ZILLA: Respect or Tolerance?

i'll give 'Zilla' respect, his movie is what opened the door for me on to the toho movies, which is quite rare as hardly or mostly none of the toho movies have been shown on UK TV (except for KKvsG 62 or one year) and only gojira and KKvsG are on dvd here. i only hated zilla becuase i joined the bandwagon, i still kind of enjoy the movie (not as much as a kid) but also g98 not only is a bad godzilla movie it sets the guideline on how NOT to make a godzilla movie, a guideline that Legendary has followed

In my humble opinion... If we did not have Zilla, who is a marvellous monster in his own right, we would not be getting thie highy anticipated Godzilla film this year, with a talented director who evidently cares for the character, and cutting edge technology that would not have been available at the time of 98.

@Devianteist, Thank you for complementing (hope I spelled that word right) on my name. You made one error though. It's KingKaijuGojira. The G is uppercase and the J is lowercase. I feel like that many people do that. Ohh and I like your name too, it sounds cool.

All I have to say: I really like the design, except for that Jay Leno chin.

@InstinctiveGigan- "I think this is a great Zilla thread, from now on any Zilla threads related to "Hate" or "In defense of" will be linked to this one."
Wait, what? REALLY? :O What, what what?! But. I'm a newb here! How could I have made an article you, a moderator, likes?! So exciting!

@KingKaijuGojira- Well that's a swing and miss on my part, my friend. Thanks for pointing that out!

@Everyone- You all have been sharing such great thoughts! Keep it up!!!

I think it depends on the person's view. I have a high respect for Zilla and his son, but that's mostly because he was my first Godzilla, he is an awesome monster, and also he influenced the whole millennium series.

For a G-Fan who saw the film at the time in theaters, I understand the great dislike for Zilla. It's like if the new movie featured Godzilla as a giant, fearful Anole or something. However, I do think Zilla at least deserves tolerance. He's a part of the Godzilla franchise, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Even Fluttershy respects Zilla! BRONIES FOR THE WIN!!! O3O

I really question the moderation on this site sometimes.....

Anyway as I've said before, I've always thought Zilla a cool monster, and liked his movie in it's own way. The series spawned from the movie really had a feel of real Godzilla, too bad it got killed by the war going on between Digimon and Pokemon during its airtime.

Zilla, as long as separated from Godzilla, should be respected as a normal KAIJU. He's not Godzilla, so just forget the 1998 scene and look at Zilla as a Kaiju. I think Zilla has no chance against Godzilla after about five minutes, but he's not a Toho Kaiju. He was never ment to face the real Godzilla. Not that I like the 1998 "GODZILLA".

@ Devianteist, no problem my friend. You are not the first to make that mistake. I think someone else did it as well, but I can't remember the username. Oh well, doesn't matter.

I think Zilla is a cool looking monster. He's no Godzilla, but on his own, I believe he was a pretty solid monster. I respect him for pretty much introducing me to Godzilla. Well actually, I'm not sure which was my first Godzilla movie, Godzilla 98 or Godzilla vs King Ghidorah, but either way, I still like Zilla. So yeah, I like Zilla and respect him, I just think he was in the wrong movie.

I've learned to forgive Emmerich and the '98 remake, especially since the new Godzilla movie will be out in just a little. I have more respect for Zilla Jr. from the animated series more then I do Zilla from the 1998 version, but regardless, I forgive Emmerich.

I've never seen the 98 movie, mainly because that was the year I was born (I know, I'm young). But I remember seeing part of act 3 on the SciFi channel, and I didn't really like it, I remember thinking "But Godzilla doesn't lay egss!" I've read reviews and know the basic plot of the movie, but not having seen it, I wont talk about Zilla. Lately I have been watching Zilla Jr. on Netflix, and so far its okay. He reminds me a lot of a puppy (I'm on episode 3).

Long story short, I don't know much about Zilla, or Zilla Jr., but I respect them both, I know it brought a lot of people into the fanbase of the original. He is a great kaiju in himself, but not when comparing him to the original. 

So to sum up, I respect him as a Zilla, not a Godzilla.

Not sure if anyone still wants to talk about this a month after the last post, but I've been on a Zilla kick and...well I suppose this is more for me to get some of that off my chest.

So here's the thing, as much as I love the Godzilla franchise as a whole, I like '98 Godzilla might be my favorite thing from the franchise. This is completely understanding WHY everyone was offended this movie even exists, and I totally understand the anger. If I was older and heard that this was the first thing we'd get after Godzilla died in his last Toho film? I get it. Zilla eats fish, runs away from humans, makes raptor babies, can't catch a cab, and gets killed by a few missles.

