More Entertaining? Godzilla (1998) vs. Godzilla (2014)

[Zarm]

Seeing the massive bias against the 1998 film most of the fans have I don't even see the point of the poll

The equally-massive bias in many quarters against G14 evens the odds.

[eabaker]

Seeing the massive bias against the 1998 film most of the fans have I don't even see the point of the poll

Opinions/tastes =/= bias. That would imply that people dislike the movie for external reasons unrelated to its content. That's not the case, though; people dislike the movie because of the movie.

[Pkmatrix]

2014 wins by a nautical mile.

I find Godzilla (1998) to be really boring, honestly. Godzilla (2014), meanwhile, I find one of the most entertaining Godzilla movies of the last three decades.

[edgaguirus]

While G98 does have some appeal, G2014 is the one I enjoy more. It has a better story and characters, plus a couple of monsters for Godzilla to fight.

[kamilleblu]

I derive more ironic value from Godzilla (1998) than I enjoy watching Godzilla (2014).

How do you "ironically" enjoy a movie? If you enjoy a movie then it did it's job.

My understanding of ironic enjoyment is that you recognize the many faults of [insert media here] but still find yourself entertained by it regardless. Usually you laugh at things that weren't intentionally humorous. Am I using it incorrectly?

[eabaker]

I derive more ironic value from Godzilla (1998) than I enjoy watching Godzilla (2014).

How do you "ironically" enjoy a movie? If you enjoy a movie then it did it's job.

My understanding of ironic enjoyment is that you recognize the many faults of [insert media here] but still find yourself entertained by it regardless. Usually you laugh at things that weren't intentionally humorous. Am I using it incorrectly?

Right. The irony lies in the contradiction between the filmmaker's intent (this will be enjoyed because it is well-crafted) and the audience's response (I enjoy this specifically because it is not well-crafted).

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

Not trying to compare it to GINO here but I guess my biggest gripe with G14 is the fact that it gave me absolutely nothing that I wanted out of a serious big budget Hollywood Godzilla movie. Except a couple choice scenes at the very end the monsters hardly got to do anything, the action and destruction was mostly shown offscreen or on TV screens/computer monitors, the human characters were flat and uninteresting, plus the story was designed in a way that prevented any big man vs monster military action. The monsters were a side note to the human characters, which in and of itself is not exactly a bad thing. What is a bad thing is that most those characters were uninteresting, unegaging, and lacked any real emotional weight. It's one of the few times in a Godzilla movie where I was constantly asking myself when in the hell the monsters would show up. I don't need monsters and action 24/7 but in return I do need characters that make me feel, care about, and root for. Joe was that character and he gets killed off not even halfway through the film. When he dies we are never given a remotely suitable replacement. The entire rest of the movie is bland forgettable characters and all too brief monster footage that doesn't really deliver until the last 10-15 minutes of the movie. For a character based film done with a ground level approach there is a detachment, a real lack of emotion and intimacy with the destruction going on around our characters.

[KillCrites]

G14 trumps G98 in literally every way lmao. Even if some people don't think there was enough of it, the action seen in Godzilla 2014 is way better executed and entertaining than anything found in G98.

[GojiDog]

Looking at this fairly and objectively:

Removing any complaints I have about the treatment of Godzilla's character, the 98 Tristar film was very much a product of its time. What movies were huge in the 90s? Jurassic Park, which reinvented creature feature style films, and Independence Day, which helped to further establish the 90s disaster movies along with Twister, Armageddon, Deep Impact, and the like. This movie was basically an attempt to get the ID4 makers to make their own version of Jurassic Park. It had a huge, and I do mean HUGE marketing campaign (seriously, the sands of time have washed away just how insanely huge the marketing campaign for this film really was. It was about on par with 89 Batman).

The issue with this whole approach is that we already got Jurassic Park and we already got ID4. Trying to recreate the success of those films is a failed enterprise because you can't capture lightning in a bottle that easily. Giving Godzilla raptor babies isn't going to wow people. Its just going to make people go "Jurassic Park did it better". Destroying New York landmarks for the sake of it isn't going to wow people because "Independence Day did it better". Instead of giving the film its own identity and its own approach, they tried to make Godzilla work within the framework of what Hollywood cinema was like in the 90s instead of taking either an original approach or giving us something akin to what us fans knew and identified as Godzilla. Even the mass marketing campaign was a huge misfire and waste of money because Godzilla was kind of a cult thing in the states even at that point and while he is a known cinematic icon, he wasn't an American pop culture icon akin to King Kong, Superman, or Batman. Having Puff Daddy and Jimmy Page do a music video isn't going to change that.

In the end, how did G98 turn out? Truthfully, it looks like just about any other 90s disaster film that was out at the time. Is it the worst one of the bunch? No. Its nowhere near the worst movie that Devlin/Emmerich have made (actually I'd argue its one of the better made films, which isn't saying much).

And to be fair, there are some things I actually do like about it. Jean Reno is the best actor in the movie and is fun to watch. And if there is one scene in the film I love, it is the scene where he goes to interview the fisherman, waves the fire in front of him, and asks "What did you see old man?" and he frightfully replies "Gojira". That was a great tone-setting type of scene and the first time I saw it I thought "Oh wow, maybe we're going to be okay" lol.

The overall problem was that it was a movie designed to appeal to the masses that was never going to appeal to the masses, so it was dead from the word Go.

Now the thing I admired about the Legendary film was that it was almost determined to go against the current trends of cinema. With the Marvel films and Transformers films being huge successes, the inclination would be to make the film in a way that it is a loud, action packed spectacle, tons of quippy one liners, and universe building to milk future sequels out of.

