Godzilla (1998) - What Happened?

[Music] hello and welcome to the horrible hallowed halls of what happened a show where we analyze and agonize over the biggest bungles of the video game and just the biggest bungles of the entertainment industry that is a lot of you have suggested it and a lot of you are getting it because we're branching down to the realm of cinema you know real art unlike those silly toys for children and what better place to start than one of the most monstrous hollywood misfires of the 90s a movie where pretty much every decision made was the wrong one it halted the production of planned sequels dead in their tracks [Music] irreparably damaged the careers of two filmmakers and pissed off the japanese originators of the franchise so much that they took a few swipes back in retaliation so godzilla 1998 what happened if we're gonna dive into this radioactive quagmire properly we have to set things up with the proper amount of context and history the king of the monsters rightly deserves so let's rewind back to the magically 90s year of 1992. touhou is swinging into high with their second era of godzilla films known as the heisei series and we're wrapping up post-production on godzilla vs mothra a warmly regarded reboot featuring the benevolent moth goddess henry saperstein who had distributed many of toho's films for decades finally convinced the japanese studio to allow him to pitch an american version of the tokusatsu franchise to hollywood as he felt there was a lot of potential for the character to gain appeal across the globe things unfortunately started out rougher than angerous hide as both colombia and tristar pitchers rejected the pitch before henry finally landed a deal at sony pitchers the then ceo peter guber was peter guber was enthusiastic at the idea and ironically enough assigned sony owned tristar pitchers to produce it a quick jaunt back to japan to seal the deal with toho then resulted in tri-star officially announcing their plans for an american take on godzilla in october of that year jan de bonte was hired to helm the feature his first as a director as he was previously the dp on such films as cujo die hard and the hunt for red october the initial script which focused on such wild ideas as goji's origin revolving around atlantis and an antagonistic monster named the griffin was penned by one terry rozio and ted elliott a writing duo who had worked on disney's aladdin and would go on to the pirates of the caribbean franchise it was an ambitious but fantastical take on the source material with jan de bonne asking for a reported 100 to 120 million dollars to film it stan winston studio is responsible for such practical effects and suits for films like the predator terminator and aliens already began building maquettes for this new godzilla which was unfortunately all for naught budgetary disputes raged between jan dubont and tristar which eventually led to the whole thing collapsing unable to come to terms de bonte exited the project and would go on to make his directorial debut with speed anything else that'll keep this elevator from falling basement godzilla languished in development hell for almost two years until the producing slash directing duo of dean devlin and roland emrick started getting noticed within hollywood their credits included films such as universal soldier and stargate and at that time we're still finishing up their third film independence day tristar approached them about picking up their flailing godzilla baby even before id4 hit the theaters they initially passed with devlin explaining both of us thought it was a dopey idea the first time we talked then when tristar came back with a second offer we still thought it was a dopey idea so why did the duo eventually get the gig well since tristar was desperate to finally get the project off the ground both filmmakers realized they could basically ask for anything including complete creative control in all aspects of writing and production few needed to point at one singular decision that could be construed as the linchpin of disaster yeah this would be it it's the clue their first order of business was to throw out rocio and elliott's script with emmerich stating it had some cool things in it but it's something i never would have done the last half was just two monsters going at it i simply don't like that the pair decided to make their own script from scratch and completed the first draft in just five weeks with the only connective tissue to toes franchise being godzilla was a creature of the atom having been formed due to nuclear fallout i didn't want to make a traditional godzilla i wanted nothing to do with it i wanted to make my own we then asked ourselves what we would do today with a monster movie and a story like that we forgot everything about the original godzilla right there now while the 1994 version of the script certainly had a lot of big changes it also leaned heavily into the realm of fantasy and since the touhou films didn't shy away from things like androids time travel space battles pollution crap monsters and dancing it's safe to say that this new scripts focus on a more grounded and realistic world was a little risky to accommodate this new direction devlin and emmerich also threw out stan winston's designs and again decided to make their own with the only mandate being it needs to run incredibly fast for some reason emrick again explains his baffling non-logic i saw the creature that they designed jan de bonk created a godzilla that was very close to the original but it was not right because