So as far as Godzilla standards are concerened, he's cowardly and weak. When you are rebooting Godzilla, you need to understand WHY Godzilla came about anyway. Watch the original movie. This was a nation's dread, fear, and loss in a rubber suit. Godzilla is a force of nature, a reckoning on mankind, a hateful god. You're not supposed to feel bad for him in the original movie. This was what the 1998 Godzilla simply did not do, by any stretch of the imagination.

That said, if you can separate yourself from them and look at this flick for what it is, you get an entirely different creature...and while it is still a Jurassic Park knock off and not that great...but totally watchable. 

They treat Zilla like a creature. That's WHY I like it. He isn't showing up because he's mad at all of humanity, he's just a giant animal who happens to run across a lot of angry little bugs and hides in their angry bug colony. I think the design is cool, I like how they potrayed him acting like a wild animal would probably act...I just really like the giant lizard. I don't need him fighting a robotic version of himself or be a dude in a rubber suit, I already had 20+ movies to go on, and even at the ripe age of 12, I knew the original would be back at some point. I was happy to have something different. Plus I love dinosaurs. So that was a plus.

So...if you made it through this and you are a Zilla fan, let me know if you'd like to listen to my latest podcast. Sorry for the blatant self-promotion, but I would really love to hear what any of you guys think of it. I spent an hour defending this ridiculous movie.

i have to agree with coolgodzilla1234 i hate this monster not to be rude again as he said but i just hate that thing it makes me agry to talk about so no we should not include it i dont even think of it as godzilla i pretend it does not even exist thats my awnser

and i call him tunahead

Well, Super Maida,

I certainly, respect you liking whatever you like.  It will never offend me--as long as you go about it the way you have.  And let me say, I don't think anything personal about someone for what movies they like, so if anyone (you know, Zilla lovers) gets defensive here, lighten up please.  I don't hate you nor am I attacking you.  I might make fun of you though...

But the movie and the creature? Oh dear.  If I were a devout Hare Krishna, I'd still be hatin'.  Some recently emerged Defenders of GINO say it had a good story...really? Please define good for me.  If good means you liked it, fine.  If you mean good in any remotely objective way, I seriously cannot help you.

Godzilla 98 is one of only three films I've ever seen that inspired such a feeling (that would be hatred) in me before the time it was over (Also: Demi Moore's worthlessly-tawdry, utterly hate-inspiring Scarlet Letter, and the inexplicably boring Absolute Power—quick, name any other movie, ever, with so many great actors that somehow sucked so badly—it is still a mystery).  Despite a warning beforehand, I remember seeing Emmerich’s Gaffethon with some expectations.  I then remember sitting through the final scene like it was a Ted Cruz filibuster, and then muttering audibly in the theater, "and they ripped off King Kong...the 1976 King Kong!!" Yeah, THAT bad.

Let's make it clear: this movie is one of those rarities that checks so many blocks on the crappiness list, that my hatred locator is on overload but here are just some (Non-Ed Wood Category, of course): waste of decent 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 hard to check that one--hey, maybe you are a genius, Roland Emmerich!! I mean, does anyone think the real reason the Japanese renamed this thing AND gave us Daisake Matsuzaka was only because of the box office haul?  No...They were undoubtedly also secretly invoking the real Godzilla to make a homicidal beeline for Tri-Star in early 1999, believe me.  

If you think for a minute, the most memorable thing about this film was its curiously and oppositely-brilliant pre-release marketing.  Who could forget the giant foot crushing the T-Rex fossil (one of my favorite teaser trailers ever) or the provocative "Size Matters" (how ironic) poster? Awesome! And clever! Oh my God, they're gonna make a freaking great, CGI-based kickass Godzilla movie!  What could be better?  I honestly couldn't wait.

Well, nine months later, the greatest contribution from this film was that it came out beforeArmageddon and made it not look so bad.  Where to start? We had Emmerich, directly inserting dark comedy jabs at Roger Ebert of all people, endless CGI in darkness/rain (not a good sign), 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… (*Aside: I can imagine one of those Hollywood interviews with the entire Simpsons cast, and someone asking Shearer and Hank Azaria, “So, do you guys ever worry if this show has reached its creative limit? That, if there’s nothing left, you’ll feel like mailing it in—could you get through it?”  Azarea and Shearer look at each other, then gaze into space for 2 seconds…then both laugh hysterically.)

In fairness, the first 20 minutes or so of the movie—before we had to see the fish-eating, afraid of everything, taxi-skating, egg-laying, bullet-dodging, asexual “monster” weren’t that 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, giant creature (do I have to say “Kaiju” nowadays?) movie “thumbs up.” And that, of course, was the biggest flaw of all, and centrally-bad part of the entire movie (aside from Emmerich himself): the creature.  

