GODZILLA 2000

OUR HERO: Takehiro Murata. When tanks fail to take Godzilla down, he swings in with his action moped to save the day.

When I first saw the commercial for Godzilla 2000 (or G2K, as we hip, inner-circle-types, call it), I was filled with glee. Finally, I would get to see a Godzilla movie on the big screen that wasn't made by a couple of retarded American guys who liked to spend alot of money making horrible movies. I've been a fan of the series for a long time (almost inevitable, as my friend Max informed me that statistically, Ohio is the second largest concentration of Godzilla fans in the world, only behind Japan. Yahoo! Now we have something to put on our license plates besides ridiculous allusions to the non-existent heart shape of our state, and its abundance of large, poisonous, brown seeds.)

OUR VILLAIN: Hiroshi Abe. He's swanky, he's hip, and he's really evil. Plus, from behind, he looks just like Neo from the Matrix! There's nothing better than seeing Godzilla kill the main character of a movie you hate!

The commencement of my journey to see the film was rife with all sorts of bad omens and such. My chum Rob got stuck behind an Amish buggy on his way to my house to pick me up ("Y'know, for people with such angry, offensive things written on their bumper stickers, the Amish sure go SLOW!"--Rob Schultz), and didn't arrive until five minutes after show time. After arriving at the theatre, Rob hurried to buy overpriced junk food, while I sauntered over to the ticket desk with my nigh-unusable free movie passes that I got for being such a good student at my school, and for rigging a raffle. The passes were pretty neat, except for the fact that they had printed, in LARGE, ANGRY print that they were unusable for any purpose. Or something like that. Anyway, I sauntered over to the desk, and casually asked the clerk (who was an incompetent I recognized from my school, but whom I shan't name) if my passes were valid for Godzilla 2000. He gave me a smarmy look, and sidestepped, exposing the sign his figure had obscured. On it, in big letters, it said, and I'm paraphrasing "Free Passes Can't Be Used on Any of these Movies, You Stupid Fathead," and underneath it was the title of the very movie I wanted to see.

Translation: You'll NEVER get this damned thing redeemed, EVER!

"Gee," said the clerk, retaining the irritable smarminess that made me wish there wasn't a booth defending his fragile shins from my avenging knee, "I wonder if you can use your pass..."

Glowering at his inbecilic attempt at sarcasm, I rifled through my wallet, and placed the ten dollars in his pustulent hand, only to recieve two tickets to...The Orginal Kings of Comedy.

"It's in the theater to your right," he said, "Enjoy."

Our intrepid Godzilla-hunting team does a spit-take before trying to drive backwards through a wall.

Now, I wasn't upset that the tickets the person gave me were to a movie I didn't want to see. Nobody checked your stubs anyway. I could've used PG-rated Godzilla tickets to go in and see Debbie Does Dallas While the Guy From Chainsaw Massacre Cuts the Thundercats into Little Pieces (a fine, if somewhat piquant film, by the way.) It wasn't that G2K's ticket sales could perpetually suffer, because every Solonite who went to see it was instead aiding the box-office revenues of Spike Lee. Toho Studios has enough money to get along. I think. The reason I was peeved was that the tickets I recieved could've been PAID for with my free passes.

"Wow. It feels kinda like you got screwed over. Twice," Rob said, as I related the story to him.

We entered the the already darkened theater (which was, by the way, the theater to my LEFT), having missed the first five minutes of the film (as well as the PREVIEWS! Waugh!), and sat apart from the other viewers, so our wry commentary wouldn't be heard.

The movie itself was rather nice, as Godzilla fare goes. I've always liked the newer Godzilla movies (NOT Devlin and Emmerich's big-chinned iguana, mind you, but the newer Japanese ones, Biolante, and the like), and this one was in that vein. Except that Godzilla had really spikey purple things on his back, which was a bit disconcerting at first.

We arrived just as a canon(sic), with three people in it, tried to escape Godzilla by driving backwards through the wall of a concrete tunnel. How can a cannon (nsic*) be driven, you ask? Well, to be honest, it looked like a jeep, but a big sticker on the side said it was a 'Canon.' This was not the last instance of silliness to be found. Apart from panicky Japanese people trying to drive backwards through concrete to escape giant monsters, we also saw some poorly-placed hot air balloons ("Silly Japanese, your hot-air baloons will never fly if you cement them to the ocean floor!"-- Luke Meeken), as well as a scientist in a submarine who, inexplicably, was dressed as Ernest P. Worrell. He couldn't have been a janitor or something, as he was working alongside the other two men (wearing sensible labcoats) in the sub. There was probably an explanation for this, but it was lost on Rob and I, as we were too bust exchanging "Hey Vern!"s and "KnowwhutImean?"s.

DIE...DIE...DIE

A soldier completing his main objective: To push Io

The film's only downfall was Io (say EE-o. on second thought, don't bother...), the thoroughly irritating tiny girl. The only good part of the film that involved her was when military jets flew over her head, and made her fall in the mud (YAY!). From then on, the only way Rob and I could stomach Io was by pretending military personnel were pushing her over throughout the whole movie. Be sure to check both this site and Rob's site, as in the future we plan to start a fan club dedicated to everyone in the world except for Io.

+ = Gamera plus stupid U.S. Godzilla = G's newest foe? Interesting...

The whole movie was spiffy, but the whole thing was thoroughly justified (as almost every Godzilla movie is) by Godzilla's big, fat fight with a big, fat monster. I personally couldn't help but notice that the demonic turtle monster resembled both Gamera, the giant turtle, and the American Godzilla. Godzilla's main foe in this big, commercialized film resembles both his main giant, rubbery monster competitor, and his blasphemous, shameful American bastard cousin? Some thinly veiled commentary in there, methinks. I attempted to discuss the similarity of the monster to Gamera (Gamera saves children!) with my colleague, who responded simply with the chant:

Gamera is really neat! Gamera is full of meat! We believe in GA-ME-RAAAAA!

The rest of the film was spiffy, though the memory of it is a bit fuzzy to me, as after Rob's joyful singing outburst, the "We Believe in Gamera!" jingle dominated all of my mind's cognitive funcions.