Day 23: Godzilla 2000 (1999)

Not the best way to start a new era of films. Godzilla 2000 (1999) is the first film in the new era of this series, that begin the millennium era. And while the Heisei era had its duds, it was mostly a very solid era and would be a hard one to follow up on. And it’s a shame that this film couldn’t get this new era off to a better start. In this film, Godzilla is already a known entity to earth and lurks as a constant threat. Because of these there are two trains of thought on how to deal with him. One group wants to destroy him wholeheartedly, and another wants him studied to see if he could be used to advance human technology. Meanwhile, a huge mysterious rock is found in the deep ocean, which turns out to be a spaceship that had landed there millions of years ago. With a new threat to mankind, the battle becomes on how to defeat this new threat while deciding on what can be done with Godzilla.

Where to start with this one. It does seem like this film has its fans, but I do struggle to see why. I do not hate it by any means, but it definitely fits into the weaker group of Godzilla films for me. The issue is both technical and story wise. The narrative is a bit of a rethread of several other Godzilla films with seen, and I did not care for having an alien craft back in this film. And the narrative effectively just has a lot of people sat down looking at computers for a good chunk of the runtime. It’s also paced weird, so it feels like Godzilla is almost barely in it at all. Imagine my surprise then when I looked it up and this is actually one of the Godzilla films which he is on screen the most. The problem is he is in it a good amount for the first half an hour and then he just disappears for almost an hour before coming back for the last twenty minutes. When he is on screen it is a bit of fun, especially his introduction and first big fight scene against the military. There are some really good shots of him in the distance in silhouette which also add a lots to the visuals.

Speaking of Godzilla though, I am not entirely sure I like the design of him in this. He is now much more jagged skinned, and his dorsal fins are huge and sharper looking than in previous designs. He also has a more elongated snout which makes him look a little streamlined. It is an okay design and I don’t hate it, but I also don’t love it. But when you compare that to this alien spaceship it is like a piece of renaissance art. This ship is just a shiny, silver slab. And it also is mostly CGI which has aged horribly (we’ll get into that more a bit later). An alien monster eventually does come from the ship, and the design of this is fine even if it does look a bit like a giant turd. But the ship is terrible. And it is not the only bit of CGI/green screen that looks bad. There are several moments in this film where the CGI used looks terrible. Possibly it looked good at the time, but almost thirty years on it has aged horribly. The practical effects still look very good, but the computer effects are realty poor and I’m a bit worried that this is where this era is going.

With this film kicking off the new era, I am slightly dubious of how much I am going to enjoy this next run of films. I’m hoping I am just being a pessimist and they pick up from here, but this was not a good start. Again, I did not hate the film, there are some aspects that I liked. But on the whole it is a weaker entry in the series so you can probably give it a miss.