Godzilla 2000 triumphs in wacky, low-tech way

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/11/2001 (8714 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HOLLYWOOD’S slick, expensive, computer-generated Godzilla came out in 1998. Now Japan’s Toho Studios, which has made 22 of the monster movies over 46 years, fights back with “the guy in the rubber suit.”

And in its own wacky, badly-dubbed, low-tech way, Godzilla 2000 triumphs.

Relying not on effects but on an actor inside a costume allows the true personality of Godzilla to shine through. (True fans claim to be able to distinguish the different performers who have donned those heavy dorsal fins since the ’50s; this movie features the debut of gymnast and stuntman Tsutomu Kitagawa.)

Godzilla may be a car-stomping nuclear mutant, but in this version he is melancholy and a little misunderstood. Strangely cute — maybe it’s that fetching overbite — he is essentially the hero of the film. Unlike the Americans, who made Godzilla into a monster that had to be subdued by humankind, the Japanese see him more as a force of nature, sometimes destructive, sometimes benign, but always awe-inspiring.

Here Godzilla takes on an enigmatic threat from outer space, a being that has lain dormant at the bottom of the ocean for 60 million years only to be released by the meddling of man — in this case Katagiri (lantern-jawed ex-model Hiroshi Abe), the stop-at-nothing head of the Crisis Control Intelligence Agency.

Shinoda (Takehiro Murata), who leads the Godzilla Prediction Network, wants only to study Godzilla. Intrepid reporter Yuki (Naomi Nishida) wants only to photograph him.

Godzilla, meanwhile, is going to do whatever the hell he wants. He might end up saving the Earth, but you know he’s going to flatten half of downtown Tokyo in the process.

Filmgoers who are accustomed to seamless Hollywood effects might find the monster showdown hokey, and the silly slapstick, mugging acting and weird dubbing (“Great Caeser’s Ghost!” one character exclaims without moving his lips) can be distracting.

But pop-cult film buffs will love the movie’s atmosphere, a dark combination of shadows and fog and post-nuclear fear. And many of the monster scenes, while done on the cheap, are ingenious and haunting.

Hollywood may have borrowed Godzilla for a while, but he really belongs to the Toho Studios.