audiences actually expected and wanted to see ‘Godzilla’ use the thing that is most associated with Godzilla.

For all that, IF you didn’t call it Godzilla and then cut out the atrocious 40 minutes having to do with the velociraptors baby godzillas, the movie would have been 90 minutes of passable fun. Although there still would have been major problems with it, such as sporting the single worst female lead performance ever in a major motion picture.

Emmerich will probably try to fob things off by saying Gareth Edwards had access to better special effects or something. But the fact is, Dean and Emmerich made a spectacularly misjudged and overall sort of shit movie, and Gareth Edwards didn’t.

Oh, and Edwards also made a Godzilla movie. So he had that going for him.

  • Flangepart

    And on that note (NICE rant on that crappy film) we can be pleased that Godzilla finally gets…respect.
    Oh, and it still looks like Deanzilla is humping that building.

  • Ericb

    I love how when Toho ended up regaining the rights to Deanzilla they had Godzilla kill it off in 2 seconds.

  • Gamera977

    Yeah, my favorite scene in the entire movie. Setting it in Australia kinda confused me though, seems like Hollywood would have made more sense. I’d love to see Big-G drop-kick Deanzilla into the giant Hollywood sign.

  • Gamera977

    Good points as usual Ken. Watching my DVD of ‘John Carter’ I’m amazed by the neat little touches they stuck in the movie but ruined the character of Carter and the whole friggin’ plot. It’s like looking at a beautiful custom car but the engine won’t start. The commentary is almost painful… the creators keep going on how much they love and respect ERB’s work- AND THEN WENT AND CHANGED THE ENTIRE FRIGGIN’ THING!!!’
    I’ve seen ‘Deanzilla’ once and well, I thought it more a ‘Jurassic Park’ rip-off than a Godzilla film. Wish they’d just stuck in more Broderick and called it ‘Ferris Bueller Vs. The Giant Iguana’. ‘Yes Cameron, tell your dad the giant monster smushed his precious car, yeah just do it!’
    I have to admire del Toro, ‘Pacific Rim’ didn’t make much sense but it was fun. I had friends complain about it but as I told them ‘del Toro said he made the movie to make you feel like an eleven year old kid again’ – and with me it worked in spades.

    And anyone who ends their biggest movie with Randy Quaid as a cropduster pilot flying a F/A-18 into an alien mothership’s exhaust port screaming ‘UP YOURS’ really, really, shouldn’t call anything else ‘cheesy’…

  • Beckoning Chasm

    There’s an interesting and well-detailed book, “John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood,” that talks about the cascade of errors behind the film. When management turned over, the film basically became an orphan, because no one wanted to touch that ICKY film that the OLD GUY had been pushing. Plus the publicity department was completely clueless. The author of the book, using various bits of the trailers, put together a better trailer that even the film-makers said “This should have been the trailer.” Given all that, I would have to agree that making the hero a whiny millenial instead of a swash-buckling man’s man was the biggest mistake of all.

  • I’m going to confess that I’m the rare Godzilla fan that actually likes Emmerich’s film Not a lot, mind you, and not as much as when I saw it in theaters, but I’m not upset I own a copy and I will, on occasion, watch it. It’s a better use of my time than watching Godzilla’s Revenge again, I can tell you that.

    I think the film’s greatest problem (not the only problem, God knows) is that it has too many characters. If they took all of the reporter characters and, say, not had them in the film at all, I’d like the movie just a little more than I do

  • Gamera977

    Thanks BC, interesting but I’m not sure I want to know anymore about the disaster the movie turned into! I can’t agree more with your point about turning JC from the ultimate badass into a whiny emo boy.
    Last time I watched it I was stuck that the plot resembles a romantic comedy- no I’m not joking. For those who haven’t read the novel it’s your basic quest story- boy meets girl, he falls in love, and kicks everyone’s ass to rescue her and they live happy ever after until the next novel. In the movie he rescues her at the beginning of the movie and they spend most of the movie together, arguing endlessly, until they realize that they love each other.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I would have so loved that scene. I even like the line used by the alien commander: “I should have known better than to trust that tuna-eating lizard!”

  • Rock Baker

    The weird Siskel and Ebert running gag always seemed off to me. It really doesn’t make ANY sense. I’m guessing the critics panned one of the team’s earlier films and this was a less than subtle stab back, but it feels more like something from an AIP Beach movie or something.

