What In The Name Of Godzilla...?

By Howard Chua-Eoan

Godzilla is in the details. the Book tells us so. Among the commandments: Godzilla has three toes on each foot, not four; Godzilla has four claws on each hand, not three; Godzilla has three rows of ridges on his back, not one; Godzilla eats fish, not people; Godzilla cannot be made to look silly; Godzilla cannot die. And, if you must ask, Godzilla does not endorse products.

The Book is a 75-page-plus compendium of iconographical dos and don'ts assembled over nearly a half-century by Toho Studios, Godzilla's propagator and the cinematic demiurge of the Land of the Rising Saurians. This mishnah of the face and form and spirit of Japan's most popular mutant antihero was solemnly handed to Dean Devlin, 35, and Roland Emmerich, 42, in 1996, almost as soon as the pair signed to produce and direct a new version of the monster classic. "We had to read it before we could write the script," says Devlin. The implicit caution: thou shall not take Godzilla's name in vain.

After perusing Toho's holy writ and digesting its meaning, Emmerich faxed the parameters of the studio's Godzilla-by-committee to Patrick Tatopoulos, creator of the aliens in Independence Day, the duo's biggest hit so far. As fate would have it, Tatopoulos never got the fax. Forging ahead anyway, he designed a monster that tampers with nearly every rule in The Book and is likely to leave fans of the old radioactive reptile either in awe or screaming "Heresy!"

Sony has bet more than $110 million on its new Godzilla, opening this week on an unprecedented 7,363 screens in hopes of breaking The Lost World's record opening weekend take of $92.7 million. An additional $50 million has reportedly been spent on a marketing scheme that includes the ubiquitous tag line "Size Does Matter" and a carefully hyped campaign of secrecy about what the modernized creature looks like. In this age of Titanic expectations, Godzilla will have to bring in more than $200 million in the U.S. alone to be considered a hit. Don't mention to the folks at Sony the words New Coke.

It was probably inevitable that the King of the Monsters--who made his debut in a 1954 Japanese film (re-edited and released in the U.S. two years later with new footage featuring Raymond Burr as an American reporter)--would sooner or later be remade. "For me, it was always very simple," says Emmerich. "Godzilla was one of the last concepts of the '50s that had never been done in modern form--that idea of the giant monster as in Tarantula or The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Why not do them again?" But, he says, "we were really concerned about the cheese factor."

So they reinvented Godzilla. Instead of barrel legs that galumph through the Ginza, Godzilla now has runner's calves to sprint down Broadway. The lumpy, rubberized-corduroy look has given way to the towering if scaly athleticism pioneered by H.R. Giger's mantid man-eaters in the Alien series. And while the snub-nosed, micro-eared Godzilla of the '60s and '70s had a vaguely mammalian mien--appropriate for a creature whose Japanese name, Gojira, is an amalgam of kujira (whale) and gorira (gorilla)--the fin-de-siecle Godzilla has a crocodilian brow, iguana affectations, a T. Rex crouch and a noble if dragonish chin instead of an avuncular Adam's apple. As for the radioactive breath, well, it was hard for Tatopoulos to justify, so don't expect it. No lizard does that in nature, he argues. "We were creating an animal. We weren't creating a monster."

Nearly 95% of the lizard's effects were created through computer graphics, and Tatopoulos' creature shop was twice the size of Jurassic Park's. But Godzilla isn't his old self: gone, for example, are his trademark maple-leaf dorsal spines, now a forest of thorns. All that really remains is the Godzillic roar, pitched higher than a foghorn but just as resonant, sort of like a herd of elephants on methamphetamines. And that's by default. A whole audio team was given the task of duplicating the sound but couldn't. And so Devlin and Emmerich simply picked up the beast's original "yell" from Toho's sound library.

For all the care lavished on re-creating the monster, the new plot is somewhat less revolutionary. As in 1954, Godzilla is the spawn of nuclear tests in the Pacific, and this time he makes his way quickly to New York City. Matthew Broderick plays an American scientist, Dr. Nick Tatopoulos (a nod to the new creator); Jean Reno is a mysterious agent for the French; Maria Pitillo is a newscaster wannabe; and Hank Azaria is a TV cameraman. Together they battle not just Godzilla but a teeming snake pit of little Godzillas. Though referred to as "he," the monster belongs to transgender studies, reproducing by parthenogenesis. How does it all end? Well, even Toho has broken the rule about Godzilla's not dying--and resurrected him in a score of installments. Broderick has already signed for two.

Cinematic homages abound in the new Godzilla. There are obvious ones to King Kong (with Broderick as the Fay Wray equivalent); then there is the constant damp a la Blade Runner and Alien; an extended attempt to outdo the Jurassic Park raptors; even a wink at the Coneheads ("Where'd you find that guy?" "He's from France"). Critical reaction at early screenings has been mixed. But for a surefire blockbuster like this, reviewers be damned! The film even taunts the critics with a brazen in-joke: the mayor of New York City is a hothead named Ebert, whose campaign symbol is a big thumbs-up.

