And then we cut to Chernobyl, and there's a very happy man singing the Clockwork Orange song and collecting.

Worms from the ground.

I love that that's what you call it.

Singing in your brain is.

I mean like you're not wrong, but that shouldn't be your primary point of reference.

That's the first time I ever heard that song.

So to me that's.

You know the song from the musical that's named after.

Yeah, well.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Castle Bravo, A Godzilla Verse retrospective.

I'm Derek.

And I'm Charlotte.

And we're two siblings here to examine the history of the Godzilla franchise, one movie at a time.

We're joined by two guests today, first friend and fellow host at Super Lux Games cast Jeff Meyer.

Good morning.

I'm here.

Morning.

Jeff, it's it's early where you are because you're you're several hours behind us, right?

Yeah, it's still a morning here.

I'm still on coffee.

Number two of four.

We'll get there.

We'll get to maximum awakeness and 2nd joining us for the third time.

Case Aiken from certain point of view.

I am certainly turning this into a Casal Bravo shut.

The fuck up.

But but Jeff, I'm with you on the on the tired front.

My wife and I have recently come up with a a shift schedule for when baby wakes up and we're both still tired in the morning.

And I had first shift, which meant that I didn't touch the coffee because I was like, oh, but I'll get to go back to bed.

And then my wife woke up and immediately had a work emergency she had to deal with.

And so, like, I'm just now getting into like my first cup and I'm, I'm tired.

So while we're Speaking of coffee, because we're, we're going to launch right into how how we're doing today.

This is a great segue, yes.

It is I I am on coffee #2.

I actually have made a latte at home from from Godzilla Coffee.

We're not sponsored.

I don't do ads on any podcast I do, but there is there is this coffee just like Godzilla branded coffee from.

It's a it's a small company called Foxtail Coffee.

They operate as part of a small distributor called Jade City Foods.

And like I got, I originally got a bag of coffee from them, like as a joke because it was like, well you know, it's 30 bucks for a fucking 8 oz bag of coffee.

That's way expensive.

But I'll say I bought the Godzilla coffee right It it'll indulge my my autism it.

Turns out.

It turns out it's it's not a French roast.

It's some of the best fucking coffee beans I've ever bought.

So I bought over the holidays like a sampler where I got a bag of like every different one.

It's like 13 different coffee blends.

Did you get I see King Ghidorah's Embodiment of Extinction blend?

I did, I did.

That's the white chocolate macadamia nut.

But that is.

But the one I'm using right now is the Mount Mihara blend, which is a peppermint coffee that's that's got Violante on the front.

It is difficult because that is one of two coffees that come pre ground instead of in bean form.

So I have to regrind the absolute shit out of them to make an espresso puck.

And because it's peppermint you're never going to make true espresso because the peppermint's going to dissolve with the hot water which is going to free up a tiny bit of volume which is going to immediately cause a drop in pressure.

You won't get a true crema.

It's not real espresso.

What the fuck ever.

I made a pseudo espresso shot, a double pseudo espresso shot of the peppermint coffee and just added some froth milk to it and it's lovely.

It's the best peppermint mocha I've ever had.

So there I got to engage in in in Autism Hyperfixation #2, which is coffee on my Godzilla podcast.

Well, if there's any Godzilla podcast episode to hyperfixate on coffee about, this is the one new.

York One, that's for sure.

The one where the running gag is the coffee.

Yeah, Charlotte, how you doing today?

I'm doing all right.

I'm tired too, but I don't drink a lot of coffee so I've just had a lot of V8.

Yeah, you're like being healthy and and smart.

Although black coffee can be good for you, but most people don't want to drink black coffee reasonable and you can't have milk so.

That's right, suffer.

OK.

Yeah, I'm doing good.

This is one of the only movies in this whole podcast that I've seen before.

How long has it been since?

Since let's Let's get around real quick.

So obviously look today it's the end of the season we have been this sort of Damocles has been hanging over us for several episodes.

Now, almost this entire season, we are finally covering the infamous Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, 1998 Tristar Godzilla.

For everybody here, how long has it been since you've seen this movie?

I don't think I've seen it since it was in theaters in 98.

I I I'm a little ashamed to say, I've probably seen it a few times.

It's probably only been about four years for me, so relatively recently, but I have different thoughts every time I watch it.

Yeah, I look, hey, I'm going to say I came away with this.

I came away from this.

I'm trying to be less of like a reactionary nerd right in my adulthood and not just like dislike thing because different.

And I'm trying to have the attitude of like art that is bad, doesn't have to be like that doesn't have to be an insult.

Like sometimes things can can be messy and it'd be interesting to pick them apart.

And I just came away with way more complicated feelings than I thought I would.

Charlotte, how long has it been since you've seen Godzilla 98 as one of the only ones you had seen prior to the podcast?

It's probably been about 20 years, but when I was a kid, like, I was like 6-7 and this came out right?

Yeah, it depends on if my birthday had happened yet that year.

This was my movie.

I had Godzilla books.

They were only this one when you asked me the very first time, Hey, do you like Godzilla?

And I said yes.

This is what I meant.

Oh God, that's right.

No, I just, I just had so much merch and I had like books that just had like frames of the movie that I just sat and looked at.

And I don't know.

I I have different opinions now than I did then because I'm not a child.

It's a running theme I'm noticing here, yeah.

But yeah.

I I wanted just to mention as well this was also my introduction to Godzilla and same kind of thing like just I was I guess 11 when it came out.

So right in the like the height of my dinosaur Jurassic Park era.

And I mean, there's some similarities, like aesthetically, but just as like a kid distracted by everything with super ADHD, like the bright neon greens on all the art and everything like that.

And it's.

The most.

Like, yeah, same thing.

I was like, I love Godzilla.

Only seen this Godzilla.

And it wasn't until really just five years ago, or whenever, I guess a little bit longer, when the legendary stuff started coming out.

But I I expanded my horizons.

Jeff, you actually watched the the original Godzilla finally for the first time.

I did, yeah.

Just finished it about an hour ago.

Yeah, that's.

I'm First off, I'm always glad when I can introduce people to the original because I like, I do think the 1954 original is just a masterpiece, right?

Like, like it, it holds up so much better than you expect it to.

So I also think people just unfairly think that like, oh, a movie was made in the 50s or 60s is going to be shitty.

And it's like we knew how cinematography and acting worked at the time.

Folks.

Writing's not a new art.

I'm a I'm a huge Star Trek nerd, too.

Like, it's it's very easy for me to shut off the hokey, like the the special effects and stuff, and just get to the core of like the messaging and the themes and things which are in a good film, we're really never aged.

So, yeah, I appreciate a lot of that.

Yeah, now case A.

Like, how long has it been since you've seen Godzilla 98?

But also like B to shout out, not too many years ago you did an episode of your show, Another Pass, dedicated specifically to Godzilla 98.

Yeah, so, so, so, my.

God, I said a couple years ago.

And it just struck me like, oh fuck, it's been so many years.

The last year has been five years.

I mean this was about two years ago.

It was, it was shortly after my Co host Sam had joined the podcast.

So it was in that kind of track there.

Yeah.

So I I did revisit it for another pass.

I watched it twice then and then realized that I'd only rented it and thus watched it twice really quickly.

Because then when I went to go re watch it now, I was like, God damn it, I'd either rent it or buy it again and ended up just buying it this time because you know, I'm sure it'll come up again for some reason.

Yeah, so two years ago we we watched it for Another Pass, which is a podcast where we look at movies and talk about how they could have been improved at the time of production in a realistic way.

And you and Charlotte have been on to talk about the the 70s King Kong movie.

