Two Godzilla Movies [Media Notes 8]

I’ve just watched two American Godzilla films: Godzilla (1998, #23 in the franchise), and Godzilla (2014, #30). In terms of special effects and general craftsmanship they’re much better than the original Japanese Gojira (1954). But I was unable to watch either one of them in a single sitting. Other things called to me.

So why blog about them at all? Because I want to note how they are like the original and how they differ from it. Since the two films have the same name, I’ll simply indicate them by date, 1998 and 2014. A quick one: The monster was radically redesigned for 1998, but pretty much the same for 2014, though somewhat larger. In 1998 the monster was hermaphroditic and managed to nest in the middle of Manhattan; finding and destroying that nest and all the baby monsters consumed much of the plot. In 2014 Godzilla is a good monster fighting two MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism).

Neither film picks up on the romantic conflict of the original film, the conflict between arranged marriage and marriage by mutual attraction and consent. That's simply not relevant in the contemporary American context.

1998

Godzilla heads to Manhattan from the South Pacific. Dr. Nick Tatopoulos is recruited to help deal with it. He’s the one who figured out that it’s hermaphroditic and breeding. He advises that Manhattan be evacuated and suggests they bait Godzilla with a big pile of fish. It works, of course, but not quite like they’d wanted it to, of course.

Meanwhile his ex-girlfriend from college, Audrey Timmonds, is trying to make it as a reporter (the news reporter motif is, I assume, an element from the 1956 American version, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. The two meet, she snags a tape of Godzilla from his tent, and her nasty boss in turn snags if from her. However, she eventually gets some footage and makes her career.

Nick and Audrey their separate ways through most of the film, both pursuing Godzilla, but met up after the little ones have been destroyed. Nick had been removed from the military action, for having allowed the tape to be swiped by Audrey, but is then snapped up by the French secret service. Why are the French secret service interested? Because it was France’s nuclear testing in the South Pacific that created Godzilla in the first place, where Godzilla swamped a Japanese fishing boat (from the original film).

Then Godzilla shows up again (we’d thought it had been killed) and chases them – Nick, Audrey, her cameraman, and he Frenchman, all over the place. But the Air Force gets him. We have a happy ending.

2014

This is a complicated story, spanning two generations. Including two generations within one American family. This is the interesting thing. There is no romance; but there is family. But then, I suppose, we had that in the Japanese original as well, Yamane and his daughter. Is this why, in myth-logic, Godzilla turns out to be a ‘friendly’ monster?

In 1999 two scientists (Serizawa and Vivienne Graham) find two giant spores in the Philippines. There’s trouble at a nuclear reactor in Japan where Joe Brody looses his wife Sandra. In 2014 their son Ford chases after his dad, Joe, who’s been arrested in the quarantine zone for the reactor. This and that happens, Joe is killed, and a MUTO heads toward San Francisco. Serizawa & Graham and Ford follow on a US warship.

Other stuff happens, but it comes down to Godzilla killing two MUTOs in San Francisco and heading back to sea. Ford has something to do with it (as do Serizawa and Graham). Ford is reunited with his family, who were in San Francisco, where Joe had been until he got the call.