And then we cut to Chernobyl, and there's a very happy man
singing the Clockwork Orange song and collecting.
Worms from the ground. I love that that's what you call
it. Singing in your brain is.
I mean like you're not wrong, but that shouldn't be your
primary point of reference. That's the first time I ever
heard that song. So to me that's.
You know the song from the musical that's named after.
Yeah, well. Hello everyone, and welcome to
Castle Bravo, A Godzilla Verse retrospective.
I'm Derek. And I'm Charlotte.
And we're two siblings here to examine the history of the
Godzilla franchise, one movie at a time.
We're joined by two guests today, first friend and fellow
host at Super Lux Games cast Jeff Meyer.
Good morning. I'm here.
Morning. Jeff, it's it's early where you
are because you're you're several hours behind us, right?
Yeah, it's still a morning here. I'm still on coffee.
Number two of four. We'll get there.
We'll get to maximum awakeness and 2nd joining us for the third
time. Case Aiken from certain point of
view. I am certainly turning this into
a Casal Bravo shut. The fuck up.
But but Jeff, I'm with you on the on the tired front.
My wife and I have recently come up with a a shift schedule for
when baby wakes up and we're both still tired in the morning.
And I had first shift, which meant that I didn't touch the
coffee because I was like, oh, but I'll get to go back to bed.
And then my wife woke up and immediately had a work emergency
she had to deal with. And so, like, I'm just now
getting into like my first cup and I'm, I'm tired.
So while we're Speaking of coffee, because we're, we're
going to launch right into how how we're doing today.
This is a great segue, yes. It is I I am on coffee #2.
I actually have made a latte at home from from Godzilla Coffee.
We're not sponsored. I don't do ads on any podcast I
do, but there is there is this coffee just like Godzilla
branded coffee from. It's a it's a small company
called Foxtail Coffee. They operate as part of a small
distributor called Jade City Foods.
And like I got, I originally got a bag of coffee from them, like
as a joke because it was like, well you know, it's 30 bucks for
a fucking 8 oz bag of coffee. That's way expensive.
But I'll say I bought the Godzilla coffee right It it'll
indulge my my autism it. Turns out.
It turns out it's it's not a French roast.
It's some of the best fucking coffee beans I've ever bought.
So I bought over the holidays like a sampler where I got a bag
of like every different one. It's like 13 different coffee
blends. Did you get I see King
Ghidorah's Embodiment of Extinction blend?
I did, I did. That's the white chocolate
macadamia nut. But that is.
But the one I'm using right now is the Mount Mihara blend, which
is a peppermint coffee that's that's got Violante on the
front. It is difficult because that is
one of two coffees that come pre ground instead of in bean form.
So I have to regrind the absolute shit out of them to
make an espresso puck. And because it's peppermint
you're never going to make true espresso because the
peppermint's going to dissolve with the hot water which is
going to free up a tiny bit of volume which is going to
immediately cause a drop in pressure.
You won't get a true crema. It's not real espresso.
What the fuck ever. I made a pseudo espresso shot, a
double pseudo espresso shot of the peppermint coffee and just
added some froth milk to it and it's lovely.
It's the best peppermint mocha I've ever had.
So there I got to engage in in in Autism Hyperfixation #2,
which is coffee on my Godzilla podcast.
Well, if there's any Godzilla podcast episode to hyperfixate
on coffee about, this is the one new.
York One, that's for sure. The one where the running gag is
the coffee. Yeah, Charlotte, how you doing
today? I'm doing all right.
I'm tired too, but I don't drink a lot of coffee so I've just had
a lot of V8. Yeah, you're like being healthy
and and smart. Although black coffee can be
good for you, but most people don't want to drink black coffee
reasonable and you can't have milk so.
That's right, suffer. OK.
Yeah, I'm doing good. This is one of the only movies
in this whole podcast that I've seen before.
How long has it been since? Since let's Let's get around
real quick. So obviously look today it's the
end of the season we have been this sort of Damocles has been
hanging over us for several episodes.
Now, almost this entire season, we are finally covering the
infamous Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, 1998 Tristar Godzilla.
For everybody here, how long has it been since you've seen this
movie? I don't think I've seen it since
it was in theaters in 98. I I I'm a little ashamed to say,
I've probably seen it a few times.
It's probably only been about four years for me, so relatively
recently, but I have different thoughts every time I watch it.
Yeah, I look, hey, I'm going to say I came away with this.
I came away from this. I'm trying to be less of like a
reactionary nerd right in my adulthood and not just like
dislike thing because different. And I'm trying to have the
attitude of like art that is bad, doesn't have to be like
that doesn't have to be an insult.
Like sometimes things can can be messy and it'd be interesting to
pick them apart. And I just came away with way
more complicated feelings than I thought I would.
Charlotte, how long has it been since you've seen Godzilla 98 as
one of the only ones you had seen prior to the podcast?
It's probably been about 20 years, but when I was a kid,
like, I was like 6-7 and this came out right?
Yeah, it depends on if my birthday had happened yet that
year. This was my movie.
I had Godzilla books. They were only this one when you
asked me the very first time, Hey, do you like Godzilla?
And I said yes. This is what I meant.
Oh God, that's right. No, I just, I just had so much
merch and I had like books that just had like frames of the
movie that I just sat and looked at.
And I don't know. I I have different opinions now
than I did then because I'm not a child.
It's a running theme I'm noticing here, yeah.
But yeah. I I wanted just to mention as
well this was also my introduction to Godzilla and
same kind of thing like just I was I guess 11 when it came out.
So right in the like the height of my dinosaur Jurassic Park
era. And I mean, there's some
similarities, like aesthetically, but just as like
a kid distracted by everything with super ADHD, like the bright
neon greens on all the art and everything like that.
And it's. The most.
Like, yeah, same thing. I was like, I love Godzilla.
Only seen this Godzilla. And it wasn't until really just
five years ago, or whenever, I guess a little bit longer, when
the legendary stuff started coming out.
But I I expanded my horizons. Jeff, you actually watched the
the original Godzilla finally for the first time.
I did, yeah. Just finished it about an hour
ago. Yeah, that's.
I'm First off, I'm always glad when I can introduce people to
the original because I like, I do think the 1954 original is
just a masterpiece, right? Like, like it, it holds up so
much better than you expect it to.
So I also think people just unfairly think that like, oh, a
movie was made in the 50s or 60s is going to be shitty.
And it's like we knew how cinematography and acting worked
at the time. Folks.
Writing's not a new art. I'm a I'm a huge Star Trek nerd,
too. Like, it's it's very easy for me
to shut off the hokey, like the the special effects and stuff,
and just get to the core of like the messaging and the themes and
things which are in a good film, we're really never aged.
So, yeah, I appreciate a lot of that.
Yeah, now case A. Like, how long has it been since
you've seen Godzilla 98? But also like B to shout out,
not too many years ago you did an episode of your show, Another
Pass, dedicated specifically to Godzilla 98.
Yeah, so, so, so, my. God, I said a couple years ago.
And it just struck me like, oh fuck, it's been so many years.
The last year has been five years.
I mean this was about two years ago.
It was, it was shortly after my Co host Sam had joined the
podcast. So it was in that kind of track
there. Yeah.
So I I did revisit it for another pass.
I watched it twice then and then realized that I'd only rented it
and thus watched it twice really quickly.
Because then when I went to go re watch it now, I was like, God
damn it, I'd either rent it or buy it again and ended up just
buying it this time because you know, I'm sure it'll come up
again for some reason. Yeah, so two years ago we we
watched it for Another Pass, which is a podcast where we look
at movies and talk about how they could have been improved at
the time of production in a realistic way.
And you and Charlotte have been on to talk about the the 70s
King Kong movie. So if people are interested in
that idea and don't want to spend time with this specific
Godzilla movie, but like the host of this show, go check out
that episode. That's a really good one.
It had been a couple of years. It probably been like 10 years
between that, that watching and the last time I had seen it.
I had seen it randomly sometime in my adulthood but but really
not like maybe like once kind of when just like looking back at
some movies that I had enjoyed in my like teens and like junior
high, I think. I think I'm the old man on this
show. So I was, I was 14 when this
movie came out and I was a it was my eighth grade.
I was about to go into high school and I was fresh off of
the hype of Independence Day, which was like such my shit when
it came out and this. Looked good news.
It was everybody's shit. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, exactly.
It was like a monumentally successful hype campaign, and it
was a movie that was inoffensive to most people.
So it was like really easy for people to kind of glom onto it
and be like, yeah, rah, rah, even if it's like like, there's
a lot of really good things going on with it and a lot of,
like, weaker things going on with it.
And I think that the weaker stuff is carried over and some
of the good stuff is not carried over for Godzilla, which is a
little bit of a bummer. I was already a Godzilla fan.
I was, I'm a giant Power Rangers fan.
I'm a giant Kaiju fan. I like, like, I really like
apes. So King Kong as a concept is
really into me like that. It's just all stuff I was going
to check out and like at this point I had already started
having like late night parties with my friends.
Parties as in quotes. Because it was really just like,
here's like five of us hanging out at one person's basement
watching a Godzilla movie and then seeing what we can find on
Skin Max. Because that was just, you know,
again, I was like 1314 when this movie came out, so I I was
primed for it. I remember I really want to talk
about the marketing campaign because I thought it was so
strong for this movie. I was so hyped for when it came
out. And then it came out and it's at
best fine. It is there.
There are some things that I I find cool about it.
There's some things that I think are interesting going on, but
the the circumstances of the movie are pretty mundane for a
giant Kaiju attack kind of movie.
Like they don't do enough with with it to really like reward
the changes that they're making. But there's there's stuff that I
enjoy and I I love Jurassic Park.
So like the the elements that were similar at the time were
cool. And like, yeah, they look
derivative as hell and don't hold up very well special effect
wise. But yeah, I mean it was super
super in the zeitgeist when it came out.
I probably saw it a couple of times over my high school period
on VHS, like just for rental because like, why not?
And then probably once or twice, maybe between high school and
like late 30s and then at like, I guess I was like 3738 when we
did the Another Pass episode on it.
Yeah, it's it's so wild because like, there's just no getting
around the fact that this is maybe aside from the original
Godzilla, probably the most significant movie we've talked
about on Castle Bravo so far. For like Western audiences.
You you can't not have an opinion on Godzilla 98 because
this movie was all of culture for a brief point in time.
It was all-encompassing. So let's let's kind of set the
stage a bit here. For those who've been listening
through season three of Castle Bravo, it wasn't many movies
into this. Like 80s nineties resurgence
where Sony got the the rights to make a Godzilla movie in in, you
know, a Hollywood Godzilla movie.
And Toho tried a couple of times to end the Godzilla series,
finally ends at 95 with Versus Destroyer and you know, makes
this, this trilogy of of Mothra movies to try and hold things
over because you know this, this Godzilla movie has spent most of
the 90s in development hell. I was surprised to find out that
this movie had spent so long in development hell when I first
found out about it. Because I think most of us
didn't hear about this until like the first trailer with the
foot coming down and you know, smashing the the trucks and and
and the Taco Bell marketing campaigns and things like that
because this movie was everywhere.
So the Long story short, long time Henry Saperstein, I really
hope I'm pronouncing his last name right.
That's the thing I should have looked up before getting in
here. But it's too late.
This is one of the guys who's been heavily involved in
bringing Godzilla movies and other, you know, sci-fi, like
Japanese made sci-fi movies of the era stateside, you know,
getting them translated, getting, you know, English voice
over, getting them into theaters, etcetera.
He finally gets permission to from Toho to make the pitch for
an American made Godzilla movie. How he ends up with Sony.
We try not to focus too much on the unmade versions of movies
because there is a graveyard of unmade Godzilla movies that that
spans an entire continent, right?