Devlin and Emmerich approached the project gingerly, having rejected four previous overtures from Sony to take charge of Godzilla. The monster appeared to be unmanageable. Jan De Bont (Speed) tried to tame the beast for a while but gave up after Sony balked at the budget he wanted for a script that had Godzilla battling a shape-shifting beast. James Cameron (Titanic), Tim Burton (Batman) and David Fincher (Alien 3) were among the directors at one time considered to update Godzilla. When Steven Spielberg, who knows from dinosaurs, heard that Devlin and Emmerich were contemplating the movie, he tried to talk them out of it and called the remake a silly concept. Emmerich, who was to direct the film, responded with a smile, "I don't know. Big Lizard eats Big Apple. I like it."

The two were persuaded to do the film by Chris Lee, now Columbia's president of production but then head of its TriStar division (both owned by Sony). The partners put on hold a movie they had in the works, dubbed Project X, about ("I kid you not," says Devlin) a giant meteor on a collision course with Earth. Lee was also the most persistent of the studio execs in persuading Toho to lend out its famous monster. Still, when he saw Tatopoulos' model just hours before it was unveiled for the Toho board of directors in Tokyo, Lee was stunned. "It was just so different," he says, "so improved." Devlin says he heard of a little more consternation: "'You have to do this in stages! Show them the face first, then show them the body, then...'" But Emmerich was adamant, and they all headed for the Toho boardroom. Says Lee: "It's 15 guys, in increasing age, all looking very stern." When the model was unveiled, there was an audible gasp.

"It was a heart-stopping moment," says Lee, who knew Toho could sink the proposed Godzilla then and there. Some quick talking took place. Says Emmerich: "I told the Japanese guys the biggest difference would be that the creature is very lean because he's very fast. I also told them, 'Guys, we either do it like this, or we don't do it at all. It's your trademark, but if you don't do it this way, I'll go make another movie, and you'll have to find someone else.'" That argument carried some weight: Toho was the Japanese distributor of Devlin and Emmerich's Independence Day and made a bundle from it.

Careful not to invoke the name Sony (and thus stir up intra-Japanese competitiveness), Lee asked the Toho board members to think of the pair's model as the "Tristar Godzilla," a line extension of their own "Classic Godzilla" franchise. And most important, he says, "we left the model in the boardroom overnight so they could get used to it." Whether persuaded by all or part of the delegation's arguments, Toho gave its blessing the next day. Says Tatopoulos: "The Japanese told me that the new Godzilla is miles away from the old creature but that I kept its spirit."

That might be debated: the new computer-generated Godzilla has little of the personality of the rubberized beast. But at least he's faster. Says Devlin: "We realized that the reason behind the whole lumbering Godzilla was that they had to shoot a guy in a heavy-rubber monster suit and film in slow motion to give him some sense of scale." At 20 stories tall, says Devlin, "if you do the math, even if it walked at a gingerly pace, it's covering a lot of territory quickly." Adds Emmerich: "Godzilla can outrun any taxi, and that was the core idea for the movie. No one can catch it. Dean and I realized we could make a different Godzilla, a movie about a hunt, about hide-and-seek."

In the Toho board, the Sony delegation had argued that there was precedent for the revisions, pointing out that Godzilla's looks shifted with each movie. For example, the eyes, originally on the side of the monster's head, migrated to the front (they've moved back to the side for this version). The original 1954 Godzilla, wild and untamable, is physically different from the relatively benign creature that does battle with the triple-headed King Ghidorah in Destroy All Monsters (1968), from the oversize Japanese nationalist who takes on a visiting American ape in King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963) and from the wholesome environmentalist wrestling a mess of sludge in Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1972). Poor thing. With apologies to Sondheim: "First you're everyone's rough-hide scamp; then the other monster; then you're camp."

But maybe not as campy as all that. After watching the original 1954 Japanese Gojira, Devlin and Emmerich came away with newfound respect for the old film. "It was not meant to be campy at all," says Devlin. "In fact, it was a mighty dramatic movie. Surprisingly, the special effects, done in the rain, in black-and-white, shot at night, were done very well, even by today's standards."

And it was a movie with a message, one that the new film at least repeats. Godzilla was a towering warning against nuclear war, its indelible subtext being Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Appropriately, the new, more naturalistic Godzilla, stepping on taxis in New York City, comes on the scene just as the world is dealing with another nuclear threat. Perhaps Godzilla will get back his fire in the belly for a sequel set in New Delhi and Islamabad.

--Reported by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles