The 90s were a hell of a time to be alive. Mullets were slowly drifting into obscurity, mainly being limited to enclaves in the southern states of the US; VHS was gurgling its last, poorly tracked in, croaky death rattle and the fact that computers were no longer the size of a three-bed semi in the suburbs meant we started to get video games worth playing and visual effects in movies that didn't look like Jim Henson had a particularly alarming acid trip nightmare on Sesame Street. Although come to mention it, combining those last two sounds like a blast; someone needs to get on that ASAP.
As a decade, it's hard to argue that it wasn't a cinematic turning point. Two movies in particular stand out to me: Jurassic Park and The Matrix. Life-affirming, awe-inspiring, game-changing movies. Two decades later they still sit firmly in the collective conscious and although I'm not a connoisseur of what I believe kids today refer to as "dank memes", I'm fairly sure Jeff Goldblum still pops up in gifs mumbling his way through his dialogue. Trouble with pioneers is that for every trail blazed, there's a million and one coattails being ridden. For every T-Rex, there's a Godzilla. Now that, ladies and gentlemen is a neat segue.
1998 brought us an update of the original and legendary man-in-a-rubber-suit with an inexplicable vendetta against the good people of Tokyo. I wasn't aware we needed one either, but so it goes. I remember having a whole bunch of the Toho movies taped off the TV from when Channel 4 was interesting and dedicated its early morning dead time to cool stuff like Godzilla and Jackie Chan films. There's nothing quite like watching two blokes dressed in shitty looking cosplay troll around a miniature city knocking the tar out of each other and everything around them. So understandably I was pretty chuffed that on the heels of the most technically proficient rendering of giant reptiles to date, some unsuspecting waterfront city was about to get a kicking from something that didn't look like it was knocked up in your Dad's garage for "Giant Monster Day" at school. (What do you mean you didn't have Giant Monster Day? This is why the country's education system is failing kids).
Sadly, if that had been the case we obviously wouldn't be here right now.
Things started out OK, but in retrospect that's because you hadn't seen the big fella properly yet. Now I'm OK with putting your own spin on things; it's how ideas evolve and if we all just did the same thing over and over, creatively that's a complete dead end. That being said, I also feel like there's just some stuff you shouldn't mess about with. Indiana Jones in a Pith helmet. Darth Vader wielding a baseball bat. Batman using a spear... Oh, wait. Moving on...
Credit where it's due, it's difficult to pin down exactly what Godzilla is supposed to be. Dinosaur? Sort of, but only if a T-Rex somehow mated with a Brachiosaur or similar (which is a charming image to put in your head first thing in the morning. Sorry, not sorry). Reptile? Not any species I've seen, but my herpetological skills begin and end at 'stay away from the bitey parts'. So I guess you can do what ever you like, but we ended up with some weird sort of Iguana-saurus Rex. It kind of fits with the back story they gave him (thinly veiled CND agenda you say? Never!) but I can't imagine anyone rushing out to buy the action figure. Apart from anything, it just doesn't look, feel or act like Godzilla and there are no other monsters to fight. The closest we come to that is Godzilla vs A Pile Of Fish. Not selling a lot of pay-per-view tickets by itself that one. That however, pales in comparison to the sheer unadulterated bullshittery that occurs in the final third of the movie where both Madison Square Garden and any goodwill I had left were left sullied, broken and literally reduced to rubble. I am of course referring to the dubious inclusion of hundreds of baby Godzillas, which I can only assume were either a nod to Godzuki, or a horribly failed attempted to replicate the drama of Jurassic Park's velociraptors. Now you get the segue. It's almost like I know what I'm doing. Almost.
Frankly terrible plot aside, Godzillas Jr. suffer from an inexcusable mix of shoddy puppetry and equally shoddy CGI. Bear in mind this was only 2 years after Spielberg made us all believe he'd actually recreated prehistoric life using... puppets and CGI. There's one scene in partlicular where three Toddler-zillas are advancing on our heroes down one of the corridors in the arena, except the compositing is so bad it looks like they're sort of hovering just above the ground. Bring back Ray Harryhausen, I'm sure they have his DNA somewhere. At least they blow them all up... or do they? PLOT TWIST! Nobody gives a shit.
Fast forward around 16 years and someone's willing to have another crack at it. Don't get me started on the whole reboot thing again, I will literally go for days and none of us want that. Gareth Edwards clearly has a thing for monsters, but he also clearly has a thing for not really letting you see said monsters. His debut, cunningly and frustratingly titled Monsters barely has hide nor hair of said eponymous beasties which is fine if you're into road trip relationship dramas. I'm not, so that's kind of a non-starter. "It's not about the monsters" they said. Well no, but it should be; tentacles or GTFO. Anyway, perhaps not surprisingly he made a Godzilla movie with so little of the titular Kaiju in it, the temptation is to call trading standards. We get some weird giant bugs which is OK, but whenever there's any threat of them actually getting into it with Godzilla, it cuts to something else. The very first time they meet, just when you're getting amped for something spectacular, it cuts to a family watching the a news report about it on a tiny TV screen. It's not all doom and gloom though; there's a nice little set-to at the end where Godzilla breaks the bug thing's jaws open and vomits plasma breath down his throat, which is completely worthy of the applause I gave it in the cinema. So basically we get a choice; we either get a monster we can look at who isn't really Godzilla or we get a Godzilla who looks the part but gets basically an extended cameo in his own movie. Ken Watanabe's trailer-worthy line "Let them fight!" instantly becomes the best piece of accidental irony in a screenplay ever. Now that's an Oscar category I can get behind.
Tweet @angerinamansuit or don't. I'm not judging, but we both clearly have time on our hands.
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