There's so, and even the ones that get made go through so many
changes, often times in the year or two leading up to their
actual production. But this is a really interesting
version because there was a version that very nearly made it
to filming all the way back in 94, four years before we got
this Godzilla movie. It was the original script
treatment was written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who
are kind of a famous duo in 90s and early 2000s Hollywood for
screen writing. It was going to be directed by
Yan De Bond, who you might know is the director of Motherfucking
Speed, Keanu Reeves on a Bus That Can't Slow Down or It Blows
Up and Special Effects by Stan Winston, which is a name that
needs no introduction. I'm going to drop a picture of
the of the Stan Winston Godzilla in the chat here and it's going
to blow your mind compared to what we got.
For listeners at home, it is an image in the production or
section in the Wikipedia page, so if you want to check that.
Out. Yeah, you can.
You can find it on on the Wikipedia page, but I mean, look
at this is the mock up for what the Stan Winston Godzilla was
going to look like as an American Godzilla.
And it's different, right? It's different from the Japanese
Godzilla, but this is very clearly and unmistakably the Big
G. Yeah, I was going to say when
you say it's different, I'm like I don't think it's meaningfully
different from the from the Japanese Godzilla.
It's different in the way that, like the different, like eras
versions of Godzilla's are are different in each suit.
Like you can see the differences if you know what you're doing,
but if you're coming in just from like a, you know, a a
layman's perspective. Like it, it looks like Godzilla
and it looks. He's got to like a slightly
narrower and elongated like snout.
That's a little more crocodilian compared to the more like I was.
Going to say I I see like the lizard aesthetic a little bit
that made it into like the final movie.
Yeah. But but still much retaining
much more of the class. Yeah, but I mean the lizard
elements I'm not even sure would show up like I'm I'm not trying
to be like argumentative, but like if it if imagine a night
scene with this with this Godzilla, I feel like it would
look really similar to like the Godzilla from 84.
I think you would. You would shoot and frame them
very similarly, probably. And if you look at him like
again, like a lot of the changes that were made did carry over to
the Patrick Atopolis design. He's got way slimmer legs then
Godzilla has traditionally had. Godzilla's usually got them big
old Thunder files. Yeah, way better defined arms
than Godzilla's. Usually much more vestigial
looking. You know, very T Rex inspired
arms. He's got, you know, much bigger
arms. And I do think that like while
you keep a Godzilla inspiration in the face, the 80s nineties
Godzilla was very feline in its appearance.
So like this is where we start leaning into the the reptilian
like much stronger than we have in a long time.
So yeah, we've got this like Bombshell 94 version that is a
totally different movie. In this version, Godzilla is
like an ancient, like biological like creation by like the
Atlanteans basically as a sort of as a as a sort of biological
weapon. And he ends up fighting a a
ghidorah like like invader from outer space.
So there would be another monster and it was very, very
focused on like Godzilla as something mythic, Titanic, you
know, above and outside of nature, right.
Which is a a, a direction that we are very familiar with at
this point because the legendary movies have taken and run with
that, right. You know, really leaned into the
idea of Godzilla as something mythic rather than something,
you know, natural. This gets so close to being
made, I'm not entirely sure. I don't know if it's that I
forgot or I just didn't make a note or I couldn't find
anything, but at some point Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich come
into the picture and Devlin is not a fan of the original.
Take the the the 94, Godzilla, Devlin and Emmerich toss out
basically everything a a a nearly finished treatment that's
ready to go. And we remake this from the
ground up, coming from the approach of we're going to take
Godzilla and make it something much more naturalistic, right?
We're going to make this an animal that's on the loose, not,
you know, a a creature that is outside the natural order.
It is worth noting and this is going to feel a little like like
like like I'm I'm trying to like lead people's opinions, but I I
think it's it is important to note that Debont and Elliot and
Rossio. We're all very big fans of
Godzilla who repeatedly like made it very clear that they
were trying to make something that honored in their minds the
Godzilla that they grew up with. Devlin and Emmerich are not
Godzilla people. There is often times a need in
nerd culture to think you have to be a fan to make something
right. And I don't like that attitude.
I think sometimes it's good for somebody who's just a Workman to
come in and go, we're going to make a good movie.
This is a source material. Here's what I think we can do
with it. You know, you don't have to have
grown up with something since childhood to make a good
adaptation or remake, you know? So I don't want to act like I
don't recognize that difference in dynamic.
I just don't know that it's as important as maybe some other
things that happen along the way.
Godzilla gets redesigned by a creature designer and special
effects artist Patrick Datopoulos of Face Off fame, who
had previously worked with Devlin and Emmerich on Stargate
and Independence Day score got composed by David Arnold.
Likewise composed for Stargate and Independence Day.
This is basically Devlin and Emerick doing a reunion tour
with a lot of their behind the camera like crew and a lot of
their creative team. Which I mean, again, like if
you've seen Stargate and you've seen an Independence Day, and if
you haven't, I don't know where you were in the 90s.
Certainly Independence Day. Yeah, I I think, I think
Stargate's pretty, pretty well known.
It's very well. Known I can understand someone
having not seen it but remembering the trailers.
But like Independence Day, like if you didn't see it, like you
weren't alive in what was it 95 like?
Yeah, I was going to say spot somebody.
He wasn't born until after the towers fell, right?
Like that sounded really aggressive.
But it's kind of true. It's not a it's not a moral
judgment. It's just a fact of like that's
probably like the where you would have to be to not have
been marked by the movie Independence Day.
I've seen Independence Day. I didn't see Stargate.
But I saw, and this is a good team from the standpoint of like
coming in hyped about doing a big special effects movie that
isn't necessary. Big ridiculous sci-fi
blockbusters that hit. I like Stargate, I like
Independence Day. Like these are fun.
Stupid but very fun and very well made movies.
That look good, like the the special effects like you like.
Obviously things that don't hold up, especially once we get into
like the HD era where like you can really see the seams on
things, but like the use of CG was really was really well
integrated with model work. Typically speaking everything
looked incredible. Like, there's even a joke in in
Austin Powers where it's like where they show the scene of the
White House being blown up and it's like, oh that, well, that
was actually a shot from Independence Day because it
looks so good, like. Yeah, yeah.
So the and, and this is kind of interesting because you you kind
of got into it a little earlier case, but like this movie, the
marketing lead up to this was insane.
We had marketing deals with our. I'm like Taco Bell's the big
one. That's the one everyone
remembers. But like the trailers for this,
refusing to show you anything from Godzilla, but like the
foot. Or the OR the tails?
The swell coming out of the water, they were like hiding
Godzilla from you because they wanted it to be this big thing.
When you finally get to see Godzilla for the first time.
And then, and it's so funny because like I I remember this
but had forgotten about it. The Godzilla leaked before the
movie came out, Like pictures of the design made it around.
That's not uncommon these days. We're like a a picture of a toy
line gets released early on Reddit, you know what I mean?
But that was like unheard of at the time for for this stuff to
be spreading on like IRC and message boards.
And I remember my dad showing me like this picture of the
Godzilla design, and everyone was up in arms.
And Devlin, Dean Devlin, this is this is so weird to me.
Dean Devlin swore that the design was fake, which obviously
like a month or two later the movie comes out and it's not.
And I don't know other than to say like I can understand being
in a defensive position of people reacting intensely
negatively in a way that's not normally seen in Hollywood pre
release and like trying to put out a fire.
Yeah, just what a, what a bizarre This movie.
You could not avoid talking and thinking about it in the lead up
to it. And then it releases Charlotte.
Yeah. Why don't you tell us what
happens in Godzilla the the 98.1, the one we speak of today,
simply called Godzilla. So normally I would structure my
notes to be like, OK and this scene takes place here and then
I would talk about what happens there.
The first little bit of this movie cuts to a completely
different country every 10 minutes.
So. So the the I think like the
first half of my my notes on the movie are a little like jumpy
because it's setting up a lot of plot points and there's a lot
going on. It is not you if it, if it.
Very Independence Day, like. Yeah, so movie starts out, it's
very, very orange at the IT says Godzilla the Beginning.
And then it shows like flashes of like French Polynesia and
nuclear tests going on and some environmental destruction which
didn't really come to play to be.
Honest, a lot of shots of marine iguanas.
Yeah, and a lot of you know what?
I I want to bring this part up because it's like even looking
at the Wikipedia page, it's like Godzilla is a mutated iguana and
I'm like, no, well, they speculate that he might be a
mutated iguana and we get the shot at the beginning.
I don't think it's like confirmed like you could you
could hand cannon pretty much anything still.
Yeah, I I would say it's not confirmed, but like a they they
regularly you shot some marine iguanas, although they also have
a random shot of Komodo dragon in there.
So I'm like who knows And of course like this is he's got a
lot of features of marine Iguana's very like uniquely and
like it's it's a good safe bet but like it's.
Certainly what they were kind of thinking.
I would argue that the movie is a little bit more open-ended on
it in terms of. Yeah, if if you didn't show the
the montage of the opening credits, I don't think as many
people would have jumped straight to Marine Iguana.
Yeah, yeah. But the the opening bit here
stops with the nuclear test and it it does show an iguana then
too, like staring at this big explosion.
So I was like, oh, it must be an iguana.
I'm not saying it's not leading you to that opinion.
I'm just saying it's open-ended enough that if you want him to
be a dark God released by nuclear energy, it could still
be that. Yeah, sure. 90% of of
establishing what Godzilla probably is happens in this
opening montage, and outside of that, there's very little other
than whatever he is is changed by a nuke.
So, you know, yeah. Which and if they were trying to
take like a naturalistic approach, you think they would
get into that more. But they cut to a fishing ship
and there's a man eating and he's watching some sumo, you
know, like as you do. Yeah, as as Japanese people
regularly do on their fishing ships watching sumo, right?
Just making it as Japanese as as babies, that's good.
It's the 90s. This is like this doesn't even
track as far as racism goes. No, There's some casual word
drops in this movie too. Yeah, we, yeah.
There's a couple things right I. Don't get to that.
So something big's come in on the radar.
It's rapidly approaching and everyone's panicking.
And I mean, it's Godzilla. Godzilla pierces the hole like
tail slams the the bridge at the top of the ship just destroys
everything. And then we cut to Chernobyl,
and there's a very happy man singing the Clockwork Orange
song and collecting. Worms from the ground.
That's what you call it. Singing in your brain is.
I mean like you're not wrong, but that shouldn't be your
primary point of reference. That's the first time I've ever
heard that song, so to me, that's or.
You could call it, you know the the song from the musical that's
named after. Yeah, well.
Folks are learning something about Charlotte today.
I have a lot of Clockwork Orange merch, so he's collecting worms
from the ground because it's Chernobyl.
And you know, let's take samples, see what's.
Going on puts like these two like this thing, this thing in
the ground and then like turns on like a battery and it.
Just makes like shocking. It just makes like a bajillion
worm suddenly come out of the ground.
Later in the movie, he says he was like trying to lure them out
and it's like you. Just shot the shit out of them,
yeah. We're frying them in the
Safeway. Their redneck is luring fish to
the surface by throwing dynamite into the pond.
Yeah. So he gets interrupted.
There's like a a Russian military squad comes down and
there's like a a a joke at the beginning of this movie where
they can't pronounce Tatopolis. It's not that.
Out of the beginning, it's throughout the entire movie,
even in French. Yeah, and it's it's like to top
First off to Topless isn't that hard of a name to say, right?
Like or read? So I don't know.
But also like considering the main character was clearly named
after creature designer Patrick Topless.
Like, OK, well, you just made fun of his name repeatedly
through the movie. I I do wonder if that was a
thing behind the scenes where they like they someone had an
issue and said that they made that a recurring joke, but.
That that that that actually kind of contract for me.
I like that that. Like Roland just could not say
it right. Yeah, it's hard to believe that
you would just naturally fall on like, Oh yeah, this fucking
name's Impossible Guy. Yeah.
Right. So yeah, the the guy can't
pronounce his name, but the government man steps out and
he's just like, you're being reassigned.
Actually, we have work for you today.