So if people are interested in that idea and don't want to spend time with this specific Godzilla movie, but like the host of this show, go check out that episode.

That's a really good one.

It had been a couple of years.

It probably been like 10 years between that, that watching and the last time I had seen it.

I had seen it randomly sometime in my adulthood but but really not like maybe like once kind of when just like looking back at some movies that I had enjoyed in my like teens and like junior high, I think.

I think I'm the old man on this show.

So I was, I was 14 when this movie came out and I was a it was my eighth grade.

I was about to go into high school and I was fresh off of the hype of Independence Day, which was like such my shit when it came out and this.

Looked good news.

It was everybody's shit.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, exactly.

It was like a monumentally successful hype campaign, and it was a movie that was inoffensive to most people.

So it was like really easy for people to kind of glom onto it and be like, yeah, rah, rah, even if it's like like, there's a lot of really good things going on with it and a lot of, like, weaker things going on with it.

And I think that the weaker stuff is carried over and some of the good stuff is not carried over for Godzilla, which is a little bit of a bummer.

I was already a Godzilla fan.

I was, I'm a giant Power Rangers fan.

I'm a giant Kaiju fan.

I like, like, I really like apes.

So King Kong as a concept is really into me like that.

It's just all stuff I was going to check out and like at this point I had already started having like late night parties with my friends.

Parties as in quotes.

Because it was really just like, here's like five of us hanging out at one person's basement watching a Godzilla movie and then seeing what we can find on Skin Max.

Because that was just, you know, again, I was like 1314 when this movie came out, so I I was primed for it.

I remember I really want to talk about the marketing campaign because I thought it was so strong for this movie.

I was so hyped for when it came out.

And then it came out and it's at best fine.

It is there.

There are some things that I I find cool about it.

There's some things that I think are interesting going on, but the the circumstances of the movie are pretty mundane for a giant Kaiju attack kind of movie.

Like they don't do enough with with it to really like reward the changes that they're making.

But there's there's stuff that I enjoy and I I love Jurassic Park.

So like the the elements that were similar at the time were cool.

And like, yeah, they look derivative as hell and don't hold up very well special effect wise.

But yeah, I mean it was super super in the zeitgeist when it came out.

I probably saw it a couple of times over my high school period on VHS, like just for rental because like, why not?

And then probably once or twice, maybe between high school and like late 30s and then at like, I guess I was like 3738 when we did the Another Pass episode on it.

Yeah, it's it's so wild because like, there's just no getting around the fact that this is maybe aside from the original Godzilla, probably the most significant movie we've talked about on Castle Bravo so far.

For like Western audiences.

You you can't not have an opinion on Godzilla 98 because this movie was all of culture for a brief point in time.

It was all-encompassing.

So let's let's kind of set the stage a bit here.

For those who've been listening through season three of Castle Bravo, it wasn't many movies into this.

Like 80s nineties resurgence where Sony got the the rights to make a Godzilla movie in in, you know, a Hollywood Godzilla movie.

And Toho tried a couple of times to end the Godzilla series, finally ends at 95 with Versus Destroyer and you know, makes this, this trilogy of of Mothra movies to try and hold things over because you know this, this Godzilla movie has spent most of the 90s in development hell.

I was surprised to find out that this movie had spent so long in development hell when I first found out about it.

Because I think most of us didn't hear about this until like the first trailer with the foot coming down and you know, smashing the the trucks and and and the Taco Bell marketing campaigns and things like that because this movie was everywhere.

So the Long story short, long time Henry Saperstein, I really hope I'm pronouncing his last name right.

That's the thing I should have looked up before getting in here.

But it's too late.

This is one of the guys who's been heavily involved in bringing Godzilla movies and other, you know, sci-fi, like Japanese made sci-fi movies of the era stateside, you know, getting them translated, getting, you know, English voice over, getting them into theaters, etcetera.

He finally gets permission to from Toho to make the pitch for an American made Godzilla movie.

How he ends up with Sony.

We try not to focus too much on the unmade versions of movies because there is a graveyard of unmade Godzilla movies that that spans an entire continent, right?

There's so, and even the ones that get made go through so many changes, often times in the year or two leading up to their actual production.

But this is a really interesting version because there was a version that very nearly made it to filming all the way back in 94, four years before we got this Godzilla movie.

It was the original script treatment was written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who are kind of a famous duo in 90s and early 2000s Hollywood for screen writing.

It was going to be directed by Yan De Bond, who you might know is the director of Motherfucking Speed, Keanu Reeves on a Bus That Can't Slow Down or It Blows Up and Special Effects by Stan Winston, which is a name that needs no introduction.

I'm going to drop a picture of the of the Stan Winston Godzilla in the chat here and it's going to blow your mind compared to what we got.

For listeners at home, it is an image in the production or section in the Wikipedia page, so if you want to check that.

Out.

Yeah, you can.

You can find it on on the Wikipedia page, but I mean, look at this is the mock up for what the Stan Winston Godzilla was going to look like as an American Godzilla.

And it's different, right?

It's different from the Japanese Godzilla, but this is very clearly and unmistakably the Big G.

Yeah, I was going to say when you say it's different, I'm like I don't think it's meaningfully different from the from the Japanese Godzilla.

It's different in the way that, like the different, like eras versions of Godzilla's are are different in each suit.

Like you can see the differences if you know what you're doing, but if you're coming in just from like a, you know, a a layman's perspective.

Like it, it looks like Godzilla and it looks.

He's got to like a slightly narrower and elongated like snout.

That's a little more crocodilian compared to the more like I was.

Going to say I I see like the lizard aesthetic a little bit that made it into like the final movie.

Yeah.

But but still much retaining much more of the class.

Yeah, but I mean the lizard elements I'm not even sure would show up like I'm I'm not trying to be like argumentative, but like if it if imagine a night scene with this with this Godzilla, I feel like it would look really similar to like the Godzilla from 84.

I think you would.

You would shoot and frame them very similarly, probably.

And if you look at him like again, like a lot of the changes that were made did carry over to the Patrick Atopolis design.

He's got way slimmer legs then Godzilla has traditionally had.

Godzilla's usually got them big old Thunder files.

Yeah, way better defined arms than Godzilla's.

Usually much more vestigial looking.

You know, very T Rex inspired arms.

He's got, you know, much bigger arms.

And I do think that like while you keep a Godzilla inspiration in the face, the 80s nineties Godzilla was very feline in its appearance.

So like this is where we start leaning into the the reptilian like much stronger than we have in a long time.

So yeah, we've got this like Bombshell 94 version that is a totally different movie.

In this version, Godzilla is like an ancient, like biological like creation by like the Atlanteans basically as a sort of as a as a sort of biological weapon.

And he ends up fighting a a ghidorah like like invader from outer space.

So there would be another monster and it was very, very focused on like Godzilla as something mythic, Titanic, you know, above and outside of nature, right.

Which is a a, a direction that we are very familiar with at this point because the legendary movies have taken and run with that, right.

You know, really leaned into the idea of Godzilla as something mythic rather than something, you know, natural.

This gets so close to being made, I'm not entirely sure.

I don't know if it's that I forgot or I just didn't make a note or I couldn't find anything, but at some point Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich come into the picture and Devlin is not a fan of the original.

Take the the the 94, Godzilla, Devlin and Emmerich toss out basically everything a a a nearly finished treatment that's ready to go.

And we remake this from the ground up, coming from the approach of we're going to take Godzilla and make it something much more naturalistic, right?

We're going to make this an animal that's on the loose, not, you know, a a creature that is outside the natural order.

It is worth noting and this is going to feel a little like like like like I'm I'm trying to like lead people's opinions, but I I think it's it is important to note that Debont and Elliot and Rossio.

