I know what you're saying... "How can it be the worst movie ever made? What about ________?" To this I would say that there are various ways a movie can be horrible, but to truly judge a film you have to weigh it against its budget and its expectations. While it's true that in a vacuum, there are worse films than "GFW", but those movies were made a few few thousand dollars and had no expectations of them. They had no legacy to live up to, so their failure was muted. Star Trek V or Alien 3 (or 4) or Superman 3 (or 4) or Ghostbusters 2 or Caddyshack 2... Those movies had expectations and a budget and failed miserably. But not like this. This was the 50th anniversary of Godzilla. It was a big deal with a ton of money thrown at it to make it spectacular.
So what did the pitch meeting sound like at Toho? "Okay, we've got a great new director for the 50th anniversary Godzilla movie. He's going to bring a younger audience to see the big 'G'. How do we know this? Because we're gonna make Godzilla into 'Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers'. And we'll make the characters look like they came out of a 'Street Fighter' movie. Then we will redesign Godzilla again so he looks like a cross between Titanasarus and a duck. What is our plot? I'm glad you asked. Basically we throw X-Men, The Matrix trilogy and every BAD example of late 60's and early 70's Godzilla into a blender. Actors? We have the perfect overactors who say lines perfectly wrong at with the craziest body language while doing so. Music? We have some great synth music from the late 80's which is guaranteed not to match any of the scenes and be as inappropriate as possible. Some scenes will even have no music at all so you can experience how awkward that is too. Monsters? We've got them all! We'd have put our paper mache King Kong in this thing if Universal wouldn't sue us out of existence. And the best thing is that the monsters don't detract from our silly plot because they are only on the screen for about 5 minutes, and each fight scene lasts about 30 seconds. I'm telling you, as bad as it sounds, it's worse! And when people complain, we'll call it a 'homage' to the bad Godzilla films of the 70's and say it was tongue-in-cheek and play it off like it's intentionally bad. Maybe we can get a new MST3K movie out of this!"
Unfortunately, you only get to have one 50th anniversary. This one was spoiled by the worst abomination I have ever seen. I had to watch GMK three times after seeing it to scrub the disgust out of my brain and convince myself that you CAN make a good Godzilla movie and it was all going to be okay in the long run.
Fortunately this movie bombed, and GMK is the most successful film Toho has had. Are you listening, Toho? Give Shusuke Kaneko whatever he wants and lock him up contractually to direct every Godzilla movie you make from now until he dies.
Minilla is in this movie more than almost any other monster. I think that says all you need to know about it.
So what did the pitch meeting sound like at Toho? "Okay, we've got a great new director for the 50th anniversary Godzilla movie. He's going to bring a younger audience to see the big 'G'. How do we know this? Because we're gonna make Godzilla into 'Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers'. And we'll make the characters look like they came out of a 'Street Fighter' movie. Then we will redesign Godzilla again so he looks like a cross between Titanasarus and a duck. What is our plot? I'm glad you asked. Basically we throw X-Men, The Matrix trilogy and every BAD example of late 60's and early 70's Godzilla into a blender. Actors? We have the perfect overactors who say lines perfectly wrong at with the craziest body language while doing so. Music? We have some great synth music from the late 80's which is guaranteed not to match any of the scenes and be as inappropriate as possible. Some scenes will even have no music at all so you can experience how awkward that is too. Monsters? We've got them all! We'd have put our paper mache King Kong in this thing if Universal wouldn't sue us out of existence. And the best thing is that the monsters don't detract from our silly plot because they are only on the screen for about 5 minutes, and each fight scene lasts about 30 seconds. I'm telling you, as bad as it sounds, it's worse! And when people complain, we'll call it a 'homage' to the bad Godzilla films of the 70's and say it was tongue-in-cheek and play it off like it's intentionally bad. Maybe we can get a new MST3K movie out of this!"
Unfortunately, you only get to have one 50th anniversary. This one was spoiled by the worst abomination I have ever seen. I had to watch GMK three times after seeing it to scrub the disgust out of my brain and convince myself that you CAN make a good Godzilla movie and it was all going to be okay in the long run.
Fortunately this movie bombed, and GMK is the most successful film Toho has had. Are you listening, Toho? Give Shusuke Kaneko whatever he wants and lock him up contractually to direct every Godzilla movie you make from now until he dies.
Minilla is in this movie more than almost any other monster. I think that says all you need to know about it.
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