Because that's how it works. You can be like researching
something and the government can just show up and say you work a
different job now. Right.
So now they they cut to a hospital and there's a one of
the Japanese men from the the fishing ship is like catatonic
in the bed and they like shine a a light in his eyes.
They like light a lighter in front of them and they're like,
what did you see? And he's like Godzilla.
Godzilla, Gojira, But. I know, but.
That's a thing that you can do later in the movie, yeah.
So, but now we're in Panama and Doctor Tatopoulos is there and
he's like, this isn't my field. You know, like, I don't know
what you're actually wanting me to figure out here, but like, I
saw you like bugs. I'm a biologist.
And they lead him into a giant footprint.
And they're like, well, this is your sample, this giant
footprint. And then they they look at a
video that was conveniently shot of the Godzilla attack in French
Polynesia. Like as it was happening.
Yeah, cameras. Sure, following the boat.
Yeah, yeah. In the middle of the ocean.
Yeah, it was like a buoy. You know, like everyone's like
live streaming these days. So you know you had a.
Yeah, in the air. Yeah, he got a very tall booze
out at this point. It's like this is like a
precursor to Deadliest Catch, but it's Japanese, so we just
never really saw it over in the States.
Yeah. So now they cut to ATV Studio in
New York. And Audrey, one of our one of
our main characters, is asking her boss about, like, some
career advancement, basically. And he's like, Oh yeah.
What? Principal Skinner?
It's fucking Harry Shearer and and it's you can't see him and
not hear Principal Skinner. It's wild.
See, I was thinking Ken Brockman the whole time, but.
Well also, Ken. Brockman.
Right. We have to talk about how like
then his secretary is Nancy Cartwright and that Hank Azarius
is is Camera Guy. Oh my God, is his secretary
Nancy Cartwright. I didn't even notice.
But like, she's there. That plus Hank Azaria.
Yeah, you got the whole damn Simpsons cast.
Well, Audrey's asking about, like, some career advancement
stuff, and he's just like, Oh yeah, well, maybe you should
have dinner with me and we can figure it out, you know?
It's the most blatant. Like, it's it's horrible.
And like First off, I guess good on you for like showing this in
the 90s. But it is the most like cartoon,
you know when you have to take an HR training at work, when
they do it like once every year or two, and you have to watch
videos that are horribly acted, where people commit like
felonies, it's like that. What did he do wrong in this?
Situation. What did he do right?
Was anything. Great thing.
This was like just like that, a whole line.
But like I think a lot of this movie especially like this
element of it was just such to me.
Like it felt like the 90s approach to everything like like
especially like women in media. Like this was the idea of like
trying to create an empowered. It has girl boss in it.
Yeah, right. Which, like, I don't know.
I've never seen anyone, like, just have a lollipop in their
mouth the whole time. But like, that was just a thing
that everyone in the 90s did. This is the most 90s New York
ass movie I think I've ever seen in my life.
Yeah, and I'm going to get into it later, but there's a lot of
stuff in this movie. It's like, if you don't know
what New York is, it's not going to land for you at all.
This is. This is this is like, yeah,
it's, it's it's concentrated. They put like Friends and
Seinfeld into like a fucking old like distillery and and what
came out the other end got filtered through like a a like
sleeve of uranium and then that's what we got.
Yeah, well, now we're cutting to Jamaica and our our, our doctor
friend is getting rizzed up by the paleontologist there because
mostly because they're really trying to set up the fact that,
like, he and Audrey used to be together because her her
pictures are in the back of his car and everything, but she she
tries to make a move and he's like, oh, she thinks I'm cute.
I mean, he is, but it's Ferris Bueller y'all like.
It is Ferris Bueller, I'm pretty sure like a year or two after
this movie. Doesn't he, like, hit A?
Child. Yeah, I think.
I think Matthew Broderick does kill a human being accidentally.
Not like hunting for sport, but he does accidentally kill a
human being. I'd still kiss him.
I don't know what to tell you. You're not a bad person for
accidentally committing vehicular manslaughter.
That's. True.
So can I stop? I don't know all the details.
I'm. Pretty sure he was in Europe and
driving on the wrong side of the road, but but like the fact
that. So don't add me if it turns out
he was like doing blow and. Derek the child murdered.
The The thing is, no. No, no, I'm OK with the with the
child murder, just not the drugs.
OK, let's get it straight. Curie was like, oh, are you
watching the Matthew Broderick one?
And I was like, yeah, and she's like.
That was exactly what my wife said, too.
No context. He killed a child.
Turn, turn 180° and walk away. Yeah, well, they get to the
destroyed fishing ship, right? And he starts collecting
samples. And what are the what are the
Army big? The big Army guys there is
fighting with this guy that says he's from the insurance company
and he's clearly not from the insurance company.
John Renault, the first French person I ever became aware of.
I just thought all French people were.
White he's he's the archetypal Frenchman.
Did you see? Yeah.
Did you see the French name credits?
Yes. They're all I watched.
I was watching the through the horrible credits saw Jean Luc,
Jean Claude, Jean Pierre and Jean.
Felipe, that was like this. How did you find a way to be
racist against the French? Yeah.
So they cut to the United States now, and there's more fishing
ships, but this time they all get caught on something, and
that something is Godzilla. And the ships get pulled under
and up in the air. At this point, with all of his
samples and everything, you know, the doctors looking at all
the samples and they're all informed about these ships going
under. And Doctor Topless is like,
well, I think the radiation isn't an anomaly.
I think it's the clue in that Godzilla is a new creature, the
first of its kind. Well, because they're also
arguing that like, they're like, oh, it's a dinosaur from the
Cretaceous and then they say it's an allosaur and I'm like,
you looked at the name allosaur, but you don't know what fucking
era it's from. Yeah, also Allosaurus.
Famously not a marine animal guys like.
Right, exactly. Famously the smaller T Rex from
the from the period before the T Rex AKA the Jurassic period.
Yeah, again, dinosaur kid. Yeah.
Yeah, but Charlie, you're right, the Polish paleontologist
strike. Again.
So we go back to Audrey now and she's in a diner and the news is
on about that fishing ship and doctor topless.
I'm just going to call him Nick from now on because his name's
Nico. But he goes by Nick, Nick's on
there. And Audrey's like, I was with
him in college and she like, recognizes him and she clearly
has some unresolved feelings. I.
Think she calls him this college sweetie or her college sweetie?
And it was. And I was just like something
like that. Weird way of saying it.
Yeah. It's weirder when we find out
later, like, not that this is like plot important or anything,
but like later we find out that like, she like, he he like,
'cause she's all like, Oh yeah, he got away.
And it's like, yeah, he proposed to you and you said no and you
had no good reason. Yeah, you had no good reason to
do that other than like well. I'm going to New York.
I'm going to make it. Yeah, she.
She bought the shit out of me, like as a character.
Like, oh, so when you say later it's like this, he's not a good
female. We get the expedition dump, like
all up front and then, you know it doesn't matter, yeah.
Yeah. So we go to this fisherman, He's
like out at the pier and he's like, oh, I'm going to try to
fish in the East River. And one of the guys and
everybody was like, oh, you're going to catch us a cold, huh?
Because it's the 90s and he does catch something and it's
Godzilla, and he goes running down the pier.
Like the first level in Sonic Adventure, All Godzilla destroys
the pier. Fine.
What a fantastic. Shot This is the shot that Sonic
Adventure is ripping off, not the other way around.
Yeah, yeah. What a fantastic fucking.
Shot good shots in this movie. This movie I'm going to go to
bat for the special effects in this movie and and not like
Godzilla himself yet but this is a very tricky like CGI Water is
hard, right? And they managed to like do a
pretty convincing like water swell composited in with like a
practical shot of a man running down a dock and that dock being
blown up by actual pyrotechnics, right.
Like, that's That's a real shot. Incredible work.
Yeah, yeah, you're right. And I mean, I wouldn't go to bat
for Godzilla itself, but the rest of it, yeah.
I'm going to go to Bat for Godzilla itself, sadly, but I
think just like we'll get there. Visually I really like the whole
set up to like that comes off this like like rain.
Like rain in New York is a good. Yes is a good look And like I
don't want to keep making like a Jurassic Park comparisons but
like the the just the the torrential downpour and I think
the way they like kind of frame everything like you said in and
you don't even get that. I don't think the full reveal
till later in the movie, but like everything from that dock
for the next like 5 or 10 minutes, I like a lot of it.
Visually, well, rain's a good way.
Rain and night are great ways to hide flaws, right?
Like, for better and worse, we've become hyper aware of that
now, but it's not a thing people were thinking of the way in the
90s. By the way, none of us have
brought up that a lot of these shots are through a chain link
fence, which is yet another way to obscure and like kind of
allow you to filter detail a little bit.
Yeah, lots of texture. Sorry my mic died for a second
there. So the I do I do want to say
like we set up the rain for the entirety of the movie.
At this point, this becomes just a a overwhelming thing that does
hide a lot of special effects, but it is also just like Create
creates this like feeling that we're just underwater for the
entirety of it. Like, they're really into this
whole, like, Godzilla's a secret.
It's a super wet movie. Even the chunks of the movie
that take place like underground, which is a weird
amount of the movie, it's a it's like a very wet underground, you
know everything has that like damp, like shake the the rain
out of your boots kind of look through the movie and it's it's
a very intentional, atmospheric choice.
Yeah, so Godzilla makes landfall, and as one would
expect, a lot of chaos and Susan traffic.
He's just running through chomping on cars, basically.
The mayor, Mayor Ebert and. The least, the least, the the
most thinly. Veiled Is there a veil like his
assistant is named Jean. There's a thumbs down moment
later in the movie, like there's no veil.
I I actually grew up watching Ebert and Roper.
But I I think like the first time I watched this I didn't
really appreciate you know the significance of Roger Ebert and
like the critic industry and I was obviously didn't know the
history. But like every time we watch
this I'm just astounded at like it's not just a one off joke.
It's like there throughout the whole movie.
Yeah, no, this is. This is basically because Ebert
disliked Emerich's earlier movies, right, Right.
Like that's that's what this is. It's just like we're going to
make him out to be a a a fat candy eating buffoon, you know,
as as a take that to not liking my movies and and like it's
funny though because like the character would be funny if you
didn't know who Roger Ebert was, right?
And you didn't know about the beat when I was a kid.
So then it's just like a funny weird, like he's a Simpsons
character, basically. Yeah.
So. Setting up what seemed like an
improbable devotion to getting everyone back at at back into
the city and back to work. And yet we found out in the real
world. Very true.
Yeah, fuck. Well, he's giving his speech at
City Hall. Godzilla crashes his speech and
a lot of people die. Oh yeah, Oh yeah, there's a
body. Count destroying.
Yeah, like, I really didn't. Godzilla causes like several 9
elevens in this movie. Yeah, well, which they compare
to. They they say this is the worst
destruction since the World Trade Center bombing which they.
Mean 90. Right.
They mean 93 because this is. Obviously, three years before
World Trade Center bombing. Yeah, they had two.
When that line drops, you're like oh and then you're like oh
wait and. Movie moments that don't age
well, but actually do, because again, Godzilla causes several
911's worth of damage. Right.
And The thing is, this movie came out three years before 9/11
and thus, like if this had come out, then the, like, the vibe of
New York destruction would be very different.
But in this scenario, they're like, no, no, no, we'd we'd
bounce back immediately. We would, we would forget.
Real move, actually. Seemed it seemed to me like the
the Godzilla destruction was actually like minor compared,
like the shots that's now owed to me were like the military.
Accident. Oh, it gets worse.
Laser. Building or bombing Madison
Square. Right.
Jesus. But like, yeah, you got like
entire skyscrapers that Godzilla has, like, walked a hole
through, you know? Right.
I will say too that like one of the things I do really like
because obviously the model for Godzilla doesn't hold up super
great, right? We haven't worked out some of
the like really good like shading and like reflectivity
and and and like while they're lighting is pretty good, like
it, it obviously doesn't look super realistic.
