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Film: Godzilla 2000 (Gojira ni-sen mireniamu)
Year: 1999
Director: Takao Okawara
Writer: Hiroshi Kashiwabara and Wataru Mimura
Starring: Hiroshi Abe, Naomi Nishida and Takehiro Murata
Review:
This film begins in the car of Takehiro Murata. With him is a reporter played by Naomi Nishida. Murata runs a group that is tracking Godzilla. Nishida is there to take pictures of Godzilla. Along with them is Murata’s daughter, played by Mayu Suzuki. She is quite intelligent and she butts heads with Nishida. They pick up something and start to follow.
That is when we see Godzilla. He attacks a station and destroys it. Murata brings the car to a tunnel that’s opening partially collapses. He drives over it and comes to the road being destroyed. In front of them is Godzilla. In a panic, Nishida snaps pictures and the flash aggregates Godzilla. It chases them, destroying the tunnel in the process.
We then see another group of scientists for a government organization. They are in a submarine and looking for something. Part of this other group is Hiroshi Abe, who is the head of the group. Along with him is Shirô Sano. They find a meteorite and are going to bring it to the surface to research.
Godzilla continues his rampage, destroying another power station. Murata believes that is what is after, destroying power sources.
The meteorite is then lifted off the ground with balloons, but the closer they get to the surface, the rock moves on its own. It destroys all the balloons and then flies into the air. It flies around before crashing into the water upright.
We then learn that Murata, Abe and Sano all worked together. Murata left though as he didn’t like the work that was being done. Murata does state that he believes the rock is powered by the sun and now that it is dark, it has stopped. Godzilla has stopped his rampage and returns to the ocean.
Murata does research on cells of Godzilla and learns that it can regenerate at a high rate, which makes him difficult to kill. As the sun comes up, Nishida’s computer turns on by itself. Something hacks it and steals information on Godzilla. Abe has secured the meteorite to the bridge with cables that he believes will disable it. The problem is that it doesn’t. This meteorite has been hiding a spaceship that has been on this planet since the time of the dinosaurs.
The ship wakes up and then lands on a high-tech building. Nishida’s computer once again gets hacked. The scientists then learn that the spaceship has tentacles coming out of it and sucking information from the supercomputer inside the building it has landed on. It is looking up information on Godzilla.
Abe comes up with the idea to blow up the building and destroy the ship. Murata tries to stop him and prevent the ship from taking too much data. It ends up that the ship is trying to create a clone to defeat Godzilla and to turn the atmosphere of Earth so it can survive. Will it succeed or will it be stopped? Can Godzilla defeat a clone of itself? Will Godzilla defeat the monster despite its hatred of humans?
This film marks the start of the next era of Godzilla films. I will say for this one that visually, this film is very clean. I think this Godzilla looks scary and it does a great job in that respect. This one is also the first to really start to utilize CGI. I have a love/hate relationship with this. There are times in this film that I like it, while there are others that it does look too fake and I wish they would have tried something else to make it better. I thought the concept of this film was good and the monster that the spaceship created has a scary look to it as well. There isn’t much in the battle scenes as they are right near the end, but they aren’t bad.
Now with that said, there are issues. The first issue being that there is way too much comedy in this film for my liking. This partly could be that I was watching it dubbed and maybe the humor didn’t translate. It takes too long to get to the climax was another problem. I also didn’t like some of the CGI that was used as it makes it look faker than a man in a rubber suit. I will say that CGI does allow the monsters more freedom of movement though.
I will say that if you like Godzilla or giant monster films, this one isn’t bad. It isn’t the best in the genre, but still worth a viewing. The story isn’t bad and the concept is decent. There isn’t a lot of action, but what little you get is good. Godzilla looks better than some of the previous films as does the monster he fights. You can find much better films in this genre, but this one is still enjoyable.
My Rating: 6 out of 10