We're all very big fans of Godzilla who repeatedly like made it very clear that they were trying to make something that honored in their minds the Godzilla that they grew up with.

Devlin and Emmerich are not Godzilla people.

There is often times a need in nerd culture to think you have to be a fan to make something right.

And I don't like that attitude.

I think sometimes it's good for somebody who's just a Workman to come in and go, we're going to make a good movie.

This is a source material.

Here's what I think we can do with it.

You know, you don't have to have grown up with something since childhood to make a good adaptation or remake, you know?

So I don't want to act like I don't recognize that difference in dynamic.

I just don't know that it's as important as maybe some other things that happen along the way.

Godzilla gets redesigned by a creature designer and special effects artist Patrick Datopoulos of Face Off fame, who had previously worked with Devlin and Emmerich on Stargate and Independence Day score got composed by David Arnold.

Likewise composed for Stargate and Independence Day.

This is basically Devlin and Emerick doing a reunion tour with a lot of their behind the camera like crew and a lot of their creative team.

Which I mean, again, like if you've seen Stargate and you've seen an Independence Day, and if you haven't, I don't know where you were in the 90s.

Certainly Independence Day.

Yeah, I I think, I think Stargate's pretty, pretty well known.

It's very well.

Known I can understand someone having not seen it but remembering the trailers.

But like Independence Day, like if you didn't see it, like you weren't alive in what was it 95 like?

Yeah, I was going to say spot somebody.

He wasn't born until after the towers fell, right?

Like that sounded really aggressive.

But it's kind of true.

It's not a it's not a moral judgment.

It's just a fact of like that's probably like the where you would have to be to not have been marked by the movie Independence Day.

I've seen Independence Day.

I didn't see Stargate.

But I saw, and this is a good team from the standpoint of like coming in hyped about doing a big special effects movie that isn't necessary.

Big ridiculous sci-fi blockbusters that hit.

I like Stargate, I like Independence Day.

Like these are fun.

Stupid but very fun and very well made movies.

That look good, like the the special effects like you like.

Obviously things that don't hold up, especially once we get into like the HD era where like you can really see the seams on things, but like the use of CG was really was really well integrated with model work.

Typically speaking everything looked incredible.

Like, there's even a joke in in Austin Powers where it's like where they show the scene of the White House being blown up and it's like, oh that, well, that was actually a shot from Independence Day because it looks so good, like.

Yeah, yeah.

So the and, and this is kind of interesting because you you kind of got into it a little earlier case, but like this movie, the marketing lead up to this was insane.

We had marketing deals with our.

I'm like Taco Bell's the big one.

That's the one everyone remembers.

But like the trailers for this, refusing to show you anything from Godzilla, but like the foot.

Or the OR the tails?

The swell coming out of the water, they were like hiding Godzilla from you because they wanted it to be this big thing.

When you finally get to see Godzilla for the first time.

And then, and it's so funny because like I I remember this but had forgotten about it.

The Godzilla leaked before the movie came out, Like pictures of the design made it around.

That's not uncommon these days.

We're like a a picture of a toy line gets released early on Reddit, you know what I mean?

But that was like unheard of at the time for for this stuff to be spreading on like IRC and message boards.

And I remember my dad showing me like this picture of the Godzilla design, and everyone was up in arms.

And Devlin, Dean Devlin, this is this is so weird to me.

Dean Devlin swore that the design was fake, which obviously like a month or two later the movie comes out and it's not.

And I don't know other than to say like I can understand being in a defensive position of people reacting intensely negatively in a way that's not normally seen in Hollywood pre release and like trying to put out a fire.

Yeah, just what a, what a bizarre This movie.

You could not avoid talking and thinking about it in the lead up to it.

And then it releases Charlotte.

Yeah.

Why don't you tell us what happens in Godzilla the the 98.1, the one we speak of today, simply called Godzilla.

So normally I would structure my notes to be like, OK and this scene takes place here and then I would talk about what happens there.

The first little bit of this movie cuts to a completely different country every 10 minutes.

So.

So the the I think like the first half of my my notes on the movie are a little like jumpy because it's setting up a lot of plot points and there's a lot going on.

It is not you if it, if it.

Very Independence Day, like.

Yeah, so movie starts out, it's very, very orange at the IT says Godzilla the Beginning.

And then it shows like flashes of like French Polynesia and nuclear tests going on and some environmental destruction which didn't really come to play to be.

Honest, a lot of shots of marine iguanas.

Yeah, and a lot of you know what?

I I want to bring this part up because it's like even looking at the Wikipedia page, it's like Godzilla is a mutated iguana and I'm like, no, well, they speculate that he might be a mutated iguana and we get the shot at the beginning.

I don't think it's like confirmed like you could you could hand cannon pretty much anything still.

Yeah, I I would say it's not confirmed, but like a they they regularly you shot some marine iguanas, although they also have a random shot of Komodo dragon in there.

So I'm like who knows And of course like this is he's got a lot of features of marine Iguana's very like uniquely and like it's it's a good safe bet but like it's.

Certainly what they were kind of thinking.

I would argue that the movie is a little bit more open-ended on it in terms of.

Yeah, if if you didn't show the the montage of the opening credits, I don't think as many people would have jumped straight to Marine Iguana.

Yeah, yeah.

But the the opening bit here stops with the nuclear test and it it does show an iguana then too, like staring at this big explosion.

So I was like, oh, it must be an iguana.

I'm not saying it's not leading you to that opinion.

I'm just saying it's open-ended enough that if you want him to be a dark God released by nuclear energy, it could still be that.

Yeah, sure.

90% of of establishing what Godzilla probably is happens in this opening montage, and outside of that, there's very little other than whatever he is is changed by a nuke.

So, you know, yeah.

Which and if they were trying to take like a naturalistic approach, you think they would get into that more.

But they cut to a fishing ship and there's a man eating and he's watching some sumo, you know, like as you do.

Yeah, as as Japanese people regularly do on their fishing ships watching sumo, right?

Just making it as Japanese as as babies, that's good.

It's the 90s.

This is like this doesn't even track as far as racism goes.

No, There's some casual word drops in this movie too.

Yeah, we, yeah.

There's a couple things right I.

Don't get to that.

So something big's come in on the radar.

It's rapidly approaching and everyone's panicking.

And I mean, it's Godzilla.

Godzilla pierces the hole like tail slams the the bridge at the top of the ship just destroys everything.

And then we cut to Chernobyl, and there's a very happy man singing the Clockwork Orange song and collecting.

Worms from the ground.

That's what you call it.

Singing in your brain is.

I mean like you're not wrong, but that shouldn't be your primary point of reference.

That's the first time I've ever heard that song, so to me, that's or.

You could call it, you know the the song from the musical that's named after.

Yeah, well.

Folks are learning something about Charlotte today.

I have a lot of Clockwork Orange merch, so he's collecting worms from the ground because it's Chernobyl.

And you know, let's take samples, see what's.

Going on puts like these two like this thing, this thing in the ground and then like turns on like a battery and it.

Just makes like shocking.

It just makes like a bajillion worm suddenly come out of the ground.

Later in the movie, he says he was like trying to lure them out and it's like you.

Just shot the shit out of them, yeah.

We're frying them in the Safeway.

Their redneck is luring fish to the surface by throwing dynamite into the pond.

Yeah.

So he gets interrupted.

There's like a a Russian military squad comes down and there's like a a a joke at the beginning of this movie where they can't pronounce Tatopolis.

It's not that.

Out of the beginning, it's throughout the entire movie, even in French.

Yeah, and it's it's like to top First off to Topless isn't that hard of a name to say, right?

