Please join me a minute and
think back. Think waaayyy back. Not too far
back though. Okay, it’s 1999. December.
The thirty-first day. 11:59 PM. What were
you doing on the eve of the millennium? Were
you waiting patiently for the ball to drop
in Times Square? Were you spending precious
moments with friends and family? Were you
silently waiting Armageddon, ala Toho‘s
Prophecies
of Nostradamus (1974)? Or, by chance,
were you watching events unfold live from
Tokyo? A 55 meter green lizard has risen out
of the bay to stop a hulking behemoth from
the stars from creating a new nightmarish
kingdom for the new millennium! Well, at least
it happened that way in Japanese theaters.
After 1998’s GODZILLA
came and went, fans around the world were
screaming for the old Godzilla to come back
and wash the taste of fish from their mouths.
Toho caved and released Godzilla 2000:
Millennium, but in the end, was it what
we really asked for?
Professor Yuji Shinoda was
once a great scientist at a Japanese university.
Fearing that man would always trudge on without
reviewing his mistakes, Shinoda left and founded
the Godzilla Prediction Network (GPN), headed
by himself and his daughter Io. It is 1999
and Godzilla has been traveling about Japan
and trashing all the major power plants and
reactors, and the people of the world don’t
seem the understand why. Along for the ride
is amateur newspaper photographer Yuki Ichinose.
Yuki doesn’t really care for the Shinodas
or GPN. All she wants is a nice opportunity
to snap some close-ups of Godzilla.
A former peer of Shinoda’s,
one Mitsuo Katagiri, has just been promoted
to the head of Japan’s Crisis Control
Intelligence Agency (CCI). Working with him
is Shiro Miyasaka, a former friend of Shinoda.
Katagiri doesn’t particularly like what
Godzilla’s been doing with Japan’s
energy sources, so he feels the best bet is
to kill the giant dinosaur. Meanwhile, Katagiri
has given Miyasaka free reign to research
a recently discovered meteorite at the bottom
of the Japan Trench. Balloons are attached
to bring the rock to the surface, but halfway
up, it decides to surface on its own. Miyasaka
and his team can only stare as the 70 million
year old rock takes to the sky and heads towards
Japan.
Godzilla has appeared in Tokai
to raid another nuclear plant. Katagiri and
Shinoda race to the scene. The Japanese self
defense forces have employed new full-metal
missiles to penetrate the monster’s
skin and stop him once and for all. Shinoda
on the other hand only wishes to study the
creature and limit his exposure to mankind.
Godzilla surfaces, however, and CCI’s
plan goes forward. The missiles, needless
to say, fail to stop the radioactive titan,
but before he can wipe out the army, the giant
space rock flies in to pick a fight with Godzilla.
The two unlikely combatants exchange heat
rays before the rock, now clearly an alien
spacecraft, hurdles through the air and crashes
in the sea. Godzilla retreats to the ocean
to lick his wounds.
Shinoda walks the beach and
finds skin samples of the giant monster in
his enormous footsteps. To further analyze
the DNA, he must ally himself with CCI, which
Katagiri allows, as long as the professor
shares his information. Miyasaka and Shinoda
discover the secret to Godzilla’s mysterious
regenerative properties and name the gene
Organizer-G1.
Outside, crowds gather as CCI
anchor the UFO to the ground. Miyasaka theorizes
that the UFO crashed into the ocean and remained
dormant until the submarine lights struck
its surface. Bright lights, typically the
sun, are what power the ship! Failing to get
another scoop, Yuki discovers that her laptop
has been hacked into and a new file has been
created. Furthermore, all the files on Godzilla
have been opened.
The UFO takes off and sheds
its skin, revealing a polished, streamlined
spaceship. It lands atop a news building in
Tokyo where it rests as the sun goes down.
Noting that the ship is hacking into all the
computers in Shinjuku, Katagiri requests the
destruction of the building while Shinoda
is still inside, collecting information on
the mysterious beings. The building goes up
in a ball of flames, but the UFO still hovers
above the great city.
Shinoda escapes and reveals
that the aliens plan to take over the world
and change the atmosphere to suit their shapeless
forms. Until then, they require Godzilla’s
Organizer-G1 to demolish the cities of the
world. The monster king himself arrives for
round two against the saucer but suffers another
K.O. This time though, the aliens absorb the
monster’s cells and transform into the
hideous Godzilla clone Orga. Godzilla comes
around and the battle for the next millennium
begins!
In the previous twenty-two
Godzilla films, Toho rarely broke from their
established formula. Typically a giant monster
would ravage the world for some reason or
another and in the end, the giant Godzilla
would come and beat it into submission. In
1998, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich broke
from this time-honored tradition and delivered
their scaredy-cat American Godzilla, which
was ultimately killed by the American military.