today we wouldn't do it like that okay creature designer patrick tatopoulos who at that time had worked on such films as bram stoker's dracula and the super mario brothers movie i'll let that sit was hired to redesign the legendary monster suffice to say he took a very different approach saying what they did which was a mistake in my mind was rather than going in a new direction they tried to alter and make the old one better and when you do that first of all i think it's very disrespectful it's more disrespectful for me to alter something existing than to take a fresh new direction is that really how that works regardless even though the deal had been inked between sony pitchers and touhou touhou would have final approval on any new godzilla designs devlin emerick to topless and the funky bunch presented sketches and a maquette to touhou chairman asayo matsuoka producer shogo tomiyama and special effects director koichi matsuoko the trio remained silent for several long minutes before asking if they could reconvene the next day emrick would state they were speechless they stared at it for several minutes and asked us to come back tomorrow i thought for sure we didn't have the movie then tomiyama recalled it was just so different we realized we couldn't even make slight adjustments that left the major question on whether to approve it or not faced with a choice and not wanting to hold up production any longer toho signed off on godzilla's new look the very next day with the begrudging all clear from touhou casting began for the film which would go on to become its own huge issue in the mid-90s the summer blockbuster was becoming the big bankable bet for movie studios which usually had big names attached to them either behind the lens or in front of it you have your steven spielberg's jim carrey's or your tom cruises and the like who did godzilla have ferris bueller and sixty percent of the characters from the simpsons the cast of godzilla was head scratching to say the least our protag matthew broderick was hot off the failure of the cable guy well you may be the wrong man for the job but i think you're cute moe and ken brockman were cast as a cab driver and a tv news anchor and jon renell a relatively unknown actor in north america at that time played a french secret service agent trying to cover up his country's role in creating godzilla not to be outdone other problems would plague the production most egregious being the incredibly tight schedule as tristar wanted to hit memorial weekend 1998 leaving devlin and emrick exactly one year for production and post-production jurassic park had released only a few years prior and cg was still kind of wearing its training wheels so having less than a year to create a completely computer generated character was a bit insane why all the noise made for memorial weekend you ask well it was fast becoming the most desirable date for big blockbusters to debut on as again the lost world jurassic park had made over 70 million dollars the year prior to help with the workload patrick tatopolis his crew made a massive animatronic puppet of godzilla for certain shots and even made a suit for a stuntman to wear but in the end both techniques were rejected and cgi was used in their stead while the production was working at a breakneck pace the marketing machine for godzilla wasn't far behind merchandise t-shirts posters all the expected stuff the toy line was massive and it had the various scientists in the film armed with cannons and vehicles remember this guy of course you don't but he got a figure too bus ads taco bell tie-ins you name it they slap godzilla's big goofy gob on it i think i need a bigger book all of this however pales in comparison to the greatest music video of all time where puff daddy and jimmy page finally came together and angrily played a song in godzilla's face until everything exploded all of this was fluff however as the movie was furiously being edited up until the 11th hour leading to that big release date while it was not known at the time roland emrick would later state he was against tristar's decision regarding early test screenings which are normally conducted months ahead of time in case they need to adjust things via editing or special effects godzilla received no screenings of the sort which boated all sorts of bad the movie finally hit theaters on may 20th 1998 amidst a torrent of manufactured hype due to the aforementioned merchandising and marketing machine actual real palatable hype was a bit subdued as again there was no real established actors and american audiences unfamiliar with godzilla could rally around the look of the big g was also pretty divisive among sci-fi and fantasy fans with many unfavorable comparisons being drawn to the original touhou monster now north america had seen a gamut of godzilla media over the years including the hannah barbera cartoon early 90s toy lines video games comics and some vhs releases so even the most casual fan knew what godzilla kinda looked like and how he did things downtown therefore it was no surprise that roland emrick's version of godzilla took a critical shellacking from critics colonel your campaign's a disaster paper-thin cartoony characters cringy dialogue and humor and over-reliance on cgi wonky pacing disappointing fight scenes a much smaller and weaker version of the title character the list is pretty extensive but you know uneven plots and boring characters are usually hallmarks of the godzilla films but the issue here is that when the monster does show up things don't get much better the unstoppable