Set aside, for a moment, the amazing incongruity of the "monster" from its namesake.  Even that considerable blunder aside, what else, I beg you, of this creature was remotely interesting or compelling for anyone besides hopeless animal romantics and little children?  Not. One. Damned. Thing. I could go into every flaw and write a short book, but there really are too many to list here.  The creature didn't have the power to make me scared or awed, the intelligence to do anything remarkable, the physical look of anything terribly original (had it been 10 years earlier different story, but we'd been Jurassic Park-ed to death by that point), actions that conveyed it to be anything besides just a big scared animal, or a story behind it to make me in any way sympathize with it. Well, someone just came online and said they liked the creature because it was that: a big scared animal running away the whole movie.  Okay fine.  I have some Farah Fawcett butt paintings and  It had absolutely none of those things.  In fact, it shared its most worrisome trait with the villain creatures of our current movie: it was, in essence, a parasite about to infest the earth: good riddance.

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, he really did that…

<<Interlude:  Remember folks too: this movie was nominated for six Golden Raspberries (it won 2). Those are non-Godzilla fans. This movie was hated just as  much by EVERYONE else...>>

And we're back: 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 the Madison Square Garden Easter Egg Hunt from our collective movie muscle-memory. (My Ex-wife BTW, is an unabashed lover of Sci-Fi and probably about as non-critical as our lovely member, Something Real. She had already seen it (while 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 suppose it’s not surprising that some folks like this movie.  Some people, I’m told, liked 2012 (another glorious Emmerich disaster that disregards all logic, science and meaning but is cleverly disguised by its action and special effects from being declared the crap-bomb it is), or Grown-Ups 2 (wait, that one’s #4 on the Instant Hate List!), Plan 9 From Outer Space and heck even Scarlet Letter (BTW, if you’re one of them, just keep that to yourself—Hawthorne’s been spinning in his grave like a nuclear centrifuge since 1995. He doesn’t need to hear you, okay? Let him rest).

Well, whatever floats your boat people…but trust me, somewhere in Japan, they’re still sending sonar pings toward the Marianas Trench in morse code, saying, “Please Gojira, watch the movie 2012; fuel your rage…”  Maybe the crowning irony is that Emmerich might just be the Godzilla of movie writers—unstoppably destructive and impossible to ever understand.

I have nothing but disdain for that abomination of a movie. I enjoyed it at the time as a young pup, but for obvious reasons, I was kid, and I was ignorant to things like differentiating a mindless action flick and an epic. 

Godzilla '98, much like the Street Fighter movie, and several Batmans after Batman Returns, just should not have been made, but greed and capitalism will continue to destroy sacred franchises. 

Frankly, I find anyone even remotely defending that movie to be simply trolling, it wasn't good even from a casual movie goer perspective, the movie had more holes and flaws then not, much like (regretfully) Mortal Kombat, you can only barely enjoy it because you are an avid fan of the franchise, but even in your wanton lust, you are semi conciously aware that you are reaching, and if you removed your passionate obsession, you would most likely detest it.

The only positive I can draw from the '98 version is that it makes all the other Godzilla movies that much better, because the minimum bar has been set so dreadfully low, it's near impossible to do worse.

i like reading peoples opinions but zilla the zeries and zilla from that movie all of i its just horible i cant stand it i think the topic should be droped and the movie should not be thought of thats my finale thought

I absolutely hate Zilla compared to Godzilla, yet I respect him and Zilla Jr alot in their OWN right. I respect Zilla as if he is a separate monster with no relation to Godzilla whatsoever. It would be cool If Zilla is rebooted as if he is a completely different monster. I also think Gareth should introduce him as another Kaiju in Godzillas prehistoric time. A 200 ft tall piscivore creature who scavenges if it must. A subspecies is biologically (excuse my spelling If wrong) more closely related to Godzillas being 300 ft tall, good durability and atomic breath ( Zilla Jr reference). So yeah Zilla vs Godzilla is a big NO. Zilla as a completely different monster with its own movie, YES. 

this is still a popular topic well tunahead has more fans then i knew but still his design and everything is horrible in my own opinion i will always say the same thing same to zilla jr just horrible please understand my opinions but still if you like him theres no reason to stop liking him keep loving what you love to each his own

Tolerance,and maybe eh a little,little bit of respect

Zilla is a good monster but a horrible abomination of godzilla. I will give it RESPECT as a stand alone monster but I shall SHAME it as a Godzilla.

I recently rewatched the 1998 film after not having seen it for years.