This movie...didn't really do that.

I know I'm about to sound like an old man yelling at the clouds, but part of my problem with today's blockbusters are the overreliance on CGI and these long, drawn out, action sequences that only serve to overload my senses rather than suck me into the film. I mean the Transformers films are so incoherent, I don't even know what is going on half the time.

And with so many films trying to match the success of Marvel, you see a bunch of "1st films" in a franchise that desperately try to set up a million things. Amazing Spider-Man 2 for example spent so much time trying to set up The Sinister Six that it lost sight of the main plot. And the less said about the recent Tom Cruise Mummy film, the better.

But it felt like with this Godzilla film, Gareth Edwards had a vision to slow the pace and get back to making the monster something to be awed. By reducing Godzilla's screen time, it made every second count with him. It made Godzilla feel more important to me, and after so many films of constantly throwing stuff in my face, it was refreshing to see a film take a slower pace and wine and dine me a bit and then explode with awesome stuff after it had been built up to. That to me is entertaining and more memorable than something like Transformers: Age of Extinction (I hate to keep harping on those films. I'll stop now haha).

Maybe its just my personal taste, but I just like slower paced movies. The recent Planet of the Apes films had that quality as well. I like to be slowly immersed into the world I'm experiencing, not smacked over the head with it with one computer generated action sequence after another. It also helps when the cast is good, and for the most part, I liked the cast of the film. Cranston, Wantanabe, Hawkins, and even Olsen with her small role all left an impact on me in some way.

And I liked the Monsters and how they were executed. True, the MUTOs didn't have the greatest designs, but there was a clear personality and attitude that came across from them that kind of reminded me of an old kaiju film from the 60s. The fight at the end is fantastic, and Godzilla felt like Godzilla whenever he was on screen.

That said, there are faults with the Legendary film. I thought Bryan Cranston was outstanding and the emotional core of the first act, so his quick departure was a disappointment. Sorry, but Aaron Taylor Johnson doesn't have the chops to quite carry the story the way Cranston could have and was while he was in the film. Also, I have some logistics questions in the story. Like if Godzilla was awakened in 1954, where was he all that time in between? James of AVGN fame said in his review that Godzilla probably should have been the one to attack the plant at the beginning (in an attempt to kill The MUTO cocoon).

But overall, it was a highly entertaining film for me and closer to what I want out of a movie going experience than the 98 film did.

[eabaker]

Hawkins, and even Olsen with her small role all left an impact on me in some way.

Just curious, between those two, why it was Olsen who got the "with her small role" caveat, when Hawkins had significantly less to do.

[Maritonic]

Hawkins, and even Olsen with her small role all left an impact on me in some way.

Just curious, between those two, why it was Olsen who got the "with her small role" caveat, when Hawkins had significantly less to do.

Agreed here, while neither role had a ton of screen time, I would definitely say Olsen was the bigger role of the two.

[Zarm]

snip

This is an absolutely perfect encapsulation. Not only do I feel the same way about the film, but also about the state of films these days.

I'll stand there and shout at the clouds with ya, GojiDog!

[eabaker]

snip

This is an absolutely perfect encapsulation. Not only do I feel the same way about the film, but also about the state of films these days.

I'll stand there and shout at the clouds with ya, GojiDog!

I'm shaking my fist right there with you guys!

[GojiDog]

Hawkins, and even Olsen with her small role all left an impact on me in some way.

Just curious, between those two, why it was Olsen who got the "with her small role" caveat, when Hawkins had significantly less to do.

Poor choice of words on my part, lol.

What I meant was Olsen left an impression despite being separated from the main story for most of it. Hawkins was in the thick of it along side Serasawa so she was present in the main conflict for most of the film, even if just a side character.

Really Olsen was there to give ATJ motivation and react to stuff, but for that, I thought she did well.

[Zarm]

Truthfully, I often say I have no objection to the protagonist (and I don't; not the way other people do)- but I do think that a large part of why I am invested in him enough to care what happens to him throughout the movie is more from his relationship with Olsen established early-on than any aspect of his personality. Wanting to see him survive to make it back to his wife, to complete the separated couple once more, is probably why I don't latch onto the lacking personality that others have an issue with- the relationship takes its place. And Olsen is a large part of selling that relationship. So for me, her presence looms large even when she's absence; it's her performance that imbues Ford with the the interest to hold protagonist status.

[eabaker]

Truthfully, I often say I have no objection to the protagonist (and I don't; not the way other people do)- but I do think that a large part of why I am invested in him enough to care what happens to him throughout the movie is more from his relationship with Olsen established early-on than any aspect of his personality. Wanting to see him survive to make it back to his wife, to complete the separated couple once more, is probably why I don't latch onto the lacking personality that others have an issue with- the relationship takes its place. And Olsen is a large part of selling that relationship. So for me, her presence looms large even when she's absence; it's her performance that imbues Ford with the the interest to hold protagonist status.

I half-agree with you on this, but I think I'd like the movie a lot more if it shifted some screen time away from Johnson and over to Olsen and the son - because Olsen is the more charismatic screen presence, because her character isn't given much of her own story, and because I don't find a lot of the business given to Johnson very interesting.

[Godzillian]

Olsen and the kid aren't even really characters, they're just props in the film.

[Kaeyas]

I can't believe this is actually even debatable lol IMO, G 98' is a weak, unentertaining, JP Lost World rip-off that would have sucked just as much had the G name had no attachment to it. No disrespect to anyone who likes it of course...just my honest opinion.