force of nature that could decimate anything with his atomic breath was replaced with a simple-minded animal that spent most of the movie's running time just fleeing from the military these same sentiments were echoed by various people at touhou godzilla's suit actor kim patro satsuma who played the monster during the heisei era walked out of a screening at a godzilla convention in 1998 muttering it's not godzilla it doesn't have his spirit shisuke kaneko who directed the successful 90s trilogy of gamra film stated it is interesting that the us version of godzilla runs about trying to escape missiles americans seem unable to accept the creature that cannot be put down by their arms touhou would immediately try to discredit emerick's film in various ways with the first and most prominent one being fast tracking a new godzilla production that would hit japanese theaters just one year later dubbed godzilla millennium or godzilla 2000 in the west this was an attempt to try and salvage the franchise and show that toho could bring back the true godzilla spirit just a few years later in 2001's godzilla gmk two government officials could be heard and of course most famously in godzilla final wars the 1998 version of the creature officially became zilla as that suffix could be attributed to other creatures marking them as godzilla bootlegs up until this point the unofficial fan name for the oversized iguana was gino which isn't a moniker that needs much explanation regardless of what you call it genozilla got its [ __ ] easily bopped on by final wars goji in a matter of seconds so yeah suffice to say uh touhou held the grudge now despite all this the most outrageous fact about godzilla in 1998 is its budget it's been stated that the film costs before marketing between 130 and 150 million dollars considerably more than the 100 to 120 jan de bont requested just a few years earlier why tristar and sony pictures agreed to a budget that was even higher than the previous attempt is anyone's guess the most common thinking being since devlin and emerick were such an up-and-coming duo had helmed several other films tristar felt it was a safer bet than spending a lot of money on a first-time director like jan de bont speaking of money the film would open to around 50 million dollars over its first weekend and would eventually go on to make 300 million worldwide although this was considered by industry analysts a failure and simply not enough for sony to hedge their bets on to start a trilogy of films which was the original plan sony would also need to keep licensing toho's character each year to keep their deal going and you know funnily enough they didn't re-up it to make more films after this one however some of the proposed ideas that dean devlin drafted up for sequels made their way into godzilla the series a saturday morning cartoon following the characters from the film teaming up with a young godzilla hatchling that quickly grew to full size to fight at rogue's gallery of all original kaiju this series despite being stuck with the trappings of the movie is considered by many to be a better alternative than the subject matter it's based on then there was rob fryde who helped acquire the rights for tristar he was angered how the studio handled the property fuming furiously the sony executive team that took over godzilla was one of the worst cases of executive incompetence i've observed in my 20-year career one of the golden assets of our time which was hand delivered to them was managed as poorly and as a nepali as anybody can manage an asset they took a jewel and turned it into dust emeric and devlin well they would never really recover from the debacle and languished for years with similarly panned disaster films like 10 000 bc 2012 geostorm and etc this also essentially killed godzilla's westward push for more than a decade until legendary pitchers released their own version in 2014. touhou was originally wary of licensing the character again but since their millennium series of goji films failed at the japanese box office they felt it was worth another shot legendary's godzilla would go on to a 500 million dollar hall worldwide re-establish the character once again and kicked off the understated but nonetheless successful monster verse which will culminate in king kong vs godzilla in 2020. touhou was pleased with legendary's effort stating that they felt the character was finally done justice which spurred them into hatching plans for their own connected series of kaiju films shin godzilla their latest live-action reboot did fantastically well for them but as of right now touhou has no plans to make a sequel for and the less said about the anime trilogy the better when you look back at everything though it really is a testament to the longevity of the monster toho created where a disastrous critically reviled motion picture was not enough to kill the franchise any lesser character who had stumbled so hard out of the gate would have been delegated to the dustbin of history right there but thankfully for us our giant radioactive overlord will be terrorizing theaters for decades to come if you know of any other bombastic movie bombs you'd like to see on what happened let me know in the comments below or check out the flophouse vip patreon to officially vote on upcoming subjects see you next time and thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 870,406

Keywords: Godzilla, Godzilla 1998, Movie Bombs, Movie Disasters, Wha Happun, Matt McMuscles

Id: qTXUamYjA1M

Length: 20min 13sec (1213 seconds)

Published: Sun May 26 2019