After almost a decade of re-releasing the same DVD of the 1998 GODZILLA, Sony puts out a new edition for the film. This replaces the tired eyeball image seen on home video releases with an actual image of Godzilla, although with a red eye, and the cast below him. It's a more appealing look, although Hank Azaria's character seems to have lost an arm with the way the Photoshop was done. All in all, though, the disc sacrifices a little on the video side, but has a stellar audio presentation and offers even more extras.
| Video: |
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The presentation here is similar to the 1998 DVD release, although with slightly more compression apparent. This leads to the image being very soft at times, especially when the focus is far away. You can see signs of edge enhancement, halos around small details, as well showing that Sony tried to use this to compensate for the compression. The vibrancy of the colors also suffers, although there are still moments were deep reds and other colors shine through. The black levels are definitely lacking, though, but at least the movie never appears overly dark as to obscure details. Naturally given its age, the presentation sports nothing that could be associated with print damage, like scratches.
GODZILLA is presented in its original
aspect ratio of 2.35:1.
| Audio: |
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This disc has two audio tracks, same as the 1998 DVD although it exchanges the stereo English track for a French stereo track. This leaves a surround track as the English option. As before, there is rich speaker distinction in the 5.1 track, especially during the destruction segments. For the French track, this is a dubbed version, although it's selective. For example, when Niko Tatopoulos is singing the "Dancing in the Rain" song the track elects to totally preserve this. Although immediately when he stops singing it transitions to French, an odd segue given the differences in delivery. Overall the dubbing quality is poor, but has a huge saving grace in Jean Reno doing his own dubbing, giving an excellent performance and giving the only notable aspect of the dub.
The movie can be accompanied by removable English or French subtitles.
| Extras: |
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For this release, Sony includes everything from the 1998 DVD, save the trailers sadly and the dated cast & crew bios, and then throws in three new additions. Amazingly, though, it uses the same exact menu as the 1998 release. In fact, I thought I put in the wrong disc at first. The additions are simply added to the menus, though, despite having the same design. Now while I'll cover everything, I'll put more emphasis on what's new.
First off from the new content is "All Time Best of Godzilla Fight Scenes", aka an overly long commercial for the Godzilla titles available from Sony. This is basically clips set to dated sounding techno music with boring narration applied to it. It goes from one movie to the next, with the only curve ball being that the Rebirth of Mothra films are combined, although seeing as how they aren't about Godzilla their inclusion is questionable anyway. This is a full screen aspect ratio, with annoying skin-like graphics added to the top and bottom. For those curious why they did this, it's obvious come the Heisei entries as they are using 1.33:1 sources and then the skin-like graphics to try and hide this with lackluster results. The overall video is also heavily compressed. In total, it features segments on the 1998 GODZILLA, Son of Godzilla (1967), Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971), Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003), Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972), Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994), Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995), Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966), Rebirth of Mothra II (1997), Rebirth of Mothra (1996), Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000), Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001), Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002), Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) and ends on a long segment for Godzilla: Final Wars (2004). The only other interesting thing to note is that they portray Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003) as if it's just Godzilla against the military, ignoring Mothra and Kiryu. They also use footage from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993) and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003) during the Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002) segment and have a very out of the place chunk of dialogue that says "hit it with the maser". It also has a section for Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991), but uses no footage from the movie but instead footage from Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001).
After this we have three episodes from Godzilla: The Series (1998). These are episode 8 "What Dreams May Come", episode 15 "Monster Wars - Part 1" and episode 32 "Where Is Thy Sting?". These are full episodes, so a total of 63 minutes of content. It also means they are heavily compressed. At the time, these worked as samplers so people would buy the discs from Sony. However, since Mill Creek released the entire Godzilla: The Series DVD in 2014 that's easily the better route to go.
Next up is the "Production Art Gallery", which features 50 different concept art pictures. The images are compressed, but it's still a nice feature and the best of the new additions.
Following these are familiar faces, such as the four minute music video "Heroes" by The Wallflowers. The music appears during the movie's credits, while the music video does have some high production values and does feature Godzilla. It also includes the 7 minute Featurette found on earlier releases, which is a bit of a stinker as it plays it up for laughs while getting none... and featuring awful entry-level Photoshop effects at times. The "Godzilla Takes New York" feature is also here again, which represent only 5 before and after images, showing locations in New York and then showing them with added CGI effects. "Publicity Stills Gallery", which features 14 promo images from the movie or behind the scenes shots, is back as well. It also offers the same audio commentary with Volker Engel (visual effects supervisor), Karen Goulekas (associate visual effects supervisor) and Patrick Tatopoulos (creature designer and supervisor). Sadly, though, it's not all that insightful.
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Bottom
line, if you don't already have GODZILLA on DVD, want it, and have no interest in Blu-ray this is a good home video option. It's slightly superior to the 1998 release thanks to its extras, although isn't worth buying at all if you have the earlier edition.
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