The fact is that this monster wasn’t
Godzilla, and fans felt cheated. Toho didn’t
much like this either, so they rushed out
Godzilla 2000: Millennium. The team
behind the movie hadn’t changed much
since the VS series of Godzilla films during
the mid-90s. Writing the screenplay was Godzilla
veteran Wataru
Mimura, this time teamed with newcomer
Hiroshi Kashiwabara. In the director’s
chair was Takao
Okawara, the director of Toho’s
most successful monster bash of the 90s, Godzilla
vs. Mothra (1992). Also returning
from Godzilla
vs. Mothra (1992) was star Takehiro
Murata, this time around playing the optimistic
scientist Shinoda. Producer Tomoyuki
Tanaka had passed away, may he rest in
piece, but in his place was Shogo
Tomiyama, a man who was certainly no stranger
to the series, having produced all the entries
from 1989 to 1995 alongside Tanaka. Even composer
Takayuki
Hattori was allowed to tag along and redeem
himself for the disaster that was Godzilla
vs. Space Godzilla (1994) (and here’s
a hint: he didn’t.) Clearly Tomiyama
had hoped for another success in the vain
of Toho’s earlier films of the decade.
Times clearly had changed.
Perhaps the most noticeable
problem here is that longtime special effects
director Koichi
Kawakita had passed the rains on to Kenji
Suzuki. Suzuki-san had previously directed
the minimal effects for Rebirth
of Mothra 3 (1998) the previous year,
but here he fails to live up to the scope
of the last few Godzilla films. While Kawakita’s
work had grown tired and repetitive, at least
it showed more inspiration than Suzuki’s
lifeless effects. Suzuki relies on a lot of
matte work to bring Godzilla to life, and
I do mean a lot of matte shots. Unfortunately,
Suzuki and his team are not quite as good
at the illusion as former teams had been.
What we see in the movie is a Godzilla clearly
pasted onto the screen. Suzuki also experiments
with CGI a lot more than previous attempts
but here too he misses the mark. The Millennium
creature (Millennian) is the first Toho monster
fully realized in CGI, but its quick scene
looks like it was lifted from a SyFy movie.
Perhaps the only good CGI scene is of Godzilla
swimming under water, but even this appears
cartoony. Compare this to Tristar’s
big budget CGI monster from the previous year
and it’s almost embarrassing.
The new Godzilla suit, built
by Shinichi Wakasa, is a radical new design
which has proven to be the Godzilla of the
new millennium. The production model by Yuji
Sakai showed a feral, animalistic Godzilla;
this beast was clearly more a wild animal
than anything previous. Wakasa and his team
at Monsters Inc. (I’m not making this
up, I promise) took the monstrous design and
produced a very mediocre and rubbery lizard
suit. Almost all of the advancements that
had appeared during Kawakita’s run as
SFX director were gone. No more could the
great Godzilla turn his head. Not coincidentally,
this Godzilla appears stiff and unanimated,
a far cry from the design originally intended.
As Godzilla, Tsutomu Kitagawa
turns in a surprisingly good performance for
a newcomer. Whereas he isn’t given the
best of suits to work with, he manages to
bring some life to the beast. Of note is the
scene where Orga tries to swallow Godzilla.
Kitagawa really manages to project a feeling
of confusion, matching the audiences’
shocked reactions. Orga, played by Makoto
Ito, doesn’t have too much screen time
but even then, the monster is unoriginal (the
design looks like a cross between Devlin’s
Godzilla, the Predator and the Rancor from
Return of the Jedi [1983]) and looks
too bulky for fighting, which was a problem
encountered by the crew of the earlier 1990s
films. This creature, named for Godzilla’s
regenerative gene, is just another monster.
There really isn’t much that makes it
stand out from the dozens of foes that Godzilla
has shared the screen with. Worst of all is
the monster’s roars, obviously lifted
from Desghidorah’s elephantine cries.
Very weak stuff. By far, Orga’s best
scene and the only memorable thing about the
creature is its stupid attempt to swallow
Godzilla, which certainly could only happen
in a Japanese monster film.