  • Rock Baker

    The team did give us STARGATE, which was a fun movie, and I enjoyed INDEPENDENCE DAY (a sort of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS through an Irwin Allen filter) because it was also fun (I remain confused by the venom constantly thrown toward a film that committed the major sin of actually giving the audience what it wanted to see).

    The best film the team did would without doubt be the Revolutionary War epic THE PATRIOT, which is a fantastic film. I get the feeling it’s the kind of good, Old Hollywood-type film they’d wanted to make all along, but I guess they split right after that.

    As to GODZILLA (1998), the film is littered with massive flaws (like how Godzilla shakes the ground with each step in a scene following another scene in which his steps cause no tremors at all), although it does manage a couple of good scenes. The fishing boats being pulled under water, and Godzilla rising from the Hudson and stepping through the street dropping boats to the ground. Those are very nice sequences, unfortunately lost in a film which is, in all fairness, a mess.

  • Ken_Begg

    Thanks for the suggestion, BC! Sadly, it’s not owned by any of our local libraries, but I added it to my Amazon list. If nothing else, it keeps from from slipping my mind.

    Anything interested in the best book I’ve read on seeing a film go insanely awry should procure a copy of The Devil’s Candy by Julie Salamon. It details the systematic errors that resulted in the legendary fiasco adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. Ms. Salamon was given fully open access to everyone during the production because it was assumed that the film would be this Oscar-winning classic. Needless to say, it will be a long time before a journalist is granted that sort of access again.

  • Ken_Begg

    It’s grossly self-indulgent, that’s for sure. Who was it there to entertain, other than the filmmakers? And naturally given the work of Dean and Emmerich, it’s entirely too on the nose. The characters are named Ebert and Gene, for heaven’s sake.

  • Ken_Begg

    Independence Day was indeed fun, but hardly the basis for getting snotty about how ‘cheesy’ Godzilla is. Stargate is decent, but the classic example of a film that made a much better TV show. I always thought Final Countdown would be a terrific TV show, only by avoiding the extraordinarily cheap cop-out ending. They stay behind to help win the war–their ship would be arguably the greatest military power in the world then, all by itself–and then we see the ramifications of their presence, militarily, technologically, socially and politically. The racially integrated crew alone would spark massive social change.

  • Rock Baker

    I think there’s a series of Civil War books which play with such an idea. I read of at least one. A crate of AK-47’s mysteriously ends up in General Grant’s possession, and the book explores what the effects of such an event would’ve been.

    Of course, the problem built into any story that alters history is that history is still there, so unless the timeline is in an alternate reality, a re-set button must be included somewhere along the line.

  • bgbear_rnh

    I always felt that time travelers cannot change history, they are history.

  • Flangepart

    Good idea. Just a scene where the ships CO knows when FDR will die, and has to decide if he should tell him could be a nice kicker, among other plot potentials.

  • Gamera977

    Rock, do you mean ‘The Guns of the South’ by Harry Turtledove? A bunch of apartheid supporting South Africans arrive near the end of the war with crates of AK-47s and other advanced weapons along with tactical maps and nitroglycerin pills for General Lee’s heart condition. Their intention is that at best you’ll end up with a slavery supporting CSA in the future – at worst it will spit up the USA. After the war ends and Lee seeing things are heading for another disaster pushes to start slowly phasing out slavery the South Africans turn on the CSA and- well read the novel- it’s a good one and a page turner.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I second this vote for “Guns of the South”. I prefer Turtledove’s heroic fantasy works but this is far and away his best one-shot novel, and one of the best alternate history novels ever — not least for showing the differences between 19th century Confederates and 20th century for-real Nazis.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Wasn’t there a series of novels done like this, with a carrier called — I kid you not — the “HiIlary Clinton”? Of course their chief struggle wasn’t against the Nazis or Imperial Japan but against the evil racist sexist patriarchal America of the time… Hey, someone thought it was a great idea. I kind of passed on it.

  • kgb_san_diego

    Definite additional plug for Guns of the South — great book!

  • It might have worked as a one off joke. Maybe. But it gets beaten in the ground so quick…

  • Flangepart

    If Greg Gutfeld had written it, it would be a comedy.

  • Gamera977

    Gee, it does sound like a parody. Then of course if you’ve been following the events with the SFWA nothing would surprise me anymore.

  • Eric Hinkle

    It seems I am out of the loop. Who’s Greg Gutfeld?