Where I do want to give them a lot of credit is that they made
it interact with the environment as much as possible in tiny
ways. The way it's footsteps affect
like the water on the street where it steps right when it
goes around a corner in the tail flicks like lightly into the
side of a building and leaves like a carve.
It's it's minor details, not stuff that they like built the
shot around, but they made sure to add a ton of these tiny
little side details in that you may not even really be paying
attention to. And it ultimately sells the
physicality of Godzilla way better than a lot of other CGI
creatures of the time and even much later.
The joke I made is he looks like a sci-fi movie like original
movie like quality model by like today's standards.
But you'd never see like a Sci-fi Channel movie like
creature look that good and interact that well with the
environment and have that much weight and presence so.
Yeah, the attention to detail. Was still on the air at that
time and like that's the quality stuff we were getting on team.
Yeah, I mean like it. It's certainly the the thing
about this team like they are very good at at doing the, the
extra work to make the technology that they're pushing
fit better. Like they've always been pushing
CG in movies that previously would have just been model work.
And you can see all the extra attention to detail they're
putting in all throughout to make it be as visually
impressive, because that's what they're selling.
They're selling the spectacle of this movie when it hits
theaters, not the spectacle of this movie, what, 27 years
later. Wow, don't hurt me like that.
You had 2626 years. 26 years later, yeah.
Wow, I got. I took one off that number.
That's so much better. So this is actually the scene
where Audrey says that Nick asked her to marry him.
OK, yeah, I wasn't. I wasn't sure, but I actually
made a note about it. Godzilla wonders by Well,
they're all talking. And honestly, like Victor who
goes by Animal in the movie. Hank Azaria.
He's my favorite. Character.
He's the best character in this. Movie He's the best character.
In this movie. Hank Azaria just has charisma.
Like naturally. Like one, this sequence that's
about to happen is probably my favorite sequence in the movie
because it's just cool. And like, it's fun and it's also
the trailer shot and like, those are all things that are great
about it. But also just Hank Azaria is so
great. Like like he and his wife have a
wonderful relationship in this movie that is terrible.
Like they this is where we get into some of the slurs that get
dropped. But but it's it feels real.
It feels fun. She clearly cares about people
because she brings them all into their house later on.
Like they both are like constantly doing the right
thing, even though they're constantly saying nice guys
finish last. I love their dynamic.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, because because
Godzilla wanders by and animal goes Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
He is lodge and and he tries to get a shot of it with his camera
and almost dies. He almost gets crushed.
He's right between the toesies, Yeah, he like.
Runs out there's like this whole like like extended sequence of
him getting the the camera like getting the the the tape into
the camera like like this whole like massive pantomiming of like
inserting it and closing it. Yeah, he's like sitting here
frantically, like he's got the tape in, he's trying to shut the
thing. He's trying to put you trying
to. And then he like, finally, right
before he like, looks down and does the very gentle casual poke
press. And it works like great
slapstick physical comedy. Again, Hank Azaria can sell
this. Yeah, so the military rallies a
response because Godzilla's here now, but somehow they lose
Godzilla. And I say somehow, but I mean
Godzilla's not as tall as some of the buildings around when he
crouches. Down I like.
This is This is one of my key gripes about this movie.
OK, I do like losing Godzilla in the maze that is New York City,
right? A lot of this works as like the
couple of sequences that are like this, but those helicopters
can fly, so God damn high y'all They could just go up well above
the city and look down like you don't have to be in the maze.
Those, those, those Apaches can fly like, I don't remember what
the ceiling is, but they can go so goddamned high.
Y'all. Even if they can't go higher
than every building, like even if that.
Like even if their ceiling is is lower than like say the Empire
State Building or the Chrysler Building.
Like like New York, yes is a a series of towers, but it is less
so than it is being sold as here.
Like there are way more buildings that are just not that
tall like. It also works well within like
the time period better than it would today because like you
know, the lack of social media and.
Oh yeah, absolutely, probably. And stuff like that, like.
Yeah. But it like, you wouldn't have
that, like, you know, it'd be all like, you know, you
basically be live tweeting like where it is today, right?
But right. It's a lot.
It's a lot more believable in that time that like you wouldn't
have a real time feed like you said, aside from like someone
reporting from a helicopter. Where he might.
So there's. A direct through line between
this and Cloverfield. And then like, there's stuff
that would come after it, you know for sure.
Like what? Yeah, that that level of social
media awareness. So I just fact checked.
So the Empire State Building, right, as an example, about 1200
feet tall, it's like 1250 something.
OK. The maximum altitude on an
Apache helicopter, which is what they're using in in the movie is
20,000 feet. So like 15 Empire State
Buildings? High Wow.
Yeah. Yeah, But again, like most
people don't know that. But it's it's very like, it's
one of those things where if you know, you're like, but so I did.
I'm turning my brain off. I'm taking this movie for what
it is presenting me. These are fun sequences with the
helicopters being stuck in the New York City maze.
Yeah. What this movie is presenting to
you is a mythological version of New York, with impossibly tall
buildings and places that are held with a religious
significance to eager you to be destroyed.
And sewer systems that are so big around that Godzilla can
move through them. And I actually appreciate that.
Look, I'm a Batman and Robin defender.
I love big, stupid mythological presentations of cities like.
Yeah, and like thematically like this, this chase sequence is the
equivalent of the Will Smith dogfight in in Independence Day.
Like the one for sure. Yeah, uses the parachute, which
I think this is, you know, starting to get into the the
issue of like, well, the cast is actually too small in this movie
for what they are, for, for for how big their parts are.
The cast is too small, yeah. Yeah, so Audrey tries to
leverage knowing Nick to, like, be like, hey, I know a guy on
the inside. I can get this story.
And you know, her boss continues to be a pig instead.
The the city, meanwhile, is still in chaos.
Traffic is slowed. There's buildings being looted.
Now. The mayor decides he's going to
make an appearance up with, like, the military and
everything. And our our French insurance man
shows up and he bugs the mayor's collar.
And this is this is a special tool that'll help us ladle.
Audrey, meanwhile, steals her boss's badge.
Just trying to, you know, get somewhere, actually do something
with her career. She's girl bossing.
Stealing your boss's press badge is girl bossing.
To be clear, some of her later choices and not so much, but
stealing, stealing pig bosses press badge and altering it to
be hers? That's certified girl boss move.
Yeah, yeah. The mayor shows up to like the
the military command center and they they all end up butting
heads because the mayor's like, I don't care about any of this.
Basically it's an election year but all this arguing's going on
like the the French people are spying on them on everything
going on. We don't know who they are quite
yet. They're just.
They're in a very old UPS truck, which I I was, I got floored.
Seeing a a 90s UPS truck, I was like holy shit.
Yeah, Godzilla is in the subway system now, which you can
totally fit in. We also shot out shout out the
the French guy bringing back coffees for everybody and
handing A doughnut and coffee to Jean Reno's character.
No croissant. No croissant.
No, I get this, this shitty fucking doughnut.
And what is this swill you call coffee and like?
You call this coffee? I call this.
American. Yeah, well.
Second best thing, frankly, in this movie after Animal is the
running coffee joke. Yes, yes.
Because here's the thing. I think it's intended to be
snobbish. Like, oh, you don't like
American coffee, but like bodega coffee sucks.
Y'all. Like, I'm going to say that I
don't care about New York City water.
Like bodega bodega drip coffee is not that good.
Y'all. Yeah, I don't know if it's
necessarily snobbish. They they're just making fun of
American coffee. Which considering this is Roland
Emmerich who is German I believe.
Really. I I guess.
See. I guess it's it's easy to read
it either way. Right?
Where it's read is like, look at these silly Frenchmen being so
big. Yeah.
Well, I was going to say the
Germans don't like the fucking French.
Yeah, no, it doesn't matter. Like, no.
But also, like, do they like the American coffee?
Like, it could be a scenario of like, Yep, American coffee is
terrible. And Yep, the French people are
going to be the ones that would say something about it, yeah.
I'll tell you this, I've. Never heard of German coffee?
Well, they can import it from France very easily, yeah.
That's true. And Italy, like the all
directions are great. Yeah, they're good.
Yeah, Nick says they should draw Godzilla out with food.
Because, I mean, it's an animal, right?
Probably just wants food. So the military does that.
They they pull out a. Bunch of Germans don't have
coffee because they just take the cream.
Oh, there we go. You're going to insert the drum
dish, right? That's that's it.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry to derail.
So sorry, Charlotte. You were.
It's. A It's a they they like.
They like white, not black. It's a Nazi thing.
I'm making love Germans. Yeah.
So no, I just didn't understand that.
So Charlotte, you were talking about a lot of?
Fish Yeah, yeah. They have a lot of fish in dump
trucks that they dump in a big fish pile.
It's a lot of fish. They mentioned that several
times, but they they're like we need this fish smell to
permeate. So we got to unseal these
manholes, and one of the manholes happens to be the One,
and it's the one that Nick Unseals happens to be the one
that Godzilla's like right under and Godzilla rips through the
concrete. Can I?
Can I this is this is like 5 seconds backward.
There is a shot as they're setting up the giant fish pile
where you get a shot of like 7 dump trucks, presumably all full
of fish like in a convoy together.
And then you get a shot of like 37 helicopters all on frame at
once flying like a like towards the camera kind of above like
from a ground like perspective. And it's just a comical number
of helicopters. And I just had this real it was
I I disassociated for a moment. It was very like end of Call of
Duty Black Ops, right of just like the amount of America
you're trying to cram on screen at once is startling to me.
We did not need 11 dump trucks full of fish in that shot to
sell the idea, and we sure didn't need the several dozen
helicopters on frame simultaneously.
They love having lots of helicopters in shots in several
spots where I'm like one, too narrow of a space for that many
helicopters. But two, I don't think actually
helicopters can be that close to each other without getting
disrupted. Like there, there's one spot
later that that it's like maybe 15 rushed through and it's like,
I don't think that works. Like 15 of them in the same New
York City block. Like.
I don't think that works for a whole bunch of reasons I don't
think I like. And one of those is just human
pilots. I don't.
I. Just don't think of it.
Advance war. Shit.
Are you trying to sell me on here?
So Godzilla bursts up through the ground and Nick like, goes
to take a picture of it. And I mean, Godzilla's not being
violent at all, you know? Can we eat some fish?
And just wants to fish bee lines towards these fish I.
Like fish, I get it. Yeah, Godzilla's tail does swipe
some some of the communication lines they had up.
So the military's like, oh we lost calms time to fire and they
start firing at it and it it uses some non not atomic breath,
just like fire breath. Basically, it's it's more like
it's breath catches on fire when it sparks.
He's got a flammable burp, which makes Godzilla about as
dangerous as John Belushi. Maybe a little bit less, but
yeah, I I said that as like a throwback that they do at a
couple of points because it's twice where it happens, where
he's roaring or they're roaring and like all the like the the
cars like slam into each other and that's when the fireball
occurs. Yeah, that's clearly they're
like naturalistic. We don't want to have like a
like a a ray of atomic fire, but we can make its breath be like
flammable if it catches. Yeah.
It's a pretty good looking. Fireball It's great visually.
Yeah, so they they try to lock on the Godzilla with their
helicopters, but they're not able to do that because
allegedly Godzilla is colder than the buildings around it.
Which dumb? That dumb.
Yeah, I sure. I get some head cannon scenario
that could allow for it where like the buildings are still
pretty warm but like God damn it like.
I'm pretty sure most missiles are not guided by heat.
I mean, like, I know that's a thing, but like that, that's not
how how a helicopter shoots a missile at another helicopter.
So I don't know. They needed a reason.
I I know it's super easy to be like Oh yeah he's exothermic and
but like that also doesn't fully make sense and they.
He's way too big to be cold, I mean.
