(Gojira ni-sen mireniamu)

Those of us who are old enough may vaguely remember a short Ray Bradbury mood piece, from the author’s earliest days as an author, called, I believe, “The Foghorn”. In this little three-page story, a lighthouse foghorn summons up from the vasty deeps a lonely leviathan, last of its kind, who comes to what it believes is a mating call from another like it and, disappointed, disappears back into the deeps forever, leaving only rubble behind it.

Somebody in Hollywood read the story and, preferring to ignore the mood, expanded it out into a tale of said leviathan coming forth, destroying the lighthouse, and then … wandering into downtown New York, crushing vintage cars underfoot (well, now they are vintage cars) and causing property destruction on a vast scale. This was The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. It was, I believe, the first in a series of such movies about ocean-born monsters tromping their way through major cities ranging from London (Gorgo) to Copenhagen (Reptilicus). And then, of course, there was Toho Films’ entry in the monster destructathon: Godzilla leveling Tokyo.

The original Godzilla movie was a relatively early postwar entry from Japan in the international film market. Released in Japan as Gojira in 1954 (only three years after the final peace treaty between Japan and the allied powers was signed), it made it to the States in 1956, where I, a callow eighth-grader, saw it at Oswego, Oregon’s, Lake Theater. I think it was the first Japanese movie I ever saw ⁽¹⁾ (well, mostly Japanese — a pre-Perry-Mason Raymond Burr was in the American version as reporter Steve Martin, no relation). What a pleasure to watch already superannuated Self-Defense Force sabre jets strafing the monster, and to see his ⁽²⁾ final demise as a victim of overoxygenation.

You would think that a dead (and dissolved!) Godzilla would not be as likely to return as, for instance, Gorgo and Mama Gorgo, who disappeared into the Thames estuary in good health after recreating the Blitz in London. But while the Beast and Gorgo and Reptilicus and others never came back, Godzilla would return time after time to his old stomping (I use the word advisedly) grounds — Tokyo. Usually he would be back to help mankind fight against some other dangerous monster, from King Kong to Ghidorah ⁽³⁾. Sometimes he would be accompanied by a junior version of himself, and occasionally be a group of other late-sixties / early-seventies monsters against whom he would sometimes fight and with whom he would sometimes be allied (Rodan, Mothra and the like). Usually, at least for the American release, there would be the token gaijin actor (an elderly Burr was back in the American version of “Godzilla 1985”, wandering around the Pentagon in the occasional scene and muttering “Godzilla cannot be destroyed!”). And, of course, there was the Emmerich-Devlin adaptation in 1998 — a rather sad attempt to westernize the monster.

Now we have the Millenial Godzilla, or, as he is perhaps incorrectly known here, Godzilla 2000 (the film was released in Japan in 1999).

There is a subplot that involves a young girl reporter (Naomi Nishida) becoming involved with the “Godzilla Prediction Network” run by former scientist and widower Shinoda (Takehiro Murata) and his daughter Io (Mayu Suzuki), who, like most kids these days, is a combination computer genius and Wall Street wizard. We also see Shinoda’s rivalry with the incredibly young and arrogant Assistant Secretary of the Interior and head of the government’s Crisis team Katagiri (Hiroshi Abe); Shinoda wants to study Godzilla, Katagiri wants to destroy him. But, of course, this all takes a back seat to the monster story itself: Godzilla is again marching on Japan, this time apparently to destroy all Japanese energy sources (no rationale for this is ever given), and at the same time Katagiri’s minions are attempting to raise a huge undersea meteorite which, after lying dormant for some sixty million years, is beginning to misbehave. The rock takes off and flies to Tokai, where Godzilla is headed to destroy an atomic plant (if he can get through a gauntlet of fifty super-tanks, half a dozen attack helicopters, and a collection of fighter-bombers all armed with the latest armor-piercing super-ordnance — not to mention Katagiri’s forbidding scowl). A fairly conclusive battle between the rock and Godzilla, already weakened by the new human weapons, sends The Big Guy back into the depths to regenerate (Shinoda’s discovery of Godzilla’s ability to regenerate is a key point in the story). Then the rock heads for Tokyo, where it proceeds to destroy civilization by downloading all the data in all Tokyo’s computers (apparently it never heard of copying files). But, of course, Godzilla eventually returns and plows his way through the city to a final meeting with the rock and its monstrous avatar whose name, according to the credits, is Orga.

Most of the SFX is fairly traditional. The monsters are guys in rubber suits (Godzilla, it says here, is Tsutomu Kitagawa). There seems to be a fair amount of model work, though it’s getting hard to tell the difference — the rock, and the planes and helicopters, behave more like CGI products. There are a couple of buildings destroyed in ways reminiscent of Independence Day — a nod to the guys who did the 1998 Godzilla, perhaps?

The story is also fairly traditional. Godzilla appears, knocks down some buildings, gets in a fight with another monster, and flattens Tokyo. A few humans hang around the periphery, engaging in human interactions that seem pretty pathetic next to the disaster occurring downtown. Army tanks and trucks roll back and forth, and every now and then somebody fires a salvo of rockets at Godzilla or anything else that looks dangerous. Nobody bothers with lip synching in the dialogue. Oh, and there are no token gaijin in major roles in this American release.

Still, although this film will (and should) win no Academy Awards, it’s a fun way to spend an afternoon.

⁽¹⁾ Not the last, however. As I type this, the TV set behind me has been regaling me with DragonballZ and Gundam Wing, both Japanese cartoon series. At one time, I might add, Toho’s special effects — particularly their use of models — put America’s in the shade; see if you can find a copy of 1960’s Battle in Outer Space and compare it to contemporary American SF films. A nod to the late, great Eiji Tsuburaya here. I once found a poster advertising another Godzilla film — Destroy All Monsters! — on a mud-brick wall in Marrakech, Morocco.

⁽³⁾ Ghidorah — a name taken from the Greek “Hydra”. In the “King Kong” movie, so I’ve heard, two endings were filmed — one in which Godzilla defeats the big ape in a climactic battle on the slopes of Mt. Fujiyama, for the Japanese market, and one in which the King wins, for the Western market.