Like or read?

So I don't know.

But also like considering the main character was clearly named after creature designer Patrick Topless.

Like, OK, well, you just made fun of his name repeatedly through the movie.

I I do wonder if that was a thing behind the scenes where they like they someone had an issue and said that they made that a recurring joke, but.

That that that that actually kind of contract for me.

I like that that.

Like Roland just could not say it right.

Yeah, it's hard to believe that you would just naturally fall on like, Oh yeah, this fucking name's Impossible Guy.

Yeah.

Right.

So yeah, the the guy can't pronounce his name, but the government man steps out and he's just like, you're being reassigned.

Actually, we have work for you today.

Because that's how it works.

You can be like researching something and the government can just show up and say you work a different job now.

Right.

So now they they cut to a hospital and there's a one of the Japanese men from the the fishing ship is like catatonic in the bed and they like shine a a light in his eyes.

They like light a lighter in front of them and they're like, what did you see?

And he's like Godzilla.

Godzilla, Gojira, But.

I know, but.

That's a thing that you can do later in the movie, yeah.

So, but now we're in Panama and Doctor Tatopoulos is there and he's like, this isn't my field.

You know, like, I don't know what you're actually wanting me to figure out here, but like, I saw you like bugs.

I'm a biologist.

And they lead him into a giant footprint.

And they're like, well, this is your sample, this giant footprint.

And then they they look at a video that was conveniently shot of the Godzilla attack in French Polynesia.

Like as it was happening.

Yeah, cameras.

Sure, following the boat.

Yeah, yeah.

In the middle of the ocean.

Yeah, it was like a buoy.

You know, like everyone's like live streaming these days.

So you know you had a.

Yeah, in the air.

Yeah, he got a very tall booze out at this point.

It's like this is like a precursor to Deadliest Catch, but it's Japanese, so we just never really saw it over in the States.

Yeah.

So now they cut to ATV Studio in New York.

And Audrey, one of our one of our main characters, is asking her boss about, like, some career advancement, basically.

And he's like, Oh yeah.

What?

Principal Skinner?

It's fucking Harry Shearer and and it's you can't see him and not hear Principal Skinner.

It's wild.

See, I was thinking Ken Brockman the whole time, but.

Well also, Ken.

Brockman.

Right.

We have to talk about how like then his secretary is Nancy Cartwright and that Hank Azarius is is Camera Guy.

Oh my God, is his secretary Nancy Cartwright.

I didn't even notice.

But like, she's there.

That plus Hank Azaria.

Yeah, you got the whole damn Simpsons cast.

Well, Audrey's asking about, like, some career advancement stuff, and he's just like, Oh yeah, well, maybe you should have dinner with me and we can figure it out, you know?

It's the most blatant.

Like, it's it's horrible.

And like First off, I guess good on you for like showing this in the 90s.

But it is the most like cartoon, you know when you have to take an HR training at work, when they do it like once every year or two, and you have to watch videos that are horribly acted, where people commit like felonies, it's like that.

What did he do wrong in this?

Situation.

What did he do right?

Was anything.

Great thing.

This was like just like that, a whole line.

But like I think a lot of this movie especially like this element of it was just such to me.

Like it felt like the 90s approach to everything like like especially like women in media.

Like this was the idea of like trying to create an empowered.

It has girl boss in it.

Yeah, right.

Which, like, I don't know.

I've never seen anyone, like, just have a lollipop in their mouth the whole time.

But like, that was just a thing that everyone in the 90s did.

This is the most 90s New York ass movie I think I've ever seen in my life.

Yeah, and I'm going to get into it later, but there's a lot of stuff in this movie.

It's like, if you don't know what New York is, it's not going to land for you at all.

This is.

This is this is like, yeah, it's, it's it's concentrated.

They put like Friends and Seinfeld into like a fucking old like distillery and and what came out the other end got filtered through like a a like sleeve of uranium and then that's what we got.

Yeah, well, now we're cutting to Jamaica and our our, our doctor friend is getting rizzed up by the paleontologist there because mostly because they're really trying to set up the fact that, like, he and Audrey used to be together because her her pictures are in the back of his car and everything, but she she tries to make a move and he's like, oh, she thinks I'm cute.

I mean, he is, but it's Ferris Bueller y'all like.

It is Ferris Bueller, I'm pretty sure like a year or two after this movie.

Doesn't he, like, hit A?

Child.

Yeah, I think.

I think Matthew Broderick does kill a human being accidentally.

Not like hunting for sport, but he does accidentally kill a human being.

I'd still kiss him.

I don't know what to tell you.

You're not a bad person for accidentally committing vehicular manslaughter.

That's.

True.

So can I stop?

I don't know all the details.

I'm.

Pretty sure he was in Europe and driving on the wrong side of the road, but but like the fact that.

So don't add me if it turns out he was like doing blow and.

Derek the child murdered.

The The thing is, no.

No, no, I'm OK with the with the child murder, just not the drugs.

OK, let's get it straight.

Curie was like, oh, are you watching the Matthew Broderick one?

And I was like, yeah, and she's like.

That was exactly what my wife said, too.

No context.

He killed a child.

Turn, turn 180° and walk away.

Yeah, well, they get to the destroyed fishing ship, right?

And he starts collecting samples.

And what are the what are the Army big?

The big Army guys there is fighting with this guy that says he's from the insurance company and he's clearly not from the insurance company.

John Renault, the first French person I ever became aware of.

I just thought all French people were.

White he's he's the archetypal Frenchman.

Did you see?

Yeah.

Did you see the French name credits?

Yes.

They're all I watched.

I was watching the through the horrible credits saw Jean Luc, Jean Claude, Jean Pierre and Jean.

Felipe, that was like this.

How did you find a way to be racist against the French?

Yeah.

So they cut to the United States now, and there's more fishing ships, but this time they all get caught on something, and that something is Godzilla.

And the ships get pulled under and up in the air.

At this point, with all of his samples and everything, you know, the doctors looking at all the samples and they're all informed about these ships going under.

And Doctor Topless is like, well, I think the radiation isn't an anomaly.

I think it's the clue in that Godzilla is a new creature, the first of its kind.

Well, because they're also arguing that like, they're like, oh, it's a dinosaur from the Cretaceous and then they say it's an allosaur and I'm like, you looked at the name allosaur, but you don't know what fucking era it's from.

Yeah, also Allosaurus.

Famously not a marine animal guys like.

Right, exactly.

Famously the smaller T Rex from the from the period before the T Rex AKA the Jurassic period.

Yeah, again, dinosaur kid.

Yeah.

Yeah, but Charlie, you're right, the Polish paleontologist strike.

Again.

So we go back to Audrey now and she's in a diner and the news is on about that fishing ship and doctor topless.

I'm just going to call him Nick from now on because his name's Nico.

But he goes by Nick, Nick's on there.

And Audrey's like, I was with him in college and she like, recognizes him and she clearly has some unresolved feelings.

I.

Think she calls him this college sweetie or her college sweetie?

And it was.

And I was just like something like that.

Weird way of saying it.

Yeah.

It's weirder when we find out later, like, not that this is like plot important or anything, but like later we find out that like, she like, he he like, 'cause she's all like, Oh yeah, he got away.

And it's like, yeah, he proposed to you and you said no and you had no good reason.

Yeah, you had no good reason to do that other than like well.

I'm going to New York.

I'm going to make it.

Yeah, she.

She bought the shit out of me, like as a character.

Like, oh, so when you say later it's like this, he's not a good female.

We get the expedition dump, like all up front and then, you know it doesn't matter, yeah.

Yeah.

So we go to this fisherman, He's like out at the pier and he's like, oh, I'm going to try to fish in the East River.