Right, exactly. Like even if he is exothermic,
like he would have to have so much heat built up just to be
able to be like fully functioning.
Let alone the fact that if we're going off of like a more
dinosaur type design, it would be endothermic and then we get
into Godzilla where it would be radioactive.
Yeah. Right, right.
But sure, sure, heat seeking missiles don't work on them, OK?
But yeah, the helicopters cause as much damage to New York City
as Godzilla does because they just keep shooting missiles at
skyscrapers. Which at least they call.
It they do bring that up at least, yeah.
They blow up the Chrysler Building.
Yeah, yeah. The military continues to think
that they've got it taken care of, but they don't.
They they end up either chased off or dead.
Is this the the, the, the, the sequence?
I'm pretty sure it is worth At one point there's a couple
helicopters looking at like a hole in a building, like, oh,
he's definitely in there. And then Godzilla like fucking
Friday the 13th like burst through the building.
So good. So now we cut back to to Nick
and he goes into this little drug store and buys a bunch of
pregnancy tests. And we know that it's because of
the bloody goop that he found on the ground.
But Audrey catches him buying these pregnancy tests and he's
like, oh, you must have quite the harem and just she doesn't
question it again because like, what if he did?
I don't know. But.
Surprisingly progressive for its time, we we're OK with
polyamory. Sure, they make up because he's
like, you know what, I guess it has been eight years.
I'll give you a shot. Sure.
And Nick uses the pregnancy test that he buys to determine that
Godzilla is pregnant and must reproduce asexually.
I don't know that you can determine that something can
produce asexually, just inherently that way.
I mean, I think this is an assumption you make from the
fact that there's only one of these fucking things that you've
seen, but that they know that's true, that they know of.
But, but the the counterpoint on this one is that parthenogenesis
which is the type of asexual reproduction that they're going
through is actually a thing that like lizards are known to
demonstrate. So like that component of it, if
we're going off of like their lizards that have been exposed
to radiation, that one makes the most sense for it all.
And it would be and it, you know, it's clearly how it
actually functions in this movie.
It's one. It's one of the less.
Far out ideas. It's definitely a a note that
they put in there that they probably had a script note of
like we'll come back to this and expand on at some point and
never did. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, Now he's like
Godzilla's here to nest. That's why Godzilla's doing all
this. And he goes to inform people of
this and Audrey finds all the pictures of them together and
gets all sentimental, but then grabs a tape off off of the
table that magically has footage of the guy in the hospital that
was catatonic. How do they have footage of the
guy in the hospital but not know about Jean Reno, who is the one
there with the lighter in his face?
I'm wondering if the French sent some footage, like some Intel
over to the Americans, but maybe not all of it.
Like maybe, like weren't. I don't know.
We don't know how buddy, buddy. Some of them are in this whole.
Scenario. So she's like, oh, let's make
up, but also let me fucking steal your top secret classified
tapes from your tent. Right, Yeah.
No. She takes the tape, she goes and
she, like, runs that information.
On that certifiably not a girl boss move.
Nico Tatopolis has done nothing wrong.
Right, so Nick tells everyone that Godzilla's pregnant and is
probably taking fish to it's young.
Like they're probably going to hatch soon.
Like you don't have time to kill Godzilla and then find the nest.
You need to find the nest now. And while they're all discussing
this, Audrey's stolen footage gets put up, put up on the TV.
And so the military gets really mad at Nick because he was the
leak, kind of, and he gets taken off the project, but the
friendship taking an interest in him.
So he, he's going to catch a taxi out of there and Audrey
shows up and is like, I'm sorry, I'm not really a reporter and I
I just, I needed to save my career.
That's why I stole all your work and got you fired by the
government and probably blacklisted.
And in real life, probably fucking court martialed or
something. Probably, yeah.
Can you be court martialed if you're a civilian?
I don't know how that shit works.
Yeah. I mean, if you're on a military
project, probably he's probably considered.
Military they They put you in Guantanamo Bay one way or
another. Yeah.
At least that gets him away from that, from that other scientist
who was like sexually harassing him throughout the movie.
Yeah, true. I thought she was.
But luckily that the. I'm not saying that it wasn't
like like, I'm not saying that I wouldn't have been.
That would have been regular flirting if it was me, but.
Yeah, but like, Nick just seems really oblivious to all of it.
He just wants to look at animals, you know?
Yeah, asexual king. True, but luckily for Nick, that
taxi that he got into wasn't really a taxi.
It was driven by Philippe, our French Secret Service man who's
been figuring all this out for him.
And he tells Nick, like, hey, the military is not going to
actually look for this nest. They've just decided to
disregard everything you've said for reasons.
So we want your help to go track down the nest because you're the
only one that wants to other than us.
And so they they are heading off to that warehouse and Animal
actually tracks them down because he's trying to, I guess,
make things better between Nick and Audrey.
But he tracks him to the warehouse and overhears what's
going on and heads out from there and he heads home.
And that's when like his wife has all the all the people in
the surrounding neighborhood, like in their house to to be
safe. And he goes and he talks to
Audrey and she's crying and watching TV.
The military is like covering up what she revealed to everybody.
So even after all the the horrible things that she did,
it's not even going to pay off for her.
I think it covered up. But Animal manages to convince
her that they should follow Nick.
And I wrote and of the French, but I mean Philippe to the nest
to show the world that Nick was actually right.
And there is a nest down there that they should have taken into
consideration. So they they all get ready to
go, and they're about to head through like military
checkpoints to get to where the nest should be.
And there's this scene where Philippe passes chewing gum to
everybody. Because they've got.
A and Nick is like, why are you all so they?
Just all eat the shit out of some.
Gum. This is why I think it's as much
making fun of Americans as it was making fun of the French
You're. Probably right, You're probably
right. Do Do Americans chew a lot of
gum? Well, but it's like the red solo
cup thing. Like maybe they just, like, see
the advertisements and they're like, yeah, Americans and their
fucking gum instead of smoking cigarettes.
I think there was a lot of that going on in movies and stuff in
the 90s. You know, if it was a tough guy,
he'd be chewing. On it's also clearly, like meant
to be an outdated stereotype that like, is pulled for media
because when when he has to speak up, he speaks in like a
bad Elvis impersonation and like mentions like, yeah, I I know
how to speak like an American because I'll I'll fucking love
Elvis movies like. Right.
I did see this movie with my stepdad, who was probably the
target audience for that joke. It's about 50 so.
Fair enough, but yeah, that was my next note, was the oldest
impression. They get another bunch of fish
together for Godzilla, though, because they're expecting to be
able to do the same trick twice. Godzilla tears into the tunnel
that like Nick and them are all in and Audrey and an animal are
tracking them like down in the sewer system in the subway slash
sewer system. And Godzilla leaves the subway
and goes up and like basically stares down an entire platoon
and then looks at the fish and then looks back at the platoon
and is like, no, I know what's happening here and I'm not doing
it. And like, leaves and they start
firing at it, which doesn't do anything again.
But Godzilla ends up diving into the waters nearby.
And the military brings submarines into like the Bay
next to Manhattan and just start shooting it.
And it ends up like leading missiles into other submarines.
Like it does some, I don't think it meant to do that, but like
kind of cool if it did. But Godzilla ends up bumping up
against like, the the side of the the island.
And some torpedoes hit it. And they're like, all right, we
killed it. Don't confirm, don't find the
body, don't worry about. It we've lost visual, therefore
we won. Right.
But while this is going on, Nick and everyone makes it to the
nest and this is where animal goes, Oh my God, he trashed the
garden. Now I'm mad because they
Godzilla destroyed Madison Square Gardens.
Like that's what I'm talking about.
Where it's just like this is like a religious significance to
this place like. Which fun fact, Madison Square
Garden isn't in Madison Square because it's the third or fourth
version of Madison Square Garden.
Like, it's not like the spot where like Marilyn Monroe like
sang because that's a different location in the city.
Like Madison Square Garden has moved multiple times.
Did it get blown up? Yeah.
Well, yeah, the the, the, the Kaiju attack of 1955 that we
don't really talk about. Well, they they go up into the
gardens and everything is eggs. And the scene where he's like,
oh, there's three eggs here and they zoom out and there's like
200 eggs. It's like, how did you miss the
rest of the eggs? Well.
The camera was zoomed. In what are you talking about?
All right, sorry. So they don't they don't even
have enough time to place their their plastic explosives that
they don't have enough of before everything starts to hatch.
Because Nick was right. They're going to hatch now and
all the baby Godzilla's start coming out.
And unfortunately our crew here smells like fish.
So they're all getting chased by hatchlings.
Now all of a sudden, they're all running out.
Which are like. The implicate the implication
being like if they didn't smell like fish, they would just leave
them alone. Which I don't buy.
Yeah, buddy, I hate to break it to you.
Those things would eat people anyway.
Yeah, especially I like. The way hatch.
Because they do establish that there's they run out of food
very quickly and they start eating like all the popcorn
that's in the building and like they they start going on after
anything that's edible after first wiping out all the fish.
Yeah, I do like that they hatch as fully grown and functional
velociraptors from Jurassic Park.
Yeah, I was like I didn't get mentioned it earlier, but like I
actually kind of don't. I, I like the main Godzilla
design. Like, I think it's AII just
think it's like kind of iconic in its own way.
You know, it's different. But like and it's it's not
necessarily derivative. Like there is a bit of like the
like amphibious element there and like the snow and stuff like
that, like with some of the classic like Godzilla scales.
But these were like even like there's a couple shots of like
the Baby Godzilla's where like one of them snaps at the other
one. And like the animation rig looks
so close to like, the way the Raptors interact at the end of
Jurassic Park is like, okay. This is where I'll buy that
comparison. Not to mention that this is
where the CGI is like way worse, because you're dealing with so
many of them that they don't do all the, like the extra details
to make it look really good. And one area is that they make
like you can see the the mouths really clearly and like there's
a lot of spots where it just like looks like smooth CG.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm also pretty sure that
when they put like 200 of them on screen, there's a bunch of
like reuse. Oh, I guarantee you, same time
they are not animating that entire crowd.
They're copy pasting and compositing.
And the same thing like the the practical ones.
It seems like they just threw five of them together, but like
there wasn't a lot of effort put into like how they move.
Yeah, so they're escaping and they they go through different
parts of Madison Square Gardens and they end up like in the
shower room and everything and animals like, whoa, this is
where the Knicks, like, showered and everything.
He's very excited to be. There as they're like trying to
kick down the door, which is like that's that is interesting
because if the only thing is the smell, like I feel like the
chlorine smell by itself would kind of wipe out the fish smell.
And then if it's only the fish smell that's driving them, like
just get in the water at that pool and just like kind of float
with just your head, like no one's going to be chasing you
then. Right.
Well, Nick tries to contact the military first with the cell
phone, doesn't get through, then with the pay phone, Remember
those kids? And he can't get through again
because all of the lines are tied up.
So, you know, Philippe's like, all right, we got to figure
something out here. And some of the, the other
Secret Service, French Secret Service people come around and
Philippe's like, where's Jean Philippe and Jean Pierre?
And like, Oh my God, they didn't make So Audrey and Animal end up
finding their way above some of the roof panels and they're
calling through there now. Meanwhile, Nick is getting
pincer attacked by these hatchlings and he managed to get
up into this elevator and like he goes up a floor and that's
when it shows like the dinosaurs are eating.
It's all the popcorn, yeah. Popcorn I.
Like that shot, though. It is a good shot there, yeah.
It's a good shot. That's a good shot as they look
at him. Like, it's a great look.
Here's the When this movie leans into like we are, we are putting
little moments of slapstick humor in, like it does work.
Because the tone of this movie is not that serious.
Right. So eventually the elevator takes
it back up to Philippe and they start talking and then Audrey
and Animal end up falling out of the the panels in the ceiling.
And Audrey's like, wait, I have an idea.
And it turns out there's a broadcast room nearby because
they cover the games from there at the news station.
