Was 1998 really that bad?

@Akagi

While I still think your assessment of fans is mostly attributed to the younger of the crop, and about as rational as their own fan ideas, I agree completely with your assessment of Emmerich's movies.

He seems to apply that exact same kind of base story to everything he does-- which would be fine if he were a visionary director. But the truth is, he has no idea how to frame memorable specticle with characters that experience the situation honestly. The closest he ever got was the President's wife's death in Independence Day, which had a completely different mood from the rest of the film.

Every movie he's made after the fact sets up disasters for characters to plant their tongue firmly in cheek at. Hank Azaria in GINO was one of the worst offenders.

Godzilla 1998 introduced me to Godzilla, if the movie and monster were called "Zilla" there wouldn't have been as much hate, and Zilla himself is a badass addition to the TOHO monsters. That's all I have to say about that. Anyone who says the film is a good monster movie I will support, anyone saying it's a good Godzilla movie...hell no. But like I said, I owe this movie.

i don't remember doing a quadruple post

Hey guys, I'm new here!

For me, I loved Zilla. Mostly because I was a 90's kid and the first Godzilla films I was exposed to was that and all the showa films being released on VHS. Watching it now I certianly don't regard it as a Godzilla film, but I still enjoy it nonetheless. I dont' remember who said it on here but I thought some of the camera work, and how they were able to show Zilla's scale, was very impressive for the time. The animated series that stemed from it was leaps and bounds better than the film.

I can completely understand however how someone waiting in line to see this film opening night might've been disappointed lol

I would say I hate it.

I don't hate it just because Godzilla got killed by missiles or ran from the military, I hated it because the writing was horrible, visuals are horrible and characters are horrible. They make the characters from the campy Toho films look like Walter White from Breaking Bad.

@Brittkamp You've pretty much said it perfectly.

Seriously, GINO was the very first monster movie I ever saw (when I was two years old!) and the film that sparked a life-long love for Godzilla as well as dinosaurs and monster movies in general, and I still hate it. That really says something about how bad it is.

"Maybe it's best that some monsters be allowed their oddity."

Well said, Something Real. I think this explains how Godzilla should be and represents the issues of the film on a multilayered, thematic scale.

I think Zilla deserved a better movie. It was an amazing creature, and I named my lizard Zilla because of the monster. However, the series was BRILLIANT!

Am I the only one who hates Zilla's design?

i hate tunaheads design and i tired of talking about some random non exsisting lizard not to be rude

Well, I mostly posted this on another forum, but it applies here too, Destroyer. No hate, but lots and lots of chuckles:

First a friendly jab at Something Real (cuz I just gotta): if Josef Stalin posted here, would you say anything bad to him?  Juuuuuust kidding....

Okay, so, I would never hate you Destroyer, especially with a very cool nickname like that one...maybe show something like morbid curiosity?

But the movie? Oh dear.  If I were a devout Hare Krishna, I'd still be hatin'. One of only three films I've ever seen that inspired such a feeling in me before the time it was over (this, Demi Moore's utterly hate-inspiring Scarlet Letter, and the inexplicably awful Absolute Power).  I remember in the final scene, muttering audibly in the theater, "and they ripped off King Kong...the 1976 King Kong!!" Yeah, THAT BAD.

This movie is one of those rarities that checks so many blocks on the crappiness list, that I've truly lost count (Non-Ed Wood Category, of course): waste of good actors: √; complete aimlessness: √; egregiously disloyal to its lineage: √√; shamelessly glomming onto some other popular movie of that time: √√√!!; stereotypically portraying the best military in the world as hopelessly incompetent: √; and perhaps worst of all--annoyingly implausible within a genre that is itself built upon implausibility: √√√√√!! (You have to really, really try to check that one--you are a genius Roland!!)  I mean, do you think the reason the Japanese renamed this thing AND gave us Daisake Matsuzaka was only because of the box office haul?  No...They were also secretly invoking the real Godzilla to make a beeline for Tri-Star studios in early 1999, believe me.  

If one thinks for a minute, the most memorable thing about this film was its oppositely-brilliant pre-release marketing.  Who could forget the giant foot crushing the T-Rex fossil? Awesome! Oh my God, they're gonna make a freaking awesome, CGI, kickass Godzilla movie!  What could be better?

Nine months later, we had Roland Emmerich, trying to make dark comedy jabs at Roger Ebert, Harry Shearer mailing it in so much he probably wished he could be credited as Derek Smalls playing the part of Charles Caiman, and thankfully inspiration for one of the most sublimely funny Robot Chicken shorts ever.  I’m sure to this day, when anyone brings up the year 1998 to Shearer, he immediately blurts, “So, wasn’t Truman Show pretty cool?”  Never happened…

In fairness, the first 20 minutes or so—before we had to see the fish-eating, afraid of everything, bullet-dodging, asexual “monster” weren’t bad.  Had the movie not then transitioned to blah, then bad, then silly, then absurd, then annoying, then anger-inspiring (yes, in exactly that order), I’d have still given it a tepid “thumbs up.”  Nope, gotta hand it to Emmerich—he didn’t just boil the frog on us with this one; he got you actively, willfully invoking thoughts about never paying full price to see a sci-fi remake ever again.  Yes…

When I left the theater at the end of Emmerich’s Folly with my ex-wife, I remember bitterly exclaiming "Great! That ruins the next 20 freaking years--Now no one will want to touch it.”  Thank you Gareth Edwards for getting us there four years early. You weren't perfect, but you pretty well erased Mayor Ebert, Raptors—er, I mean Baby ‘Zillas, and COL Hicks from our movie muscle-memory. (My Ex-wife BTW, was an unabashed lover of Sci-Fi and probably about as non-critical as our lovely member, Something Real. She had already seen it (I’d been stationed in the Balkans), and when I asked her how it was, she paused and said, “Um, I dunno, not so great.”  That’s synonymous with “1.5 out of 10” from her.  Unfortunately, I didn’t listen).

I would never hate you Dude, and I salute your individuality, honesty, and well, bravery.  But in my mind, yes, it absolutely positively WAS THAT BAD....and if we ever have a big ole Godzilla party, I’m cracking jokes about you all night long…