1998's Godzilla is such a bloated weak story that its only strength is in its name. Beyond that it creates nothing original, and pays no homage to its predecessor. It sits in the bland world of being nothing but CGI effects.
There is something about the Hollywood remake that confuses me. When they remake, why do they feel compelled to duplicate everything including the titles, and characters? How can they be so unable to reach either way? How can I ever see a movie title with Pink Panther in its name and not think about Peter Sellers? There is no way that Steve Martin, who is an amazing comic talent, can answer that. Why not create a new, Sellers inspired character and explore that?
So it is with Godzilla.
The monster of the early Godzilla films is so iconic and campy, that remaking the character would need the efforts of top notch storytelling, which Roland Emmerich lacks. The movie itself is not bad. Its Predictable and formulaic but at least the formula works. Hollywood, with its bloated price tags and overstaffed teams, and ridiculous deadlines looks to make a profit by taking as few risks as possible. The summer movie formula works at the box office.
The problem is the genre. Godzilla isn't a monster movie genre. Godzilla is a genre unto itself. It is a camp movie's camp movie. How do you think of the name without the exaggerated serrated back fins or the cardboard miniature houses filmed with the largest camera available? These things define Godzilla.
But CGI teams look at this and say to themselves, we can make it better than before; more real, more interactive. We can make the monster believable. Great. I like it. But that is not Godzilla. That's a new monster and a new character updating an old rich genre. By the time you are done, it doesn't look like Godzilla.
The monster is a Godzilla shape, but also takes from Jurassic Park, and shows only small callbacks to the original. The 1998 monster shows a lot less personality and a lot more destructive capacity. Did it need to be Godzilla? It lacked any true redefinition of the campy genre, showed no evidence of franchise capability, and did not create a story any better than the Japanese productions that made Saturday afternoon TV watchable for kids. It could have had many other names and even more original creature designs that could push it enough to be something very different.
I'm even betting that the artists conceived many different creatures for Godzilla some that were outrageous and others that were very innovative and iconic. I will further bet that the producers rejected those saying things like "It doesn't look a thing like Godzilla." Then somebody could have responded with "well the story will be the same, we'll just replace Godzilla with Killizard or some other name." It's just that simple. Certainly screenwriters have a find and replace feature on their computers, right?
But no, that won't happen. Hollywood knows that there is a name they can sell. They don't care how bad the cereal tastes so long as there is a recognizable cartoon animal on the cover. That's why they keep the name. It's not about homage or nostalgia, its about marketing. They know grown-ups watched those movies as kids they know the name means something and we want to see how they interpret that monster. It's a bait and switch campaign that brings in the money but leaves us feeling duped.
In defense of those same movie makers, maybe that's what it takes. Maybe costs and budgets require this overly safe formula. You just can't take chances with millions of dollars right? Maybe so, unless you get an innovative gutsy upstart, like say, J.J. Abrams, and see what happens. Cloverfield created a Godzilla type monster and low key way of working around it. This is a movie about the people and how they are being affected personally by the monster. It certainly had its detractors, who hated the first person perspective, but its box office success and critical success combined to make a movie more memorable than Godzilla and put a sequel in discussion.
Godzilla had a budget of about 125 million and took in 135 million domestically. That's about an 8 percent profit, and is barely break even. However, it did another 239 million internationally and made about twice its original budget back gross ticket sales. Not bad. Cloverfield cost 25 million and grossed 170 million worldwide, with 80 million domestic and 90 million international, giving it a return of 6 times above the original budget.
If we leave the monster movie genre we can look at other remakes. Hitchock's Psycho was remade as closely as a remake can be. Not only is the plot and the title the same, it is a shot by shot duplicate of the original. Talk about playing it safe. With a 20 million dollar budget and a 37 million dollar return, nobody found it successful financially or critically. Disturbia remade Hitchock's The Rear Window as a teen suspense. Its quality in no way compares to the styles of Hitchock, nor does the acting compete. But the story has appeal and it doesn't try to just copy. The result is a movie that sells four times above the budget at the box office.
It seems silly that producers can't be even a little daring in their remakes. Good stories retold with a fresh perspective, different characters and structure can be successful. Good stories warmed up as a leftover have a history of dropping off the map. Godzilla is actually a reasonably successful film, but nobody is standing in line for part two. This is the real failure. This is the day of the franchise. Filmmakers seek to create films that will sell not only themselves, but their future productions. If this is to be, filmmakers need to reexamine how to freshen up the old stories they seem determined to use.
Can it be done? Anybody seen The Dark Knight yet?