Godzilla stomps his way ashore and proceeds to destroy stuff. So right away, we're off to a good start. He is being followed by two organizations: A section of The Godzilla Prediction Network comprised of our hero Shinoda and his young daughter Io, and Crisis Control Intelligence, lead by the "villain" Katagiri, who might as well be a living, breathing anime character. Katagiri and the CCI are obsessed with Godzilla's destruction, while the GPN believe that Godzilla should be studied in order to benefit humans. Now if that's not enough drama for you, a large meteor has just been discovered under the ocean which reveals itself to be an alien space craft. The alien tries to become like Godzilla using G's own healing factor and it all works out to one big kaiju smackdown between Godzilla and Orga, the alien's assumed form.

Katagiri and Shinodo: Two great characters played by two great actors.

There's more to it than that, of course, and it's all pretty good, actually. The human story is well acted and not just tacked on, with the only complaint being the 20-30 minute long lull in the middle where there's not a lot of action. Obviously, the dubbing/looping on this movie isn't great, but is there such thing as a good dub job on a live action movie? The voice artists play their parts well, and that's all I care about. To hell with matching the words to the mouth movements. The special effects aren't spectacular, but for what they are, they're fine. In fact, for a TOHO monster movie, they're pretty damned good. The redesigned Godzilla costume is awesome. G displays a true personality and looks like a bad ass. All in all, it's just a really fun movie and if you just sit back and relax (or get all excited during the destruction as I do), you'll enjoy it.

No hurricane halitosis here, just Godzilla's atomic fire the way it should be!

There is, of course, the inevitable comparison between this movie and the absolute giant-mutated-iguana abomination that is the American Godzilla of 1998, which was brought to us by the world's favorite Hollywood hacks, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. I still don't know how those two punks got away with calling that movie "Godzilla". That was definitely not Godzilla in that movie. Godzilla does not run around and climb buildings. Godzilla SMASHES buildings! Godzilla does not run away from helicopters. Godzilla SMASHES helicopters! I hate to say it, but it is the American mentality that anything people do not understand can be controlled or destroyed. Well Godzilla can be controlled or destroyed as much as an earthquake or hurricane can. One of the cooler scenes in G2K is when Orga tries to become like Godzilla (since the alien considers Big G as Earth's dominant life form). He can't quite do it and ends up bearing a little more than a slight passing resemblance to Godzilla USA.

The big bad Alien Orga.

The Disk

The video quality is pretty good and the little bit of graininess isn't too distracting. And hey, it's wide screen! Nothing beats nuclear glory at 16x9. The sound is very well done. The main menu is one of the coolest I'd ever seen on a DVD, with an animation of Godzilla stomping around and people running away underneath. When you make a choice, a missile hits the selection. Nice touch. There's not an abundance of extras but what we get is decent. There's some behind the scenes footage of the costumed Godzilla actor having the time of his life stepping on the little Japanese city before any special effects were added. Looks like fun to me! There's 3 trailers as well, for Godzilla USA, G2K, and Anaconda for some reason. Seeing the G USA trailer again makes me even more disappointed, because the trailer is pretty cool and the movie ended up sucking so bad. The G2K trailer rocks. I remember seeing it before X-Men back in July. My heart was pumping after that! As for Anaconda, I have no idea why it's even here. That movie also sucked any ways. I wish there were some Japanese trailers included too, but you can't have everything.

This menu is so cool. Notice the Japanese lettering on the signs.

The best extra is the audio commentary by American producer Mike Schlesinger, editor Michael Mahoney, and sound effects guy Darren Pascal. They talk about what they kept and what they changed from the Japanese version, adding more sound effects and music, trimming a little bit here and there. Don't worry, they didn't radically change anything. In fact, the commentary is nothing but complementary to the great work of TOHO. They talk about how they wanted to keep the integrity of the Japanese version while paying homage to past G-Films and 50's era science fiction movies. It gives great insight into the production of the movie for the North American audience and it's the most welcomed extra on the disk that really makes it worth watching.

The only thing missing is a Japanese language option, and the only reason I say that is because it was announced at one point that it would be included with the disk. I suppose it wouldn't work out due to the changes made from the original version (10 minutes of short cutting and trimming to tie the entire movie together) and they had to take it out. But still, I wish I had the choice.

Update: I now know that the Japanese language version was originally going to be on the other side of the disk. However, apparently TOHO did not allow for this because it had not yet been released on DVD in Japan at the time. Considering how DVDs are much more expensive in Japan (G2K would come to cost around the equivalent of $100 US), TOHO didn't want a cheaper version to tempt Japanese fans to import the North American version. The same problem is keeping a Japanese language track away from Bandai's original Mobile Suit Gundam series on DVD and nearly cost Princess Mononoke it's Japanese language track until a backlash from fans forced it to be included any way.

Behind the scenes, Godzilla complains about bad catering

Conclusion

If you even moderately enjoy Godzilla, then you owe it to yourself to watch this movie. If you're just looking for a fun way to spend a few hours, give it a shot. You might like it. If you like watching things being destroyed, as I do, then what are you waiting for? See this movie now!

Accept no substitutes. The King is back! Hail to the King.

Besides, there's a little bit of Godzilla inside us all.