And one of the guys and everybody was like, oh, you're going to catch us a cold, huh?

Because it's the 90s and he does catch something and it's Godzilla, and he goes running down the pier.

Like the first level in Sonic Adventure, All Godzilla destroys the pier.

Fine.

What a fantastic.

Shot This is the shot that Sonic Adventure is ripping off, not the other way around.

Yeah, yeah.

What a fantastic fucking.

Shot good shots in this movie.

This movie I'm going to go to bat for the special effects in this movie and and not like Godzilla himself yet but this is a very tricky like CGI Water is hard, right?

And they managed to like do a pretty convincing like water swell composited in with like a practical shot of a man running down a dock and that dock being blown up by actual pyrotechnics, right.

Like, that's That's a real shot.

Incredible work.

Yeah, yeah, you're right.

And I mean, I wouldn't go to bat for Godzilla itself, but the rest of it, yeah.

I'm going to go to Bat for Godzilla itself, sadly, but I think just like we'll get there.

Visually I really like the whole set up to like that comes off this like like rain.

Like rain in New York is a good.

Yes is a good look And like I don't want to keep making like a Jurassic Park comparisons but like the the just the the torrential downpour and I think the way they like kind of frame everything like you said in and you don't even get that.

I don't think the full reveal till later in the movie, but like everything from that dock for the next like 5 or 10 minutes, I like a lot of it.

Visually, well, rain's a good way.

Rain and night are great ways to hide flaws, right?

Like, for better and worse, we've become hyper aware of that now, but it's not a thing people were thinking of the way in the 90s.

By the way, none of us have brought up that a lot of these shots are through a chain link fence, which is yet another way to obscure and like kind of allow you to filter detail a little bit.

Yeah, lots of texture.

Sorry my mic died for a second there.

So the I do I do want to say like we set up the rain for the entirety of the movie.

At this point, this becomes just a a overwhelming thing that does hide a lot of special effects, but it is also just like Create creates this like feeling that we're just underwater for the entirety of it.

Like, they're really into this whole, like, Godzilla's a secret.

It's a super wet movie.

Even the chunks of the movie that take place like underground, which is a weird amount of the movie, it's a it's like a very wet underground, you know everything has that like damp, like shake the the rain out of your boots kind of look through the movie and it's it's a very intentional, atmospheric choice.

Yeah, so Godzilla makes landfall, and as one would expect, a lot of chaos and Susan traffic.

He's just running through chomping on cars, basically.

The mayor, Mayor Ebert and.

The least, the least, the the most thinly.

Veiled Is there a veil like his assistant is named Jean.

There's a thumbs down moment later in the movie, like there's no veil.

I I actually grew up watching Ebert and Roper.

But I I think like the first time I watched this I didn't really appreciate you know the significance of Roger Ebert and like the critic industry and I was obviously didn't know the history.

But like every time we watch this I'm just astounded at like it's not just a one off joke.

It's like there throughout the whole movie.

Yeah, no, this is.

This is basically because Ebert disliked Emerich's earlier movies, right, Right.

Like that's that's what this is.

It's just like we're going to make him out to be a a a fat candy eating buffoon, you know, as as a take that to not liking my movies and and like it's funny though because like the character would be funny if you didn't know who Roger Ebert was, right?

And you didn't know about the beat when I was a kid.

So then it's just like a funny weird, like he's a Simpsons character, basically.

Yeah.

So.

Setting up what seemed like an improbable devotion to getting everyone back at at back into the city and back to work.

And yet we found out in the real world.

Very true.

Yeah, fuck.

Well, he's giving his speech at City Hall.

Godzilla crashes his speech and a lot of people die.

Oh yeah, Oh yeah, there's a body.

Count destroying.

Yeah, like, I really didn't.

Godzilla causes like several 9 elevens in this movie.

Yeah, well, which they compare to.

They they say this is the worst destruction since the World Trade Center bombing which they.

Mean 90.

Right.

They mean 93 because this is.

Obviously, three years before World Trade Center bombing.

Yeah, they had two.

When that line drops, you're like oh and then you're like oh wait and.

Movie moments that don't age well, but actually do, because again, Godzilla causes several 911's worth of damage.

Right.

And The thing is, this movie came out three years before 9/11 and thus, like if this had come out, then the, like, the vibe of New York destruction would be very different.

But in this scenario, they're like, no, no, no, we'd we'd bounce back immediately.

We would, we would forget.

Real move, actually.

Seemed it seemed to me like the the Godzilla destruction was actually like minor compared, like the shots that's now owed to me were like the military.

Accident.

Oh, it gets worse.

Laser.

Building or bombing Madison Square.

Right.

Jesus.

But like, yeah, you got like entire skyscrapers that Godzilla has, like, walked a hole through, you know?

Right.

I will say too that like one of the things I do really like because obviously the model for Godzilla doesn't hold up super great, right?

We haven't worked out some of the like really good like shading and like reflectivity and and and like while they're lighting is pretty good, like it, it obviously doesn't look super realistic.

Where I do want to give them a lot of credit is that they made it interact with the environment as much as possible in tiny ways.

The way it's footsteps affect like the water on the street where it steps right when it goes around a corner in the tail flicks like lightly into the side of a building and leaves like a carve.

It's it's minor details, not stuff that they like built the shot around, but they made sure to add a ton of these tiny little side details in that you may not even really be paying attention to.

And it ultimately sells the physicality of Godzilla way better than a lot of other CGI creatures of the time and even much later.

The joke I made is he looks like a sci-fi movie like original movie like quality model by like today's standards.

But you'd never see like a Sci-fi Channel movie like creature look that good and interact that well with the environment and have that much weight and presence so.

Yeah, the attention to detail.

Was still on the air at that time and like that's the quality stuff we were getting on team.

Yeah, I mean like it.

It's certainly the the thing about this team like they are very good at at doing the, the extra work to make the technology that they're pushing fit better.

Like they've always been pushing CG in movies that previously would have just been model work.

And you can see all the extra attention to detail they're putting in all throughout to make it be as visually impressive, because that's what they're selling.

They're selling the spectacle of this movie when it hits theaters, not the spectacle of this movie, what, 27 years later.

Wow, don't hurt me like that.

You had 2626 years.

26 years later, yeah.

Wow, I got.

I took one off that number.

That's so much better.

So this is actually the scene where Audrey says that Nick asked her to marry him.

OK, yeah, I wasn't.

I wasn't sure, but I actually made a note about it.

Godzilla wonders by Well, they're all talking.

And honestly, like Victor who goes by Animal in the movie.

Hank Azaria.

He's my favorite.

Character.

He's the best character in this.

Movie He's the best character.

In this movie.

Hank Azaria just has charisma.

Like naturally.

Like one, this sequence that's about to happen is probably my favorite sequence in the movie because it's just cool.

And like, it's fun and it's also the trailer shot and like, those are all things that are great about it.

But also just Hank Azaria is so great.

Like like he and his wife have a wonderful relationship in this movie that is terrible.

Like they this is where we get into some of the slurs that get dropped.

But but it's it feels real.

It feels fun.

She clearly cares about people because she brings them all into their house later on.

Like they both are like constantly doing the right thing, even though they're constantly saying nice guys finish last.

I love their dynamic.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, because because Godzilla wanders by and animal goes Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

He is lodge and and he tries to get a shot of it with his camera and almost dies.

He almost gets crushed.

He's right between the toesies, Yeah, he like.

Runs out there's like this whole like like extended sequence of him getting the the camera like getting the the the tape into the camera like like this whole like massive pantomiming of like inserting it and closing it.

