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Wonderful Movie

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

This is one of the worst remakes ever. From the opening scene that virtually doomed it right from the beginning with an iguana watching before a nuclear explosion, to the fools behind the camera tossing everything the Toho told them to do, this is just one dumb movie. They actually filmed it near where I work, so I did get some nice pictures of the tank equipment. But the movie is a flop. Miscast, poorly written and just dumb, it's the worst Godzilla movie ever made. I'm glad Toho made fun of it in Godzilla final wars when the real Godzilla wipes the matt with this Jurassic Park cast off.

Sure there are some campy moments especially during the first hour, but stick with it! It's actually a decent movie and really delivers with the suspense. I felt that the chase scenes were great, I was on the edge of my seat. The tackiness was forgiven by the end of the movie.

The Twin Towers are filmed in this movie encapturing a beautiful eerieness.

Many Godzilla purists rejected this CGI-based reinterpretation of the story (#23 in the series) but it is not a bad kaiju outing in its own right. The Toho release (Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, 1995) preceding Emmerich's version continued the trend toward improbable monsters, new-age subplots, and self-righteous greenery and I found the US version to be a refreshing return to the original concept: humanity vs. a single, destructive monster born of radiation. Typical of Emmerich's unsubtle style, everything is very big (Godzilla) or very numerous (e.g. helicopters) and the human drama of the 1954 original, which treats the monster's destructive rampage more as a tragedy than an adventure, is replaced by light-weight shtick, primarily revolving around the Roger Ebert-lookalike mayor (apparently an Emmerich in-joke). Godzilla itself is (IMO) quite well done with a very different look from the original (reflecting 'iguana' rather than 'dinosaur' origins) and the production has fun with the sheer scale of the monster. The opening credit scenes, which establish Godzilla's genesis, are extremely good and the film builds well from there to the arrival of the monster on the shores of Manhattan Island. The cast is fine: Mathew Broderick's playing the scientist who seems to always guess correctly and Maria Pitillo and Hank Azaria as intrepid reporters (both tropes familiar to anyone who has watched the Japanese films). Jean Reno is great as the French secret-service agent trying to ensure that the role France's nuclear tests in creating the current disaster remains unknown and he (and his team) have best lines in the film, riffing on both Gallic unflappability and the challenges of running a clandestine operation in America. Within the context of the film, a general plausibility is maintained (other than reconciling Godzilla's size and its ability to fit in the New York subway system) until the 'third act', an overdone and ridiculous chase scene that is by far the weakest part of the film. Future Japanese entries in the Godzilla franchise make the occasional amusing dig at Emmerich's fish-eating version of the iconic kaiju, but overall, I thought that the film was a worthy effort at 'Americanising' Toho's famous monster and liked the film more than most viewers (based on IMDB) and certainly more than most Godzilla-philes.