So they go in there and they get set up to to broadcast from
there and they end up sending a message back to the news
station. And this guy, his name's Ed,
who's running the the show there at the moment.
At first he's like, I'm not switching you on to the TV.
But then they, they cut over to the 200 reuse animation
dinosaurs and he's like, oh, OK, I'm going to put you on the TV.
But that they're able to broadcast that that Nick was
right and that there are hatchlings and they're going to
very quickly propagate if they don't stop them because each one
of those 200 hatchlings can make another 200.
As somebody who works in television, by the way, I'm very
frustrated by how they got one part right.
Where like specifically telling the guy in the fucking
engineering truck who works for the news station that he's got a
tune to like tune the dish to like this specific, like
transponder and then this, like, coordinate set in order to pick
up the signal from the stadium. But then they broadcast with
like the full graphics package from the stadium.
And the stadium's not going to have that graphics package.
You mean like the logo? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They have like a mic. They have a wireless mic with
like the stations. And The thing is like, that's
never going to be how that works, right?
Because this is inside baseball. Inside whatever sport, I guess.
Inside basketball player, Yeah. Yeah, in this case, like the
arena doesn't have like an agreement to have like a like
with that specific news station, right?
They're going to have like a crew who who does everything,
and then that signal has to get picked up and bounced to
whatever news, whatever TV station they have an agreement
with to air that game locally. If it's not a national game,
like, and it's an ESPN type of scenario and it's going to be
the master control on that end of things that actually applies
all the great. So you're never like they
wouldn't have a mic for. I'm sorry I this is my job
though, and I hate it. Well, it's also a spot where we
do get like a funny joke of just like a quick, like she's live
and she's like, no, what are you talking about?
Oh, we're live, OK And like, cut back to it, which is like a good
moment there. Also the reason this works and
we were debating about this or or rather we were referencing it
before we got on the call is so I the what I heard and what the
subtitles said on the version I watched is different than the
one that the clip that we just shared.
But like it works because that there is an intranet or Internet
depending on which persons I heard.
I heard intranet and the subtitles said intra.
I heard intranet but I turned on the subtitles and it said
Internet. But like would it make sense if
the network is on Internet? Because Internet is usually like
a closed. Yeah, I think it's supposed to
be their. Environment, yeah, I think.
There's supposed to be a a hard line between them and the new
station. I think that's what they're
trying to present as the reason why they have a connection.
Yeah, but. That wouldn't be an intranet.
Wouldn't it in this scenario? I mean, but also an Internet,
but yeah. Would not have a hard Direct
Line to the studio. They would have.
It would have been satellite. It would have not been like.
Right. So either way, it all falls
apart the new. Station wouldn't have been
isolated, so yeah, yeah. So they they do convince the
military that there is a problem.
And the military is like, all right, we're going to blow up
Madison Square Gardens. So they're all trying to get out
of there before that happens because they have like 6
minutes. Now all of a sudden they're just
doing it and they go over the fact that they've already
exhausted the fish supply again. And then there's this scene
where they're trying to get away and Nick like knocks over a
gumball machine and a bunch of the the baby start rolling all
over the place because they got tripped up by gumballs.
And they they get to the last room and there's like less than
30 seconds until the attack starts.
But everybody manages to get out because Philippe keeps shooting
down chandeliers and it scares the the hatchlings away just
just enough. That they get the most video
game ass bullshit I've seen. Yeah, well and then they
barricade the one door they walk out of and the the other doors
they don't even touch, which the the Godzilla's don't even like
bother with. Yeah.
I was going to say like I didn't know if I can make video game
references here, but it was very like Arkham where like as
they're dropping the chandeliers, even though it
interrupts them, they very kindly like wait to like bother
engaging with either of them. God, you're so right.
So Madison Square Gardens gets destroyed, but it turns out
Godzilla isn't dead, which I know is very shocking to
everyone watching. And Godzilla looks down and sees
all of its dead babies and looks and is like, OK, well, you're
the first living thing that I've seen.
So I'm killing you so you get to fucking deal with this.
Yeah, and just starts chasing everybody like through an
Alleyway Philippe. Like hot wires, a taxi with a
knife. Which is not how that works.
Hell yeah. Cool, but not how it works.
They they start getting away. And this is another scene where
they just start naming like, oh, you got to take this freeway,
you got to take the FDR, you got to go down this street, got to
go down 34th, like, I don't know what any of those are.
So yeah, what all the stuff you're saying, right?
Now, I mean it's all for New Yorkers and also like the other
people in the car are not familiar with this, like
arguing. So that part is is both accurate
and also like both sides of it is accurate, like the the
debates that they're making. But aside from that, most of
these are just like the general like, oh, but in the rain, Like,
no, the issue is that people have abandoned their cars and
that's like this. It's a weird ass city right now,
but it is true because like Nick and and John Reno are the are
the 2 characters that are we're supposed to relate to here.
In that it's like, OK, yeah, the New Yorkers are just bitching
about New York stuff, which is exactly what happens when you're
with New Yorkers in New York. Yeah, so there's a lot of cat
and mouse between them and Godzilla.
Godzilla just continues to chase them around.
They end up speeding past some military trucks, and Nick has
Philippe turned the car around and he ends up throwing like the
the taxi number to O'Neill, like the guy that was helping them in
the military earlier. So O'Neill goes to figure out
the radio frequency for the cab using like the booklet that they
have, and meanwhile they're still running from Godzilla.
Godzilla gets stuck in a tunnel. O'Neill manages to figure out
the radio frequency, and they they come up with a plan.
They're like, all right, you got to get Godzilla somewhere else,
which is like, OK, cool, we're stuck in in the tunnel, but
sure, so they decide to go to the Brooklyn Bridge, and they do
this by blasting high beams into Godzilla's retinas, which that
would get me too, honestly. And they start driving towards
the Brooklyn Bridge, and Godzilla manages to catch the
car in its mouth, but using a an electrical cable that's hanging
nearby. Like up.
Inside. Oh, I hate this.
Oh, it's so bad. Oh, it hurts.
Sticks the cable up in between the tooth and the gum and zaps
Godzilla. Like where you get a popcorn
kernel shell stuff. It's a it's a fucking a live
wire. Yeah, Derek can't deal with like
under fingernails or like in between team.
Stuffs. It's bad, yeah, because we're
exposing my fucking weakness now.
My enemies all know how to. Defeat me so that they managed
to get free and drive off. Godzilla gets stuck in the the
bridge suspensions and they just start skewering Godzilla from
both sides with with missiles and it slowly dies from the
wounds and they they, for I guess the second time in the
movie start doing like a wow, what a beautiful creature.
Yeah, type of thing where like Nick is.
Saying as they murdered the shit out of this unique and animal
that they just killed all of its babies.
Right, right. They genocided the species.
It's like what a beautiful creature as it dies.
The. Creature is beautiful.
It's death is sad. Yes, everyone cheers.
Godzilla's dead. It's the end of a 90s movie, so
O'Neill get some commendations. Audrey quits her gross job with
with that horrible boss. Philippe steals animals tape
because he's going to scrub it, you know, Audrey and and Nick
kiss. But The thing is, there's the
the last scene is that there's one egg still alive in Madison
Square Gardens. I'm sure they're just going to
go kill it, but what if? Yeah, What's if?
And then there's like 10 minutes of credit.
So many credits, it's so long. You got to play the Puff Daddy
Led Zeppelin tie in song. The soundtrack to this movie was
also like, what were you guys doing?
Because none of this, none of the famously like on the
Godzilla soundtrack songs made it into the movie for more than
10 seconds. I was going to say I don't
recall hearing anything but the original.
Style. Yeah, they're all like
background shots. When we're like we're in an
office or we're in the bodega, they're playing the song and
then they move on to a new scene.
Yeah, yeah, so that's the movie, guys.
This isn't really news to anybody who was alive in the
90s, but holy shit, did people not like this movie?
This might be one of the most aggressive, like high profile
Hollywood like backlashes in modern like in in in let's say
like pre. I don't, I don't know, like this
is a thing that's starting to become more common in the modern
era, right? But this didn't happen back
then. This Morbius before.
Right. Well, no, because it because it
is actually a box office success.
It's just a critically hated movie.
Like, like it. Because everybody's.
Going to ask like when you say when you say people hated this.
Like obviously critics hated it. Probably a long time.
Godzilla fans like the general audience, like I.
Think a lot of a lot of people thought it was like a fine
blockbuster, but like I knew, like a lot of people, not just
Godzilla fans, like, hated this movie.
People who were going to have strong opinions, period had had
strong opinions that were negative about this movie as
opposed to a lot of people who were just going to be like, Oh
yeah, I saw the movie that had we'd been seeing all the
commercials and they told us to go see the summer and it had
buildings that blew up and like that's kind of fun.
Which is why it was $150 million budget and it made 379 million
at the box office, which is did good.
Yeah, like that allows for the doubling and then some that is
required for it to be considered profitable.
Like this is a successful movie in terms of like are the actual
business of making movies. It's just, man, did people not
like it? Well, and like, the thing to
remember too, is that we talked about like Godzilla fans didn't
like it. But Godzilla even, like then,
right in the 90s, like Godzilla's a massive cultural
icon that even people who didn't watch Godzilla movies like
understood Godzilla right as a as a nuclear metaphor.
You know what Godzilla's supposed to look like, act like,
behave like. And, you know, people kind of
came thinking they were going to get Godzilla.
And like, ultimately, this is not a Godzilla movie.
You know, actually I had a breakthrough watching this movie
and I finally realized what it is because people have said for
ages that the main defense that a lot of people had for this
movie, like to talking to people who like Godzilla but didn't
like this movie is well, if you take it on its own merits and
and don't see it as a Godzilla movie, it's it's actually a
pretty good, pretty fun with Blockbuster.
And I agree. But his realization it's King
Kong. Yep, it's not Godzilla.
It's King Kong. Thank you for getting there,
King. Kong.
But it's a lizard. And that makes sense because to
so much of the Western world especially, we are talking about
a producer and director who do not really know much about
Godzilla. You give them a giant monster
movie. Their primary frame of reference
is King Kong when you talk giant monsters in in Europe and the
US. So they made something that was
much closer in spirit to like a king, like how King Kong has
traditionally handled Kong as a creature, naturalistic, kind of
big, not crazy, powerful, not like not working on that level.
It's a very different approach. It's very funny because of
course in the modern day we've done the opposite.
We've taken King Kong and made him a Godzilla, you know?
But that's that really put a lot into perspective for me.
But like because it's not just like people who saw the movie
who didn't like it. A lot of so many people who had
worked on the Godzilla franchise over the years like very
publicly did not like this movie.
Tons of former like cast and creative like crew walked out
famously the I think it was it was Satsuma the the 80s and 90s
Godzilla suit actor walked out of the movie.
It's it like Toho basically immediately said, Nope, you
don't get to make any more of this.
I don't really know what agreement had to be made because
famously there's that late 90s cartoon that is a follow up to
the movie. I don't really know what allowed
that to get made, but Toho is famously very protective of the
Godzilla license. They.
They probably had a license where they were allowed to do
spin off like material related to this particular movie but not
able to make sequels or like what was considered new like new
works. But like, this is the era of
like the men in Black cartoon of like a lot of movies coming out
with cartoons, even after the the wake of like all the like
the 80s properties that were like not meant for children that
got cartoons like the Toxic Avengers or RoboCop, Like, but
we're still well in that period of like, Oh yeah, well, a movie
came out that was a big thing this summer.
They made a movie about it. Or rather, they made a cartoon
about it. So yeah, like Toho basically was
like, we're not approving anything else.
This is, yeah, you're done. So there were plans to do a
whole trilogy of this and and you know nothing.
You know, I think my like because look I clearly was in
the camp of like fuck this movie for a very long time.
And I've grown up and I've come around and I really do like the
movie on its own merits and respected for it was trying to
do. But like it did not hit.