  • Eric Hinkle

    Yeah, that once-great organization has turned into a sad joke, hasn’t it? Made only worse on my end by once wandering into a blog were several SF/fantasy authors of all political descriptions were having a “debate”; I’ve seen more adult and respectful behavior on, heck, almost any site imaginable. I took so many names off of my list of “people who’s work I’ll buy” that day…

  • Gamera977

    Gutfeld is a conservative/libertarian comedian that has a show called ‘The Redeye’ late night on Fox News and a panel discussion show at 5:00 EST same channel.

    Frankly the whole thing with the SFWA just floored me when Larry Corriea was called an extremist by making the insane comment that a novel should entertain the reader instead of beating them over the head with an agenda.

  • The Rev.

    Supposedly it was due to their negative review of ID4.

    Either way, it was one of the worst things in the movie, which was no easy feat.

    My well-meaning sister got this for me for my birthday years ago. I never did watch it and, after a respectful amount of time, sold it. I really have no desire to ever watch it again.

  • The Rev.

    ID4 had some fun moments, and some moments that made me moan and grasp my head in pain. I don’t think I’ve seen it in its entirety since catching it in the theater, but occasionally I’ll stop if I come in around the spectacular destruction sequences or the part in Area 51.

    I saw Stargate years after ID4 and Godzilla, mostly because I had no expectations. It was after enjoying the series that I finally went back, and was quite surprised to find that I liked it, definitely more than the other two.

  • The Rev.

    The greatest problem for me, even more than that pathetic excuse for a monster or the half an hour spent reenacting Jurassic Park, is the fact that I don’t give a rat’s ass about any character in that movie, save Jean Reno’s, and he’s barely in it. Broderick sleepwalks through his role, Patillo is awful, Azaria’s character just kind of bugged me, and everyone else is negligible. If the iguana had eaten everyone save Reno, I’d definitely be less hostile to the movie.

  • Eric Hinkle

    “when Larry Corriea was called an extremist by making the insane comment
    that a novel should entertain the reader instead of beating them over
    the head with an agenda.”

    ??? How is that an ‘insane’ comment?

  • Gamera977

    Sorry, I was being a little sarcastic there, apparently the SFWA’s current attitude is that entertaining the reader is insane and extreme.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Ah, yeah, I see. Most SF I buy these days is either reprints or from small publishers (and reprints).

  • Gamera977

    Guess I could have phased that better. I mostly tend to go for older stuff from the used book store these days.

  • Flangepart

    It’s not, that’s what makes the reaction to what he said the real craziness. Looks like he rubbed some powerful egos the wrong way.

  • Rock Baker

    Such was the approach to The Time Tunnel.

  • Rock Baker

    ID4 was very much the essential 90’s summer blockbuster (remember back when those could be sort of fun?) and I admit I’ve come to enjoy the film much more as time has passed. I think mostly because unlike most films released since, ID4 is there simply to wow and entertain. I like the cast of familiar character actors and it has nice color (an aspect I’ve come to really appreciate since the dawn of the 21st Century). Oh sure, it runs too long and there are some silly moments (removing the Quaid subplot altogether would help), but overall makes for a neat package.

    In the end, the duo may have made only one Great film, though, and that’s THE PATRIOT (unfortunately, it can easily get lost amid the 40 other films that carry the same title).

  • Luke Blanchard

    I agree with every word, but the heart of my problem with the film lay elsewhere. Whatever it would take to make a John Carter movie great was absent.

    In the book Carter prefers Mars to Earth, and the appeal of such fiction is escape: the reader would rather be Carter, having adventures on Mars. The film failed to make Barsoom a place one would rather be. What it would have taken to make this otherwise, I don’t know.

  • The Rev.

    I forgot to mention eariler: I heard Dean Devlin was whining on his Twitter feed that he’d have to hear about how crappy his Godzilla movie was all over again with this new one coming out. I imagine he is hearing it even more after its opening weekend. I say good. NEVER FORGET.

  • Ken_Begg

    Hmm, if only there had been *something* he could have done to prevent that….

  • Petoht

    Poor John Carter.

    Oh well. We’ll always have the Asylum’s Princess of Mars! And it actually came out in 09, so I guess it’s not, technically, a mockbuster. Although, as a cute little middle finger to Disney, it was renamed John Carter of Mars in 2012, heh.

