Godzilla 2000 was the start of the Millenium series, and it can be presumed that it ignores all films before it except for the original. No references to this being the kid of the Heisei Godzilla were made.
This movie came out in 1999 in Japan, just a year after the insult TriStar made to the name. When it came out in America in 2000, it was still distributed by TriStar, so for the general public, it was confusing. Was this a sequel to Roland Emmerich’s movie, or what? But the fans knew it was the real deal. This was also the last Godzilla movie to be theatrically released in the US prior to the upcoming Legendary film.
The movie starts with Godzilla going on a rampage through Japan. It’s nice that they started with an attack, because it would be boring if they spent the entire movie explaining the backstory, establishing build up, and all that. We already know who he is, but the 1998 piece of crap gave people the wrong impression, so they just said “Oh, no That’s not him! Here’s the real King of the Monsters! Enjoy”. This was basically damage control, but it appealed mostly to the fans.
The main plot involves the discovery of an ancient meteorite, which turns out to be an alien ship. A poorly CG’d alien ship to be exact. Its laser blast is strong enough to send Godzilla flying. That’s pretty strong. The ship can hack into computers, and when it does, it looks for information about Godzilla. It wants to absorb his DNA, because he’s the most powerful creature on Earth. An actual explanation of Godzilla’s strength is given. It’s because his cells have something called Regenerator G1, which can heal any wounds in a short amount of time.
The ship eventually extracts the DNA, and turns into the kaiju known as Orga. With past reboots to Godzilla, he’s always been alone, so it was a relief to see a big fight at the end. Orga himself looks awesome! He’s huge! Almost able to eat Godzilla, but it turns out to be a big mistake when he tries.
Overall, this was just an okay movie. Nothing too special, but nothing too bad either. This felt like the shortest Godzilla movie I’ve watched to be honest. It did manage to fit in a few cool action scenes, and the human characters weren’t as bad as they usually are. I was surprised at how annoying the kid wasn’t. She was the least irritating kid out of all the Godzilla movies by far. The rest of them are forgettable. The dubbing is okay, but some of the Showa Godzilla movies had better dub actors.
One thing I have to touch on is Godzilla’s new design. Look at this!
It looks amazing! That’s how the first American version should have done it! This is an updated version of Godzilla, but it still keeps the impression and feel of the classic design… but this looks a lot more bad@$$!!!
I think my only other problems with this one were the special effects. They were… eh…. They weren’t impressive. Most of the shots with Godzilla walking through the cities and in the background were mostly done with green screens and other compositing effects. Some of them are really good, and others are really bad. There aren’t as many miniature props as the Heisei series had, which is disappointing. I loved looking at those sets, they were so well designed and detailed, and they sure looked more convincing than the compositing effects this film had. There’s one shot where Godzilla’s under water, and it’s done in awful CG, just like the ship. These moments really contrast with the rest of the film. Sometimes it looks better when there’s actually something in front of the camera. Many people will agree with that, especially when it comes to this movie. The graphics on the Godzilla video games like Destroy All Monsters Melee and Save the Earth look better than the CG here.
In conclusion, this is a decent movie. It’s special effects are definitely questionable, but it still manages to entertain.
FINAL RATING: 25 / 50
STORY: 2 / 5
ACTING: 2 / 5
CHARACTERS: 2 / 5
SPECIAL EFFECTS: 2 / 5
ACTION: 3 / 5
SOUNDTRACK: 3 / 5
TONE: 2 / 5
ENJOYABILITY: 3 / 5
REWATCH VALUE: 3 / 5
OWNING VALUE: 3 / 5
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