I wanted to see it as objectively as possible in spite of the consensus in the fandom regarding its place (or lack thereof) in the lore that is Godzilla. So, I'm looking for strengths, and I find some parts that are actually enjoyable. Right out of the box, there's David Arnold's theme for the opening credits. Very atmospheric, with the nuclear explosions and the reptiles in French Polynesia looking up at the fireballs.

So far, so good.

Then, there's the attack on the Japanese fishing/canning ship in the Pacific, culminating with the Tail smacking the ship's superstructure. Very good opening, I thought.

Then things start to fall apart. The not funny at all running gag about the apparent inability of people to pronounce 'Tatapolous.' It was so obvious after the fourth or fifth time. Then, the old Japanese crewmember being able to somehow understand English when an open cigarette lighter is waved in front of him. "What did you see, old man?" "Gojira."

Of course.

I thought the aerial of the giant footsteps across Panama was a neat visual, conveying size and mass without any dialogue. It, was here. 

Then, the people start talking. Earlier on there was Nick Tatapolous singing (?) "Singing in the Rain" during his earthworm hunt at Chernobyl. Then there's the infatuation that Dr. Elsie Chapman has for the 'Worm Guy." It's cringe worthy. But, it's followed, again, by a nice visual. It's the shipwreck in the Caribbean, clawed and evidential of a giant beast. We run into the mysterious Philippe Roach (Jean Reno) again. Actually, his character was interesting and convincingly motivated. He said he was patriot who loved his country. But he sometimes had to save his country from itself. Actually, it was memories of his character that led to me to want to watch Godzilla again.

If you remove or, at least, drastically alter some of the other characters, redesign Godzilla and make him act like Godzilla, the film would have been a lot more watchable. It would have been interesting to have seen a more developed storyline involving the French secret service agents. Maybe not played so much for laughs, but with real danger and adventurous tension. Perhaps to have had these foreign agents actually at odds and in conflict with the American military personnel would have added a darkness to the film that would have afforded some needed weight to the story. But this would have been at odds with tongue-in-cheek, parody approach that the filmmakers took with their film. It’s obvious from their work, and even their statements, that they did not take Godzilla, the pop icon and character, seriously. You cannot do justice to, let alone present in an entertaining and profound way, a subject you hold in contempt. This is what makes Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla so hard to watch. What they needed was oversight from someone emotionally invested in the series throughout the project if artistic credibility and authenticity was to be preserved. But, as is painfully obvious, this was not the objective. The goal was to make a mindless, summer blockbuster and sell as many toys and t-shirts as possible. The work of Ishiro Honda, Eiji Tsuburaya and Tomoyuki Tanaka did figure in the approach of the director and producer of this film.

To fans, this is unthinkable. Perhaps, for the casual movie viewer, it doesn’t matter as much. But this is Godzilla. He cannot be reduced to being a plot development in a film that bears his name. He’s the King of the Monsters.

After watching the dispatching of Godzilla on the Brooklyn Bridge in the Emmerich film, I was convinced that what I had actually seen was a remake of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. And the original was better. Much better.

I think I’ll watch the Ray Harryhausen and Eugene Lourie classic this weekend, God willing.

On the other hand, if we keep the basic Tatapolous design, with some modifications, as well as the speed and agility, Zilla, the kaiju assasin might work. I remember getting this impression, character concept wise, when looking at some drawings of the Tatapolous monster. If we make the titular monster from the 1998 film one who uses his speed and ability to move quickly as tactical weapons rather than to run from the military, than you have the makings for a horror-monster film. What if he was able to blend in with his surroundings, a la Predator? Some of the drawings I saw conveyed the potential for being vicious. If he's scary, and totally unsympathetic, unrelenting and a killer, you may cross, somewhat, into another genre's territory, but it would be a story that would force people to take it seriously because they wouldn't know what he would do next.

This, would be a monster truly on the loose and too fast to catch, with the ability to evade visual detection because it could blend into the background. No egg-laying and being suseptible to being lured by fish. He can't be 'just an animal.' A kaiju, which literally means, 'mysterious creature,' is something which by it's very nature defies explanation, easy or difficult.

With Zilla being portrayed in this manner, the ending has to be different. No cheering, high-fives and we all live happily ever after. A monster with the aforementioned characteristics would put everyone and everything at risk.

That's how I would have liked to have seen the Tatapolus designed used based on concept drawings I've seen.

This is what I meant in reference to the the last post

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--GwvXR4g-FY/U3Yu8mP0eqI/AAAAAAAAnm0/DSeO3hfh8Og/s1600/top-GODZILLA_1998_Concept_Art_-_23.jpg