Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

In 1998, Tristar got permission from Toho to make a Godzilla film and Tristar went hog wild. Promotional material was everywhere! We were inundated with it! This film was jammed into our faces by every TV commercial, fast-food deal, and billboard. It was written on the sky, carved into the moon, and subliminally implanted into our minds via hypnotic dog whistles.

It starred Mathew Broderick! They could have called it Godzilla vs. Ferris Bueler!

[Tangent: Godzilla 1984 (A.k.a. The Return of Godzilla, A.k.a Godzilla 1985) could be seen on a movie marquee in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Coincidence or conspiracy? You decide!]

I saw Godzilla vs. Mathew Broderick in the theatre. I was 15 years old and the last “Godzilla” anything I saw before this was him clumsily flying backwards. This! Compared to that? THIS was amazing! This was my first experience with something like Godzilla on the big screen. Jurassic Park came out in 1993 but this dinosaur was WAY bigger than any of those… wait, he was kind of a dinosaur. He was very different from the Godzilla I remember. This Godzilla wasn’t here to fight other monsters. He seemed out of place and, dare I say it? He seemed scared. Kind of reminds me of a certain gigantic gorilla?

It still made for a great albeit long movie according to my 15 year old brain. But I’ve grown up now. I’ve learned a thing or two about movies and writing and money-grubbing producers and I’ve learned a couple things about Godzilla.

Tristar’s Godzilla (1998) was not well received by Japanese audiences and most American audiences were just Godzilla’ed out by the time the film actually hit the screen, overloaded as they had been by the relentless salvo of promotional campaigns.

I think this film had a soul. Some American was very passionate about America making their (or maybe just his) idea of an American Godzilla film. But hubris and money-grubbing corrupted that soul.

I believe it is a well made film with great special effects, a decent story, funny/annoying and/or interesting characters, an amazing musical score and album, and okay acting, with the exception of Maria Pitillo who was just awful. It also had half the cast of The Simpsons for some reason.

It just doesn’t have the same soul as the Japanese Godzilla films. That might have been an utter impossibility. If it was just a different kind of Kaiju film, it might have fared better with both audiences. But this had the audacity to claim the Godzilla title, a tall order to fill; nigh unreachable considering the history from whence the true Godzilla came.

For one thing, this Godzilla (or Zilla as Toho later called it to differentiate it from theirs) was created by French nuclear tests. So one could easily argue that this was an entirely different creature from THE Godzilla altogether. Retconning occurrences in later Japanese films would make that point a reality. The Zilla of 1998 would become a bit of a joke.

But Godzilla 1998 also had Jean Reno and any movie with Jean Reno in it is alright with me.

There was also an animated series centered around this Zilla and I found it to be quite palatable. The plots were decent even if the characters were boring. At the very least, the characters didn’t go walking unshielded into an active volcano like they did in the 1978 animated series.

Tristar would distribute many older Godzilla films in the U.S. which meant the true Godzilla could start developing a bigger audience, an audience who would know what Godzilla was supposed to be.

I wouldn’t really know of the disdain for 1998 American Godzilla until the next official Toho era.

The Tristar Era was over as quickly as it started with a single film and a mostly unknown animated series in its repertoire.

In Japan, the American Godzilla would be a mile marker signifying a call to revitalize once again what the true Godzilla was and could be.

In The Millennium Era, Godzilla would return with a vengeance.