This is a very divisive movie and it did not hit for a lot of
folks. I mean even.
Talk about some of those reasons, like like let can we
can we start with the monster itself?
Like, we've we've all made allusions to our thoughts about
the design for Godzilla. But like, I actually think that
this is an interesting spot to look at in terms of like what
they were going for in terms of of making it different while
also being being on paper the same creature as as the the
larger franchise like. You can see where they they were
like, OK, and then we've got the spines and we've got, you know,
like they were trying to incorporate some visual elements
of Godzilla to not make it, you know?
I I think that like, if you look at it from the perspective of
people who wanted to do Jurassic Park but with Godzilla, the but
and also Godzilla and also just do like their own like monster
movie. Like there are a lot of things
about the design that I think wouldn't have been that big of a
deal. I think that it's posture being
more like reptilian or or more bird, like really would have
been fine if there were other aspects of it that didn't like
look so different, like I think the head's the biggest
difference in terms of the overall.
Pack. It's got a very box.
Like HEAD, which is super is so big it's.
Got that, Jay Leno, Chip, yeah. It's it's really T Rex and it's
really iguana like like those elements are are are there like
it's arms are are big or there's enough spots where it's arms are
like close to the ground where I'm like oh why isn't a
quadruped to begin with And it's because it has to be Godzilla
that it's not a quadruped especially like when it's like
crawling around and like in tunneling.
But I but I think the overall, like, general look of Godzilla
isn't that bad, minus the head. Because like we were all hyped
about like all the commercials that were like just the foot,
like where it's like they're actually going to do like a
Godzilla. It's like kind of a runner and
kind, you know, like all the T Rex.
Kind of more realistic than than a dude in a suit.
Like, remember right before this The Lost World came out, which
had a Godzilla parody in it. You know, like there's a
sequence later, like late, later in the movie where Japanese
people are running from a T Rex like on purpose to do those kind
of homages, so like. Well like look at the look at
the Stan Winston design that that, you know again I I posted
in chat earlier and anyone else can famously look up.
There's pictures everywhere like the biggest differences if you
want to get right down to it if you put that dude oh like bent
forward more you change his head and you take somebody fat off
him you're not that far. I mean the the spines are
slightly different but like you're like you're not far off.
Right. And also we need to be clear
that like some details don't matter in the broader sense of a
a redesign, like the shape of the spines.
Some, yeah, some people are going to be very particular
about. But like the presence of the
spines is more important than the shape in terms of like,
here's a redesign of Godzilla, especially for a new movie and a
new franchise, you know? Like Godzilla's spines have been
shaped all kinds of different ways, and they're going to get
even weirder in the future. You know, so matter of fact, the
movie that Toho makes to bounce back from this has maybe the
most radically different spines on Godzilla we've ever seen in
Godzilla 2000. So, you know, that's not
important. I think the head is a big part
of it. The head.
And he's skinny. Godzilla's always been a thick.
Boy, it's skinny and also small like.
Again, this is the Godzilla or the the King Kong comparison,
like the the idea of him climbing up around on buildings
and stuff like as cool as it is to have him like kind of like
curled around the Chrysler Building, that's a different
kind of monster concept than what Godzilla typically is.
Godzilla normally towers over the buildings around him, or at
the very least is, you know, as big as any of them.
So it's not like there's any sort of like climbing sort of
like, you know, arboreal creature to him.
But the fact that I say arboreal creature, that's the King Kong
part. Yeah, yeah, Well, and like, I
don't actually think the 98 Godzilla's that much smaller
than Godzilla originally was, but.
The city's very big. That's the thing.
A New York City's way the fuck bigger than any place Godzilla's
been before now. And also, we did spend the 80s
and 90s gradually increasing Godzilla size.
You know, he went from 50 meters for however many years to 60 to
80 to 100 fucking meters tall. You know, we doubled the size of
Godzilla over the 80s and 90s, and now we're back down to a
littler guy, and we put him around bigger buildings, like,
he just feels smaller. He gets taken out by missiles,
which is a thing that Godzilla usually just tanks and gets mad
at. Like, again, it makes sense from
the perspective of we're trying to create an animal, not a God,
right? Yeah, officially he's 55 meters,
which puts them about the same size as the original Godzilla.
Yeah, but you know, I I think it's because even Devlin will
tell you like that. He thinks it was just ultimately
the original sin. Is the approach to make like a
supernaturalistic tone down Godzilla?
That's not a thing that appeals to people when they're looking
for Godzilla. They're looking for the God
part. Matter of fact, this version of
Godzilla has been retroactively renamed Zilla by Toho as his own
unique thing, rather than as an incarnation of Godzilla because
it took the God out of Godzilla. Is is the the the, the phrase
that was used. I do want to say it's it.
I am happy that Zilla's reputation has kind of come back
around where Godzilla fans are much better at appreciating this
movie and respecting Zilla as his own thing rather than having
to compare him against Godzilla. It does kind of help that he's
taking some licks in the meantime.
I mean, they make some jokes about it in in an upcoming early
2000s movie where there's a joke about like, didn't Godzilla
surface in New York? The Americans thought it was,
but it was something totally different.
And then Zilla famously comes back in Godzilla Final Wars and
gets his ass beat. Which kind of like for a lot of
folks was the like, all right, we're good now.
That's enough beating up on on the little guy it.
Allows them to come over from from from a deal to a face.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So like it is. It is.
And I think also like people have come to respect, you know,
we brought up that animated series, like people broadly
really like that animated series that they made.
So I think that there was this intense initial reaction to this
movie, but people have God, it's only been 26 years, but people
have cooled over time and really come around on not being so
fucking reactionary about this movie.
But it does shape the entire course of things to come,
because we were going to have a whole Hollywood Godzilla series.
And the reaction to this movie not only made Toho bring
Godzilla back from retirement way earlier than they originally
planned, cause Toho was not going to come back to Godzilla
for a long time. They wanted another 10-15 year
break, but like it also made them even more protective with
the license to the point that basically nobody in the West was
allowed to make anything Godzilla for ages.
Pipe Works famously got to make those couple Godzilla games on
the, you know, GameCube, PS2, Xbox, the Wii.
But man, if you read some of the stories about how controlling
Toho was behind the scenes, like it's pretty clear that even, you
know, 7-8 years later, Toho was very defensive of that license.
So it's a super weird that. Plus, like we talked about the
94, the unmade 94 version of the script, there's a graphic novel
out of the 94 unmade Godzilla movie, right?
There's actually been so much more kind of like appreciation
and understanding for what this movie was at this point in time
nowadays, but but it did change everything going forward.
So I mean, yeah, 'cause, like when you look at this movie as
as a whole, like getting back to that whole, like, oh, if you
take out the Godzilla part and you just look at as a as a
monster movie, there are a lot of things going for it that are
pretty similar to like other Godzilla movies.
Like, I just recently watched him Godzilla.
And there's some some straight up similarities in terms of
like, OK, yeah, we get our scientist specialist in to try
to figure out what the hell this thing is.
That's sort of like coming up and then that he's kind of
iguana like when he first shows up, you know, like.
That you? Could make arguments for this
movie to to be fine. And I I think that you know I
talked about this on the another past episode, the the movie
itself is dealing with the fact that Roland Emmerich is not very
good at having really well developed characters.
That usually the the strength of the pieces that Emmerich has are
that we have so many of them and this movie doesn't have that
many of them. And the ones that are there in a
lot of spots feel like that they that their parts were like
deliberately cut shorter. So like I alluded to that the
one scientist lady who's like hitting on on on to Topless the
whole time up until he's like Ousted.
I feel like that was supposed to be the Canon romance of this
until they decided to sort of shifted around to this like the
the reporter subplot and sort of make that the the main through
line. Like I think this movie should
have been more of a like the way that at the end of Independence
Day Goldblum and Will Smith like are together.
But they've been apart this whole movie, and they have
totally different arcs throughout the whole thing.
And that they they bring everyone together a little too
soon and then just kind of together Ish, you know, either
either directly physically together or thematically
together from that point on. Because like the Audrey fight
with with Topless isn't like really enough to be make them no
longer like connected characters in this world.
Like in fact it almost like makes it like, well, you know,
they're going to get back together.
So they have to get physically back together so that they can
romantically get back together. Like the movie itself is like,
it's just a little too small for, for what it is when when
you get down to it. The monster threat of this movie
is actually one of the bigger monster threats of all Kaiju
movies. Like the idea that we could have
an ace actually reproducing, you know, 180 foot tall creature.
Out there that is just going to keep breeding 200 or more at a
time and that they're just going to keep on showing up and
becoming, you know, this this crazy thing like like that's a
dune level event like that. Godzilla 98 is fucking
tyrannids. Like, if you want to get down to
it, like it's a swarm creature that's going to devour
everything if you let it get out of control, you know?
And I think that's a really, it's in fact like I'm kind of
surprised that nobody has ever tried to like bring Zilla back
and like lean into that a bit and.
The form of Zilla's is actually really terrifying to humanity in
a way that a single Godzilla is not.
Yeah, yeah. I just think like I I.
Yeah, I was going to say, I've got like some similar thoughts
about like again just you know, watching this and and the
original one kind side by side like on paper there is a lot of
like the classic like it starts with the fishing boats, there's
kind of, you know, tracking it towards.
The there is standing in the footprint.
Yeah, which I was like surprised, like watching the.
I was like, oh, this is like almost verbatim.
But I think the structure of the movie isn't as much the problem
for me as, you know, like you just mentioned, like the
characters, but like, the script is the big one, right?
And it's like, it's fine. I watch a dumb movie.
I'm not surprised that there's dumb characters, but it's like
whereas like watching the original 1 or some of the more
recent ones like -1, like you always have like the science
exposition dump or like you know, the either the science
plan or the military plan. In the better ones it feels like
real scientists speaking about real sciency things or like a
real military strategy. And then this, like the words
that they say, it's just like does not sound like anyone in
that role would ever speak that way because it's obviously
written by someone who has no idea what they're talking about.
And like, normally I don't get hung up on that stuff, but it's
just like how everyone just it's hard to sit through when it
sounds so dumb and there's so much very early. 50 in terms of
or or rather hastily rewritten me, I guess would be a more
accurate term, since again, I do legitimately think that the like
the the other scientist character was supposed to be a
bigger part. Well, Sony had already spent all
this money on the original version of the movie for like so
many years, and was was really trying to get this thing out the
door, only to find out in 94. Like, OK, now we've got to start
over from scratch because of the people we picked.
And I mean, like, they're clearly willing to keep
investing in it, but you can't tell me that there wasn't, like
deadlines and budget limits hanging over these people's
heads to get this thing out the door.
So, you know, like, yeah, it was.
This was clearly not the cleanest.
Production. Yeah, 'cause there's a lot that
you could also feel like bring a a consultant in to talk a little
bit about the science here, or talk a little bit about the
thing here. Or just a script doctor, just
like tighten up some of the interactions between people and
you would have had a much stronger piece.
Because the beats are fine ultimately.
Yeah. I also think like we mentioned
Independence Day a few times, like that movie really rides on
the chemistry and the strength of Goldblum and and Will Smith
obviously. Like, I think most of the cast
and this is fine, like Hank Azaria definitely is the best
character in the movie like you guys said.
But I vehicle history aside, I like Matthew Broderick.
Like, I enjoy him as a comedic actor, but like still to me in
this, even every time I watch it.
I don't know if it's the writing or the direction, but he just
stands out a little bit. I feel like I would have been
interested to see the movie with someone else in the lead role
just to John. Reno kills, but he's not in that
much of movie. And then the young lady who
plays Audrey is, I mean, she falls flat to me completely.
Well, and she doesn't have much of A career after this either.
Like this would have been a star making turn for her, but it's
just not a movie that she did much of A service to and did no
service to her career. I don't want to say she's not
like a good actor, you know, or anything.
I don't, you know, I mean, again, like, it can just as
easily be like, you know, bad writing doesn't help, you know.