Yeah, he's like sitting here frantically, like he's got the tape in, he's trying to shut the thing.

He's trying to put you trying to.

And then he like, finally, right before he like, looks down and does the very gentle casual poke press.

And it works like great slapstick physical comedy.

Again, Hank Azaria can sell this.

Yeah, so the military rallies a response because Godzilla's here now, but somehow they lose Godzilla.

And I say somehow, but I mean Godzilla's not as tall as some of the buildings around when he crouches.

Down I like.

This is This is one of my key gripes about this movie.

OK, I do like losing Godzilla in the maze that is New York City, right?

A lot of this works as like the couple of sequences that are like this, but those helicopters can fly, so God damn high y'all They could just go up well above the city and look down like you don't have to be in the maze.

Those, those, those Apaches can fly like, I don't remember what the ceiling is, but they can go so goddamned high.

Y'all.

Even if they can't go higher than every building, like even if that.

Like even if their ceiling is is lower than like say the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building.

Like like New York, yes is a a series of towers, but it is less so than it is being sold as here.

Like there are way more buildings that are just not that tall like.

It also works well within like the time period better than it would today because like you know, the lack of social media and.

Oh yeah, absolutely, probably.

And stuff like that, like.

Yeah.

But it like, you wouldn't have that, like, you know, it'd be all like, you know, you basically be live tweeting like where it is today, right?

But right.

It's a lot.

It's a lot more believable in that time that like you wouldn't have a real time feed like you said, aside from like someone reporting from a helicopter.

Where he might.

So there's.

A direct through line between this and Cloverfield.

And then like, there's stuff that would come after it, you know for sure.

Like what?

Yeah, that that level of social media awareness.

So I just fact checked.

So the Empire State Building, right, as an example, about 1200 feet tall, it's like 1250 something.

OK.

The maximum altitude on an Apache helicopter, which is what they're using in in the movie is 20,000 feet.

So like 15 Empire State Buildings?

High Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, But again, like most people don't know that.

But it's it's very like, it's one of those things where if you know, you're like, but so I did.

I'm turning my brain off.

I'm taking this movie for what it is presenting me.

These are fun sequences with the helicopters being stuck in the New York City maze.

Yeah.

What this movie is presenting to you is a mythological version of New York, with impossibly tall buildings and places that are held with a religious significance to eager you to be destroyed.

And sewer systems that are so big around that Godzilla can move through them.

And I actually appreciate that.

Look, I'm a Batman and Robin defender.

I love big, stupid mythological presentations of cities like.

Yeah, and like thematically like this, this chase sequence is the equivalent of the Will Smith dogfight in in Independence Day.

Like the one for sure.

Yeah, uses the parachute, which I think this is, you know, starting to get into the the issue of like, well, the cast is actually too small in this movie for what they are, for, for for how big their parts are.

The cast is too small, yeah.

Yeah, so Audrey tries to leverage knowing Nick to, like, be like, hey, I know a guy on the inside.

I can get this story.

And you know, her boss continues to be a pig instead.

The the city, meanwhile, is still in chaos.

Traffic is slowed.

There's buildings being looted.

Now.

The mayor decides he's going to make an appearance up with, like, the military and everything.

And our our French insurance man shows up and he bugs the mayor's collar.

And this is this is a special tool that'll help us ladle.

Audrey, meanwhile, steals her boss's badge.

Just trying to, you know, get somewhere, actually do something with her career.

She's girl bossing.

Stealing your boss's press badge is girl bossing.

To be clear, some of her later choices and not so much, but stealing, stealing pig bosses press badge and altering it to be hers?

That's certified girl boss move.

Yeah, yeah.

The mayor shows up to like the the military command center and they they all end up butting heads because the mayor's like, I don't care about any of this.

Basically it's an election year but all this arguing's going on like the the French people are spying on them on everything going on.

We don't know who they are quite yet.

They're just.

They're in a very old UPS truck, which I I was, I got floored.

Seeing a a 90s UPS truck, I was like holy shit.

Yeah, Godzilla is in the subway system now, which you can totally fit in.

We also shot out shout out the the French guy bringing back coffees for everybody and handing A doughnut and coffee to Jean Reno's character.

No croissant.

No croissant.

No, I get this, this shitty fucking doughnut.

And what is this swill you call coffee and like?

You call this coffee?

I call this.

American.

Yeah, well.

Second best thing, frankly, in this movie after Animal is the running coffee joke.

Yes, yes.

Because here's the thing.

I think it's intended to be snobbish.

Like, oh, you don't like American coffee, but like bodega coffee sucks.

Y'all.

Like, I'm going to say that I don't care about New York City water.

Like bodega bodega drip coffee is not that good.

Y'all.

Yeah, I don't know if it's necessarily snobbish.

They they're just making fun of American coffee.

Which considering this is Roland Emmerich who is German I believe.

Really.

I I guess.

See.

I guess it's it's easy to read it either way.

Right?

Where it's read is like, look at these silly Frenchmen being so big.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I was going to say the Germans don't like the fucking French.

Yeah, no, it doesn't matter.

Like, no.

But also, like, do they like the American coffee?

Like, it could be a scenario of like, Yep, American coffee is terrible.

And Yep, the French people are going to be the ones that would say something about it, yeah.

I'll tell you this, I've.

Never heard of German coffee?

Well, they can import it from France very easily, yeah.

That's true.

And Italy, like the all directions are great.

Yeah, they're good.

Yeah, Nick says they should draw Godzilla out with food.

Because, I mean, it's an animal, right?

Probably just wants food.

So the military does that.

They they pull out a.

Bunch of Germans don't have coffee because they just take the cream.

Oh, there we go.

You're going to insert the drum dish, right?

That's that's it.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry to derail.

So sorry, Charlotte.

You were.

It's.

A It's a they they like.

They like white, not black.

It's a Nazi thing.

I'm making love Germans.

Yeah.

So no, I just didn't understand that.

So Charlotte, you were talking about a lot of?

Fish Yeah, yeah.

They have a lot of fish in dump trucks that they dump in a big fish pile.

It's a lot of fish.

They mentioned that several times, but they they're like we need this fish smell to permeate.

So we got to unseal these manholes, and one of the manholes happens to be the One, and it's the one that Nick Unseals happens to be the one that Godzilla's like right under and Godzilla rips through the concrete.

Can I?

Can I this is this is like 5 seconds backward.

There is a shot as they're setting up the giant fish pile where you get a shot of like 7 dump trucks, presumably all full of fish like in a convoy together.

And then you get a shot of like 37 helicopters all on frame at once flying like a like towards the camera kind of above like from a ground like perspective.

And it's just a comical number of helicopters.

And I just had this real it was I I disassociated for a moment.

It was very like end of Call of Duty Black Ops, right of just like the amount of America you're trying to cram on screen at once is startling to me.

We did not need 11 dump trucks full of fish in that shot to sell the idea, and we sure didn't need the several dozen helicopters on frame simultaneously.

They love having lots of helicopters in shots in several spots where I'm like one, too narrow of a space for that many helicopters.

But two, I don't think actually helicopters can be that close to each other without getting disrupted.

Like there, there's one spot later that that it's like maybe 15 rushed through and it's like, I don't think that works.

Like 15 of them in the same New York City block.

Like.

I don't think that works for a whole bunch of reasons I don't think I like.

And one of those is just human pilots.

I don't.

I.

Just don't think of it.

Advance war.

Shit.

Are you trying to sell me on here?

So Godzilla bursts up through the ground and Nick like, goes to take a picture of it.

And I mean, Godzilla's not being violent at all, you know?

Can we eat some fish?

And just wants to fish bee lines towards these fish I.

Like fish, I get it.