  • Jimmy

    The World War 2.0 books by aussie author John Birmingham. Whoever gave you that description of the series was wrong though- there was a great deal made of the culture shock but it wasn’t quite 1940s bad, 2010s good.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Thanks for letting me know the author’s name.

  • Gamera977

    Yes, thanks! If I ever get though this stack of paperbacks I’ve accumulated over the years I might have to give this a look.

  • Bill Hiers

    …which makes them look really, really childish and petulant.

  • Bill Hiers

    I didn’t really think the ’98 movie was that bad. Everyone goes on about Godzilla’s appearance, which could be looked at as simply a failed attempt at trying something different – and remember Toho did sign off on the movie, or at least the rights to the name. The movie performed poorly, sure, and most people dislike it… but it wouldn’t have gotten made without Toho’s cooperation, so they bear some responsibility for the final product. Their refusal to own this, and their cheap shots against the movie in other Godzilla movies, really doesn’t engender much sympathy in me.

    Other criticisms about it don’t make much sense:

    1. He’s defeated by the military – There’s a precedent for this. Godzilla Raids Again has Godzilla get defeated by the Japanese air force at the end, and Godzilla 1985 and Godzilla vs. Biollante both have him severely inconvenienced by the Super X and its successor, the Super X2.. So it’s not like he’s never been shown to be hurt by human weaponry before (Oxygen Destroyer, anyone?). And given his size compared to other Godzillas in the past, him being threatened by helicopters and taken out by jets isn’t that unbelievable within the universe of the movie.

    2. The battle with the baby Godzillas is a ripoff of Jurassic Park’s raptors – So what? By ’98, Jurassic Park and its sequel were getting ripped off and referenced by almost everything everywhere so Godzilla doing it isn’t terribly special, and consequently not worthy of the scorn it gets. Besides, I believe the baby Godzillas actually kill more people than the Jurassic Park raptors did (4 onscreen victims in Godzilla vs. 1 onscreen victim in Jurassic Park). And Toho themselves ripped off Aliens with Godzilla vs. Destroyer, and they hardly catch any flak for it, so why single out the American film?

    At the end of the day, it’s a movie called Godzilla and it has a fire-breathing monster named Godzilla attacking a city. So, fundamentally, it’s a Godzilla film. Everything else is just details. Whether it’s a good movie or not is another matter entirely, but it is a Godzilla movie.

  • Bill Hiers

    Considering all the shots taken at his film from pissed off Godzilla fanboys acting like he raped their childhood, I’d say Devlin is entitled to complain about having to hear more of it.

    You act like he committed some crime against humanity for which he can never be forgiven unless he pulls a Joel Schumacher and apologizes and bashes his crappy movie just to satisfy the raging fanboys. It’s amusing how pissy people get over things like this.

    And, for the record, I think the new film is okay, but not great. It had a great beginning but it sort of went downhill around the middle. It didn’t have as much fanwank as I was expecting it to, though, thank goodness. It even had some nods to the ’98 film, although they took the ideas in different directions.

  • Ken_Begg

    Well, considering the complete piece of garbage he foisted on ticket buyers–pretty much everybody disliked the film, not just ‘fanboys’–he deserves it. Even aside from the fact that is it in no way a Godzilla movie, it’s (to say the least) poorly written, features some of the most atrocious acting I’ve ever seen, self-serving in ‘jokes’ like the Siskel & Ebert thing, etc. That whole extended middle section with the raptor rip-offs was horrible. After the year of just insane hype the studio used to get people wanting to see this, the actual movie was a major kick in the groin.

    The Red Letter Media guys reviewed it recently, and noted that one major problem is that all the characters seem to be the comic relief. Good call on that.

  • Ken_Begg

    Well, you have a lot more passion for this topic than I do. Your liking for the film is, I think you’d have to admit, a minority opinion. In general I’d say the problem with the raptor rip-off wasn’t that it was a rip-off, but a poorly integrated one that had nothing to do with the rest of the movie, and certainly not with the character of Godzilla, and just stopped the friggin’ movie dead for an extended period of time. As noted above, if they had just cut all that out, the film would have been more palatable. And of course Dean *didn’t* want Godzilla to breath fire (which he doesn’t do, but sort of close enough, I guess), he was forced to awkwardly insert some CGI flames into the movie because audiences, it turned out, actually wanted the “cheese factor” he was so sniffy about.

    Fundamentally, it ISN’T a Godzilla movie. I think that’s sort of the biggest problem with it. Giant Dinosaur does not automatically equal Godzilla.