If she's not getting directed correctly, that can tell you a
lot. But it is weird that like you
have several actors in this movie who have a lot of natural
charisma. Like you all pointed out
Broderick, you know, I said Renault, Hank, Azaria.
And you just don't get a lot of those guys with all the charisma
interacting. You know it's usually people
talking to background characters or it's Nick and Audrey who
again like Audrey has no chemistry and not a lot of like
presence or charisma. So yeah it's it's it's missing
that that that Smith and Goldblum chemistry is is a great
call. But, you know, I mean it's I
think, I think this is going to be, this is, I didn't know when
I was setting out that this was going to be the podcast where I
ask people to take it easy on Godzilla 98 but will go so hard
on Shin Godzilla when the time comes.
I'm the most backwards fucking person, apparently.
But you know, like, I do think, like it's this is a messy movie,
but it's time for people to move on.
You know, the the impact it made on history and on how this
franchise would develop in the future is set in stone.
This marks the very much like an opportunity that became the end
of an era, and everything will change after this.
But like people who are still holding on to, like, strong,
negative feelings about this, it's time to move on.
Guys. It's OK.
It's fine. Yeah.
And ultimately like this is the thing about a lot of like hated
properties of of older eras where like in a lot of cases the
reason we're we're you know looking at them again and and
taking in this all is that the sting has gone away because we
are getting good material since you know we've we've gotten
plenty of great Japanese Godzilla movies.
We've gotten plenty of Great American ones now like.
So it's hard to look at this and see it as like well, this was
the end. This screwed up everything for
everyone. Like, it didn't, obviously.
It did take time. And like, for people who wanted
like a new American Godzilla movie that was, you know, strong
and like, you know, scratched all the itches that they had
related to the Godzilla franchise and this, didn't they?
They did have to wait a long time for it.
And there I understand that like, I've I am a giant comic
book nerd. For a long time, that was a
problem. But also now I do look at the
glut of stuff we have there, and it's hard to look back at the
things that I used to be annoyed about and not feel like, well,
yeah, at the time it kind of sucked.
But now we've like, we've gotten enough great ones.
We've gotten enough great ones. Of all the of.
Whatever nerd property you have that you can spend all your time
watching it and not have to, like, rewatch that much.
Yeah. Let alone I think it's kind of a
bad ones. I think it's kind of a great
diagnosis that like at the time this felt like the end, you
know, and and that probably drove a lot of very that drove a
lot of the backlash is like this was the one shot we were going
to get to like big like legitimate.
Godzilla is probably how some people viewed it.
And then that chance was ruined for quite a long time.
And then for Godzilla fans in in general who didn't see a lot,
it's like, oh, well, who knows what's going to happen to even
the Japanese stuff after this, whether it gets brought over,
you know, foreign movies making it to the US was still not as
consistent a thing at the time. So it felt like the end and it
so clearly wasn't. I have one one last little note
because this, this is shaping up to be one of our longest, if not
our longest episode. But I have one last note of a
thing that for all my defenses sits a little weird with me
because like, this is a movie that is absent of ideology,
right? That is not the kind of movies
that that Emmerich makes. You know, they're they're about
big chest beating, like, you know, nationalism, parentheses.
Head empty, right. Yeah, 37 helicopters.
It's a helicopter movie. It's a big helicopter movie.
That's that's a genre. And I'm so glad you invented
that term, Jeff. But it feels weird to make a
Godzilla movie, to keep his origin as like a thing that was
mutated through, like the dangers of nuclear testing, for
so much of that stuff to be kept right, but then to shift it to
the French. And it's not like, here's the
thing, in the grand scheme of things, like Europe needs to
catch a few strays, right? Like, it's not like America has
a has a a, a a monopoly on like nuclear testing and like the the
damage we've done to the environment and like, you know,
kind of cultural imperialism over like the global South and
the global east, likeable east isn't really a term.
Whatever. You know what I'm trying to
fucking get at? But like, this sin was ours,
right? We're the ones who bombed
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right? We're the ones.
Yes, we're the ones who did the Operation Castle nuclear tests
that, like sank that fishing boat that so heavily inspired
the original Godzilla movie along with the bombs.
It feels really weird to have a even if the director is German,
to have like, an American Godzilla movie where we go.
Actually, the French did it. Yeah.
It feels a very American way to do it though, considering like
it is it. Is.
Like we're the only nation to have actually done a nuclear
strike on another nation and and all this stuff.
But fuck the French. Yeah, yeah.
And it again, I don't think I'm not even going to like accuse
like anybody of like thinking that through of like we're going
to shift the blame. I don't think it's anything like
that. But I do think if you understand
the importance of like the nuke, you understand like, where all
of this comes from, the origin of everything.
It is ultimately America's sin, right, that we dropped the
bombs. So Godzilla like, despite the
fact that so much of this franchise has been and and you
know, original director Ishero Honda like clearly had an
attitude of like we have to look beyond national borders.
And you know, very much like did that that sort of thing that was
a lot of classic pulp sci-fi did were like the good things that
that people do are emblematic of all of us and the bad things
that people do are emblematic of of the worst of all of us.
And those things are not defined by lines on a map like.
And even the original movie I think sometimes can be softer on
America than people remember. Like we're still the ones who
dropped the bombs, and it feels real fucking weird to have
France make Godzilla. But there is a very obvious
reason for why it happened that way, though, which is the the
United States Marine Corps participated in the filming and
provided materials and it. Absolutely.
And you and I don't think the American public was really ready
for a movie that was like, hey guys, just like there's people
today who still defend dropping the bombs.
Like a a shocking number of left wing people who defend dropping
the bombs. Like, 1990s America is not ready
to face, like, the the weight of what we did to Japan, right?
Yeah, it's and just. And again, movies made, you
know, sponsored by the US military, like presented by
never be critical. Like in no way.
And like unfortunately, this is sort of a continuation of, you
know, the rah rah militariness that is President Emrich's stuff
prior to this, even though that it's usually subversive to a
degree. Like we are allowed to have a
military that fucks up a lot in this movie, which is not
something Michael Bay would have done.
Yeah, you're allowed to be subversive to a certain degree,
but we're not allowed to interrogate real world history.
Yeah, we're not allowed to just like outright say like man, like
there are consequences. Even if it even if you came down
being like what's it, it was the right call at the time.
Like you could not imagine. Like the Defense Department.
Like okaying just the phrase there were consequences to our
actions. Yeah, no, no, no.
We got to make Captain Marvel a fucking Air Force recruiting ad,
right? It's somebody who likes that
movie because I like Marvel trash.
Don't judge me. But yeah, like anytime you get
the military involved because you want to use their their fun
vehicles instead of CGI ING them in, like that's kind of what you
rush. You can't.
Or not just CGICGI the men and have like make it not look like
specific planes or helicopters or anything like that, if
exactly. Like, if you want 37
helicopters, you do got a cozy up to the US military.
Going on going on a lefty rant for a hot second because I can't
help it. Like, God damn it, every movie
that has like any sort of backing from the US military
should have a disclaimer that it's presented by the US
military or by the Defense Department.
Like it is an insidious thing in in our movie making that like is
constantly there. It doesn't have a similar.
Disclaimer is like the no animals were harmed during the
making of this movie. Like you can't throw that in
there in the credits like like this and the NFL should both.
Like it should be above the above the title presented by the
US Defense Department because Jesus Christ like that it causes
so many script changes. Like I guarantee that's why the
why it was written that way where they were like originally
was going to be the Secret Service or something related to
military intelligence and they were like well, no, we actually
can't do that. It has to be something different
otherwise, you know, XYZ reasons and had to rewrite it to be the
French and they're like, well, we can get Jean Reno and it
would be oh great, great. Everyone will love that part of
it and he's. It's a classic guy, Jean Reno.
And he's great for for the purposes like, like the the his
involvement in the way they are involved make enough sense that
we're not like really like thrown too much by it, but like,
God damn it, this movie is is sponsored by the US military, as
are so many others. And that's why the US is not
allowed to, like, have anything that looks bad remotely in it.
It's still not the most rah rah America thing in a Godzilla
movie. Which is still Godzilla that
shot in Godzilla, King of the Monsters, The 2016 one where
fucking Godzilla. Or 2018 whenever it was where
Godzilla's like advancing on Boston, framed and escorted by
US fighter jets. Well, that's the difference
between. Your post 911 right there.
Which is which is the most America fuck yeah bullshit to
ever make it into this franchise.
But I do love it because I'm trash.
Guys, Do we have anything else? I mean, fuck, we've covered a
lot of ground with this movie, but does anybody else have any
burning things to say? Nope.
All right. I'm going to take that as a no
from everybody, folks. That is a wrap on this episode.
Thank you all so much for joining us on our journey so
far. And this season, the end of
season three, we're going to be taking a break for a while, a
much needed break. I know season three went on a
lot longer than we anticipated because there were a lot of
delays due to horrible life circumstances on my part.
But we're going to take us a much needed break before we come
back. Jeff, you got anything you feel
like plugging for our listeners? Not really.
Just our good old SDGC live show Every Thursday, not Easter.
It's You got interest in video games.
Make sure you tune into that. But no.
Otherwise I'm I'm happy to do my own thing.
I've got a. Free of social media and and
otherwise content creation outside of SDGC and it's such a
beautiful space to be in. I'm envious.
Yeah, Case. What about you, bud?
I am not free of social media or of content creation.
So you can find me on most of the social media platforms at
Case Aiken except for Instagram where I am still holding on to
my pretentious aim Screen name from high school which is
Ketzel. Collateral 5.
Which is yes, a Brainiac 5 reference not just in a randomly
assigned number because this was so early on that no one thought
that they would have multiple ketzel collateral but so that's
where you can find me on the socials.
If you want to find more things where I am talking I host two
podcasts actively right now. One is another pass which as we
talked about did an episode on this movie and I I I feel really
good about it. I I didn't want to retread too
many of the things I said in that one.
So if you would like to hear our speculation on like what could
have been done. And also, I used to live in New
York, and my coworker, or pardon me, my Co host is a like a a a
lifelong New Yorker. And if you want to hear her
ranting about like the high highways or like like what
should have been going on in the background of of various shots.
And then check that episode out, 'cause it was a lot of fun.
Or check out the episode of of that we did on King Kong with
Derek and Charlotte. Like both really fun entries or
you know like lots of other good episodes in there you could
check out there. It's it's a fun show.
I I like making it it's it's fun to do.
I also do Men of Steel which is a Superman and Superman adjacent
show where we talk about the Superman archetype, why it's
alluring how it can be subverted sometimes.
You know great great examples both from Superman comics but
also from things you know like Invincible or the boys or or
whatever. You know we we talk about the
archetype more than anything in particular and on that note I do
a YouTube series called Superman Analogues which is part of the
certain POV media YouTube channel where I do like 5 to 10
minute like little rants about like this is what's important
about this character who was kind of inspired by Superman.
So check all those out. The podcast you can find
anywhere you get podcasts. The the YouTube series you can
find on certain POV media or on at YouTube on or on YouTube at
certain POV media. Pardon me pronouns or not
pronouns. Articles are hard sometimes.
We've been at this for two hours.
So, like, we're all a little. Yes, and and like I said.
What's the English? Language at within this for two
hours. All of these are different words
that kind of mean the same thing here anyway.
So check all that out and and yeah, yeah this is so much fun
coming back on because I I really enjoyed the show it it
had quickly become part of my regular rotation when it
launched and I'm just happy to be back talking repping a weird
one that I just like. I just can't get the the Led
Zeppelin like cover that Combs did out of my head.
When we talk about it like that marketing campaign was real hard
and I was 14 in the exact target audience.
Truly the strangest thing. This was before.
This was before Sony got Eminem to do everything but what we
could have had, huh? Folks, if you've enjoyed this
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Castle Bravo is a production of Derek Van Dyke and Charlotte
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Pools of Memory.