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…
