GODZILLA 2000

by Chris Fujiwara

Perhaps you were wondering how Godzilla welcomed the millennium. Now it can be told. Godzilla 2000, Toho Studios' latest installment in the long-running saga of the fire-breathing giant, pits him against a UFO that surfaces from the ocean floor in the shape of a huge rock. The human characters include a father-and daughter team dedicated to tracking Godzilla's movements in order to anticipate and minimize the havoc he inevitably brings. This "Godzilla Prediction Network" motif shows the filmmakers' concern for locating Godzilla in a plausible contemporary technological/economic context.

Other aspects of the film seem born of a similar impulse to modernity. Characters spend a vast amount of time gazing at monitors. The film's urban landscape is dark, hellish, and sleek. The special effects make ample use of computer-generated imagery, and the shapeshifting of the UFO is distinctly post-Alien.

The fluctuating status of reality in Godzilla 2000 is both troublesome and uninteresting. The addition of digital special effects and other postmodern markers to the standard Godzilla mix renders the whole show pointless. Takao Okawara's laborious direction fails to erase memories of Ishiro Honda, whose firm hand guided many of the classic Japanese monster movies. Why bother making a Godzilla movie with real trucks? At Cinema World, Entertainment Cinemas, Gardner, the Hoyt Westborough, Leominster, Natick, the Solomon Pond Hoyt, and the Worcester North Showcase.