Takao
Okawara is a very hit-or-miss type when
it comes to directing. This film and Godzilla
vs. Mothra (1992) show his worse
side, but when he hits the mark, we get action-packed
films such as Godzilla
vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993) and Godzilla
vs. Destoroyah (1995). With this
movie, Okawara seems to follow a very subdued
and almost apathetic approach. The characters
are good, and he manages to direct them well,
but he and his editor really must not have
cared. Scenes drag on and on while nothing
important happens. Yuki asks two men where
the GPN headquarters is, but the scene is
played for laughs as one man is continuously
hit on the head with a plank. Yuki then proceeds
to wander through a warehouse before entering
the main “office”. She announces
she’s arrived but nothing happens. It’s
as boring as I just described it. Mimura and
Kashiwabara write scenes into the story for
no reason more than to rip off the American
remake. Shinoda digs around in the monster’s
footsteps, Godzilla menacingly chases our
heroes in a tunnel, Godzilla first appears
at Tokai as his ridiculously large fins break
the waves, etc. For a movie that’s intended
to remind audiences what the real Godzilla
is. Okawara, Mimura, and Kashiwabara really
go overboard with the lifted scenes from America’s
Godzilla! It should be noted though that Okawara
does direct some scenes excellently. Shinoda
outrunning the explosion in the building is
well done and harkens back to the more action-oriented
Godzilla films for which Okawara-san is known.
Another great scene has Shinoda and Miyasaka
(Shiro Sano) discover Organizer-G1. Had there
been more scenes like these two, perhaps the
movie wouldn’t drudge on. Perhaps we
the audience would care about the troubles
of the leads.
The main characters here are
derived from the standard clichés (the
reporter, the scientist, the military men),
but one actually starts to feel for the characters.
The only character with a real back story
is Shinoda, although hints are dropped that
Katagiri is the reason he left his former
job. Io, Shinoda’s daughter, doesn’t
really do much and it’s disappointing
she isn’t explored more. Why is it that
Shinoda and Io live alone and constantly chasing
Godzilla? Well, the movie doesn’t really
try to explain. Wouldn’t it have been
so much more interesting if Shinoda had held
a grudge against Godzilla because his wife,
Io’s mother, had died at the hands of
the great monster? Yuki Ichinose, played by
Naomi Nishida, is the only character with
any sort of development, but it’s incredibly
weak. At the beginning of the film, she doesn’t
care about the Shinoda family, but at the
end, she has warmed up to them (as evident
in the aforementioned scene between Shinoda
and Miyasaka). The real stand out in the cast
is Hiroshi
Abe as the villainous Katagiri. The actor
just oozes evil and surprisingly doesn’t
overact. Katagiri is a minor villain when
compared to Torahata in Mothra
vs. Godzilla (1964), but Abe’s
excellent performance makes the character
so much more memorable.
By far the most disappointing
aspect of the entire picture is the more than
lackluster score by Takayuki
Hattori. I’ll admit that I am one
of few people who enjoy his brassy score for
Godzilla
vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994), but here
he writes mostly mediocre arrangements for
decent themes. The new Godzilla theme is extremely
repetitive and used in probably every scene
in the movie. Unfortunately it’s not
that interesting and it easily attaches itself
to you. The overall instrumentation of the
score is very weak. At least one track has
what appears to be a MIDI voice setting one
would typically find on an old keyboard! No
single track has any sort of power. Actually,
when Godzilla appears in Tokyo Bay, Akira
Ifukube’s great Godzilla theme starts
up and it’s quite a shock to hear something
powerful in this movie! Hattori really fails
to engage the audience, and alongside the
poor pacing and stale direction, it wouldn’t
be surprising to see some fans fall asleep.
In the summer of 2000, American
fans were treated with a new Toho produced
Godzilla film in theaters for the first time
since the ‘80s. Tristar pictures dubbed
and edited the film for American release,
dropping eight painfully long minutes and
adding extra music and sound effects. Excluding
Godzilla 1985, this is the most a Godzilla
film had been edited since Continental’s
1965 release of Ghidorah,
the Three-Headed Monster (1964).
Typically fans frown upon this treatment of
the films, but fans who had previously seen
Toho’s cut of the film praised Tristar’s
edits, obviously an unprecedented moment in
the history of Godzilla movies in the western
hemisphere. Tristar’s cut is superior
in every way to the film scene in Japanese
theaters only months before and is clearly
the definitive way to watch the film. In my
eyes, the people of Tristar redeemed themselves
for the bomb that was 1998’s GODZILLA.
Without a doubt, Godzilla
2000: Millennium is a less than mediocre
entry in the long-running series. Is it fair
to call it that? Probably not. Toho had just
allowed a large corporation to take over the
Godzilla franchise and it backfired in everyone’s
face. There’s no doubt that Toho rushed
this film out to keep Godzilla alive, and
for Toho, it proved to be a success. Beyond
that, however, this film managed to be a bridge
between the previous era and the five films
that followed. Godzilla 2000: Millennium
has all the markings of the earlier Heisei
films and the later Millennium films. Like
the Godzilla seen in the film, it was something
we had seen before, yet it was new enough
to keep us guessing as to its nature. This
much can be said truly though: Had this not
been a film to start a new era, it would have
been forgotten long, long ago. |
(1.5/5)