Tristar's release of the American version of Godzilla 2000: Millennium. In most respects, this is one of the better Godzilla DVDs on the market, if one can look past the absence of the Japanese version, with a good video presentation, a great audio presentation, and a selection of extras that go past simply a collection of trailers.

Godzilla 2000's video presentation, while not perfect, is generally good overall. The colors here tend to be well defined, with a couple of details like Godzilla's crimson tongue looking especially nice, but could have stood to be a little more vibrant. The brightness level appears to be set just right here though, as details are very easy to make out during the final battle unlike other releases of the film. As for digital inconstancies, artifacting is vaguely noticeable on this release, with some portions looking a little pixilated, but overall the picture looks very sharp with details readably noticeable. Digital noise can be an issue at times, especially at the beginning of the film where the frame is busy enough to be distracting at times during the darker scenes.

The print used in the transfer, as previously discussed, is the US version of the film. In terms of the shape of the print used for the transfer, several small scratches appear from time to time which is surprising given the age of the movie. The film's original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 is maintained on this DVD, and is Anamorphic for widescreen TVs.

Easily the disc's strongest aspect, if one can overlook the lack of a Japanese audio track, is the superior sound quality found on this release. The DVD has three audio tracks in total, a stereo (2.0) English dubbed track, a surround (5.1) English dubbed track and a (2.0) French dubbed track, with all three sounding nothing short of flawless. The surround audio track sounds particularly nice, with an excellent use of directionality being exploited from the various speakers. Some of the sound effects, like Godzilla's tail crashing down on some surrounding buildings, are very rich in bass on the surround track as well. The audio tracks are accompanied by removable, English and French, subtitles.

Godzilla 2000 has a modest collection of extras, which tends to be a rarity on region 1 Toho kaiju discs. The most significant extra on this disc is, unarguably, the excellent audio commentary provided by Michael Schlesinger (producer and writer of the US version), Michael Mahoney (editor of the US version), and Darren Paskal (supervising sound editor on the US version). The commentary gives some great insight into what went into the choices made in adapting Godzilla 2000: Millennium for a Western audience, and some information on the film itself. There is also a brief, two minute, behind the scenes footage reel here as well. The behind the scenes footage shows bad signs of artifacting though, due to the fact that it was obviously very heavily compressed, as pixels are quite noticeable. To round out the selection of extras on this disc are a trio of trailers (Anaconda, GODZILLA, and the US trailer for Godzilla 2000) and some very brief talent files.

Bottom line is that, unless one loathes the film, Tristar's Godzilla 2000 makes an excellent addition into any Godzilla fan's collection, especially at the bargain bin prices that the disc retails for now.

This disc is also featured in the DVD box set(s): Godzilla DVD Collection (5 pack), 50th Anniversary Godzilla Collection.