Yeah, Godzilla's tail does swipe some some of the communication lines they had up.

So the military's like, oh we lost calms time to fire and they start firing at it and it it uses some non not atomic breath, just like fire breath.

Basically, it's it's more like it's breath catches on fire when it sparks.

He's got a flammable burp, which makes Godzilla about as dangerous as John Belushi.

Maybe a little bit less, but yeah, I I said that as like a throwback that they do at a couple of points because it's twice where it happens, where he's roaring or they're roaring and like all the like the the cars like slam into each other and that's when the fireball occurs.

Yeah, that's clearly they're like naturalistic.

We don't want to have like a like a a ray of atomic fire, but we can make its breath be like flammable if it catches.

Yeah.

It's a pretty good looking.

Fireball It's great visually.

Yeah, so they they try to lock on the Godzilla with their helicopters, but they're not able to do that because allegedly Godzilla is colder than the buildings around it.

Which dumb?

That dumb.

Yeah, I sure.

I get some head cannon scenario that could allow for it where like the buildings are still pretty warm but like God damn it like.

I'm pretty sure most missiles are not guided by heat.

I mean, like, I know that's a thing, but like that, that's not how how a helicopter shoots a missile at another helicopter.

So I don't know.

They needed a reason.

I I know it's super easy to be like Oh yeah he's exothermic and but like that also doesn't fully make sense and they.

He's way too big to be cold, I mean.

Right, exactly.

Like even if he is exothermic, like he would have to have so much heat built up just to be able to be like fully functioning.

Let alone the fact that if we're going off of like a more dinosaur type design, it would be endothermic and then we get into Godzilla where it would be radioactive.

Yeah.

Right, right.

But sure, sure, heat seeking missiles don't work on them, OK?

But yeah, the helicopters cause as much damage to New York City as Godzilla does because they just keep shooting missiles at skyscrapers.

Which at least they call.

It they do bring that up at least, yeah.

They blow up the Chrysler Building.

Yeah, yeah.

The military continues to think that they've got it taken care of, but they don't.

They they end up either chased off or dead.

Is this the the, the, the, the sequence?

I'm pretty sure it is worth At one point there's a couple helicopters looking at like a hole in a building, like, oh, he's definitely in there.

And then Godzilla like fucking Friday the 13th like burst through the building.

So good.

So now we cut back to to Nick and he goes into this little drug store and buys a bunch of pregnancy tests.

And we know that it's because of the bloody goop that he found on the ground.

But Audrey catches him buying these pregnancy tests and he's like, oh, you must have quite the harem and just she doesn't question it again because like, what if he did?

I don't know.

But.

Surprisingly progressive for its time, we we're OK with polyamory.

Sure, they make up because he's like, you know what, I guess it has been eight years.

I'll give you a shot.

Sure.

And Nick uses the pregnancy test that he buys to determine that Godzilla is pregnant and must reproduce asexually.

I don't know that you can determine that something can produce asexually, just inherently that way.

I mean, I think this is an assumption you make from the fact that there's only one of these fucking things that you've seen, but that they know that's true, that they know of.

But, but the the counterpoint on this one is that parthenogenesis which is the type of asexual reproduction that they're going through is actually a thing that like lizards are known to demonstrate.

So like that component of it, if we're going off of like their lizards that have been exposed to radiation, that one makes the most sense for it all.

And it would be and it, you know, it's clearly how it actually functions in this movie.

It's one.

It's one of the less.

Far out ideas.

It's definitely a a note that they put in there that they probably had a script note of like we'll come back to this and expand on at some point and never did.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, Now he's like Godzilla's here to nest.

That's why Godzilla's doing all this.

And he goes to inform people of this and Audrey finds all the pictures of them together and gets all sentimental, but then grabs a tape off off of the table that magically has footage of the guy in the hospital that was catatonic.

How do they have footage of the guy in the hospital but not know about Jean Reno, who is the one there with the lighter in his face?

I'm wondering if the French sent some footage, like some Intel over to the Americans, but maybe not all of it.

Like maybe, like weren't.

I don't know.

We don't know how buddy, buddy.

Some of them are in this whole.

Scenario.

So she's like, oh, let's make up, but also let me fucking steal your top secret classified tapes from your tent.

Right, Yeah.

No.

She takes the tape, she goes and she, like, runs that information.

On that certifiably not a girl boss move.

Nico Tatopolis has done nothing wrong.

Right, so Nick tells everyone that Godzilla's pregnant and is probably taking fish to it's young.

Like they're probably going to hatch soon.

Like you don't have time to kill Godzilla and then find the nest.

You need to find the nest now.

And while they're all discussing this, Audrey's stolen footage gets put up, put up on the TV.

And so the military gets really mad at Nick because he was the leak, kind of, and he gets taken off the project, but the friendship taking an interest in him.

So he, he's going to catch a taxi out of there and Audrey shows up and is like, I'm sorry, I'm not really a reporter and I I just, I needed to save my career.

That's why I stole all your work and got you fired by the government and probably blacklisted.

And in real life, probably fucking court martialed or something.

Probably, yeah.

Can you be court martialed if you're a civilian?

I don't know how that shit works.

Yeah.

I mean, if you're on a military project, probably he's probably considered.

Military they They put you in Guantanamo Bay one way or another.

Yeah.

At least that gets him away from that, from that other scientist who was like sexually harassing him throughout the movie.

Yeah, true.

I thought she was.

But luckily that the.

I'm not saying that it wasn't like like, I'm not saying that I wouldn't have been.

That would have been regular flirting if it was me, but.

Yeah, but like, Nick just seems really oblivious to all of it.

He just wants to look at animals, you know?

Yeah, asexual king.

True, but luckily for Nick, that taxi that he got into wasn't really a taxi.

It was driven by Philippe, our French Secret Service man who's been figuring all this out for him.

And he tells Nick, like, hey, the military is not going to actually look for this nest.

They've just decided to disregard everything you've said for reasons.

So we want your help to go track down the nest because you're the only one that wants to other than us.

And so they they are heading off to that warehouse and Animal actually tracks them down because he's trying to, I guess, make things better between Nick and Audrey.

But he tracks him to the warehouse and overhears what's going on and heads out from there and he heads home.

And that's when like his wife has all the all the people in the surrounding neighborhood, like in their house to to be safe.

And he goes and he talks to Audrey and she's crying and watching TV.

The military is like covering up what she revealed to everybody.

So even after all the the horrible things that she did, it's not even going to pay off for her.

I think it covered up.

But Animal manages to convince her that they should follow Nick.

And I wrote and of the French, but I mean Philippe to the nest to show the world that Nick was actually right.

And there is a nest down there that they should have taken into consideration.

So they they all get ready to go, and they're about to head through like military checkpoints to get to where the nest should be.

And there's this scene where Philippe passes chewing gum to everybody.

Because they've got.

A and Nick is like, why are you all so they?

Just all eat the shit out of some.

Gum.

This is why I think it's as much making fun of Americans as it was making fun of the French You're.

Probably right, You're probably right.

Do Do Americans chew a lot of gum?

Well, but it's like the red solo cup thing.

Like maybe they just, like, see the advertisements and they're like, yeah, Americans and their fucking gum instead of smoking cigarettes.

I think there was a lot of that going on in movies and stuff in the 90s.

You know, if it was a tough guy, he'd be chewing.

On it's also clearly, like meant to be an outdated stereotype that like, is pulled for media because when when he has to speak up, he speaks in like a bad Elvis impersonation and like mentions like, yeah, I I know how to speak like an American because I'll I'll fucking love Elvis movies like.

Right.

I did see this movie with my stepdad, who was probably the target audience for that joke.