  • Gamera977

    Gee Bill it’s just a movie! If you like the film great, I saw it once and have no desire to ever see it again.

  • Reginald Van Der Slythe III

    Not like Emmerich and Devlin, right?

  • Gamera977

    Yeah, not sure Toho looks any worse than Emmerich and Devlin’s trashing of Siskel and Ebert…

  • Bill Hiers

    You always were a bit too malicious in your reviews for my tastes, Ken.

  • Bill Hiers

    Fair enough.

  • Bill Hiers

    It does when the thing is CALLED Godzila. The movie being bad doesn’t invalidate this. Surely we can agree on that at least. I mean, if simply being terrible was enough to make a movie “not count,” Godzilla vs. Megalon would’ve been erased from the Toho canon years ago.

    And the baby Godzillas kind of had everything to do with Godzilla. He laid the eggs they hatched from. How can you say they have nothing to do with the rest of the movie? It’s set up, many scenes in advance, that Godzilla reproduces asexually and came to New York to make a nest to lay eggs. So it isn’t like they come out of nowhere.

    As for the extended sequence of them pursuing the humans, Toho did pretty much an identical sequence beforehand in Godzilla vs. Destroyer (and, heck, let’s not forget the Meganurons from Rodan). Smaller monsters that menace the characters on an up close and personal level vs. Godzilla’s towering threat has been used before in Godzilla movies, so it isn’t entirely out of place here.

  • Ken_Begg

    I hardly think it’s malicious to say that when one makes and presents a massively expensive and insanely publicized movie which disappoints an overwhelming percentage of ticket-buying moviegoers that he deserves the criticism arising from that.

    Its not like he didn’t also get the keep all the money he made, after all. I think criticism and some mocking is little enough price to pay.

  • Andrew Kidd

    I’ve pretty much hated everything by Emmerich/Devlin (and I also disliked the Stargate TV series. I was once accused,in all seriousness, of not being a “true” science fiction fan for saying so), and hold them in contempt on another level than just for creating such badly written, crassly commercial product. Pretty much all of their films exploit some sort of pseudoscience or worse nonsense, basically pandering to crowd who believes in UFOs, Doomsday Prophecies, and the like. I assume they’ll teaming up with Jenny McCarthy someday to make a movie about a zombie outbreak caused by vaccines or a remake of DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS where the killer plants are really GMO produce.

  • The Rev.

    So, after 16 years, I finally watched this again. Only because those lovable scamps at Rifftrax did their thing to it. They were quite funny, and also pretty merciless, which was good. They especially hammered the portrayal of the military, which I imagine would make Ken and GJ happy in particular.

    The movie itself actually managed to be worse than I recalled in practically every way. The computer graphics were more awful than I remembered, especially in the MSG section. The Siskel and Ebert parody was even more pointless. The babies were more raptor-like, and I want to say I noticed more cribs from JP this time around. The acting, with one exception, was more terrible. I’m not sure how that’s possible in the case of Maria Patillo, but it was. (Chelsea refused to believe she was the female lead for quite a while, then found the idea of Tatopoulos eventually getting back together with her repugnant after what her character pulled.) Hank Azaria’s wife I’d managed to completely forget, and as soon as she opened her mouth it all came flooding back and I actually cringed. Even Jean Reno was worse than my memory had led me to believe. The exception? For some unexplainable reason, I found Hank Azaria himself less irritating this go-round.

    After it was over, Dara took my hand and said, “I understand now.”

    Anyway, I’m hoping they release a DVD of the live recording. That way I don’t have to own a copy of this movie, because they did a really good job with it and I’m sure I’d watch it again but man I don’t want that thing on my shelf…said the guy with copies of both Catman movies, Corpse Grinders II and Zombis 3-5 proudly displayed.

  • My brother Todd, also a Godzilla fan, loved this movie as a kid, but every time he watches it he likes it a little less.

    I find I’m that way myself, but I don’t think it’ll ever sink to where I’d be ashamed to own a copy.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Wasn’t the 98 Godzilla movie what turned Todd into Dreddmore?

  • I’m not sure. It sure didn’t help.

  • The Rev.

    Not so much ashamed, as seeing no point in owning a movie I would never watch. The ones I listed, for example, I’d consider watching again someday.

    Granted, some of them only in the context of inflicting them on someone else…

  • Valid point.