It's about 50 so.

Fair enough, but yeah, that was my next note, was the oldest impression.

They get another bunch of fish together for Godzilla, though, because they're expecting to be able to do the same trick twice.

Godzilla tears into the tunnel that like Nick and them are all in and Audrey and an animal are tracking them like down in the sewer system in the subway slash sewer system.

And Godzilla leaves the subway and goes up and like basically stares down an entire platoon and then looks at the fish and then looks back at the platoon and is like, no, I know what's happening here and I'm not doing it.

And like, leaves and they start firing at it, which doesn't do anything again.

But Godzilla ends up diving into the waters nearby.

And the military brings submarines into like the Bay next to Manhattan and just start shooting it.

And it ends up like leading missiles into other submarines.

Like it does some, I don't think it meant to do that, but like kind of cool if it did.

But Godzilla ends up bumping up against like, the the side of the the island.

And some torpedoes hit it.

And they're like, all right, we killed it.

Don't confirm, don't find the body, don't worry about.

It we've lost visual, therefore we won.

Right.

But while this is going on, Nick and everyone makes it to the nest and this is where animal goes, Oh my God, he trashed the garden.

Now I'm mad because they Godzilla destroyed Madison Square Gardens.

Like that's what I'm talking about.

Where it's just like this is like a religious significance to this place like.

Which fun fact, Madison Square Garden isn't in Madison Square because it's the third or fourth version of Madison Square Garden.

Like, it's not like the spot where like Marilyn Monroe like sang because that's a different location in the city.

Like Madison Square Garden has moved multiple times.

Did it get blown up?

Yeah.

Well, yeah, the the, the, the Kaiju attack of 1955 that we don't really talk about.

Well, they they go up into the gardens and everything is eggs.

And the scene where he's like, oh, there's three eggs here and they zoom out and there's like 200 eggs.

It's like, how did you miss the rest of the eggs?

Well.

The camera was zoomed.

In what are you talking about?

All right, sorry.

So they don't they don't even have enough time to place their their plastic explosives that they don't have enough of before everything starts to hatch.

Because Nick was right.

They're going to hatch now and all the baby Godzilla's start coming out.

And unfortunately our crew here smells like fish.

So they're all getting chased by hatchlings.

Now all of a sudden, they're all running out.

Which are like.

The implicate the implication being like if they didn't smell like fish, they would just leave them alone.

Which I don't buy.

Yeah, buddy, I hate to break it to you.

Those things would eat people anyway.

Yeah, especially I like.

The way hatch.

Because they do establish that there's they run out of food very quickly and they start eating like all the popcorn that's in the building and like they they start going on after anything that's edible after first wiping out all the fish.

Yeah, I do like that they hatch as fully grown and functional velociraptors from Jurassic Park.

Yeah, I was like I didn't get mentioned it earlier, but like I actually kind of don't.

I, I like the main Godzilla design.

Like, I think it's AII just think it's like kind of iconic in its own way.

You know, it's different.

But like and it's it's not necessarily derivative.

Like there is a bit of like the like amphibious element there and like the snow and stuff like that, like with some of the classic like Godzilla scales.

But these were like even like there's a couple shots of like the Baby Godzilla's where like one of them snaps at the other one.

And like the animation rig looks so close to like, the way the Raptors interact at the end of Jurassic Park is like, okay.

This is where I'll buy that comparison.

Not to mention that this is where the CGI is like way worse, because you're dealing with so many of them that they don't do all the, like the extra details to make it look really good.

And one area is that they make like you can see the the mouths really clearly and like there's a lot of spots where it just like looks like smooth CG.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm also pretty sure that when they put like 200 of them on screen, there's a bunch of like reuse.

Oh, I guarantee you, same time they are not animating that entire crowd.

They're copy pasting and compositing.

And the same thing like the the practical ones.

It seems like they just threw five of them together, but like there wasn't a lot of effort put into like how they move.

Yeah, so they're escaping and they they go through different parts of Madison Square Gardens and they end up like in the shower room and everything and animals like, whoa, this is where the Knicks, like, showered and everything.

He's very excited to be.

There as they're like trying to kick down the door, which is like that's that is interesting because if the only thing is the smell, like I feel like the chlorine smell by itself would kind of wipe out the fish smell.

And then if it's only the fish smell that's driving them, like just get in the water at that pool and just like kind of float with just your head, like no one's going to be chasing you then.

Right.

Well, Nick tries to contact the military first with the cell phone, doesn't get through, then with the pay phone, Remember those kids?

And he can't get through again because all of the lines are tied up.

So, you know, Philippe's like, all right, we got to figure something out here.

And some of the, the other Secret Service, French Secret Service people come around and Philippe's like, where's Jean Philippe and Jean Pierre?

And like, Oh my God, they didn't make So Audrey and Animal end up finding their way above some of the roof panels and they're calling through there now.

Meanwhile, Nick is getting pincer attacked by these hatchlings and he managed to get up into this elevator and like he goes up a floor and that's when it shows like the dinosaurs are eating.

It's all the popcorn, yeah.

Popcorn I.

Like that shot, though.

It is a good shot there, yeah.

It's a good shot.

That's a good shot as they look at him.

Like, it's a great look.

Here's the When this movie leans into like we are, we are putting little moments of slapstick humor in, like it does work.

Because the tone of this movie is not that serious.

Right.

So eventually the elevator takes it back up to Philippe and they start talking and then Audrey and Animal end up falling out of the the panels in the ceiling.

And Audrey's like, wait, I have an idea.

And it turns out there's a broadcast room nearby because they cover the games from there at the news station.

So they go in there and they get set up to to broadcast from there and they end up sending a message back to the news station.

And this guy, his name's Ed, who's running the the show there at the moment.

At first he's like, I'm not switching you on to the TV.

But then they, they cut over to the 200 reuse animation dinosaurs and he's like, oh, OK, I'm going to put you on the TV.

But that they're able to broadcast that that Nick was right and that there are hatchlings and they're going to very quickly propagate if they don't stop them because each one of those 200 hatchlings can make another 200.

As somebody who works in television, by the way, I'm very frustrated by how they got one part right.

Where like specifically telling the guy in the fucking engineering truck who works for the news station that he's got a tune to like tune the dish to like this specific, like transponder and then this, like, coordinate set in order to pick up the signal from the stadium.

But then they broadcast with like the full graphics package from the stadium.

And the stadium's not going to have that graphics package.

You mean like the logo?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They have like a mic.

They have a wireless mic with like the stations.

And The thing is like, that's never going to be how that works, right?

Because this is inside baseball.

Inside whatever sport, I guess.

Inside basketball player, Yeah.

Yeah, in this case, like the arena doesn't have like an agreement to have like a like with that specific news station, right?

They're going to have like a crew who who does everything, and then that signal has to get picked up and bounced to whatever news, whatever TV station they have an agreement with to air that game locally.

If it's not a national game, like, and it's an ESPN type of scenario and it's going to be the master control on that end of things that actually applies all the great.

So you're never like they wouldn't have a mic for.

I'm sorry I this is my job though, and I hate it.

Well, it's also a spot where we do get like a funny joke of just like a quick, like she's live and she's like, no, what are you talking about?

Oh, we're live, OK And like, cut back to it, which is like a good moment there.

Also the reason this works and we were debating about this or or rather we were referencing it before we got on the call is so I the what I heard and what the subtitles said on the version I watched is different than the one that the clip that we just shared.

But like it works because that there is an intranet or Internet depending on which persons I heard.

I heard intranet and the subtitles said intra.

I heard intranet but I turned on the subtitles and it said Internet.

But like would it make sense if the network is on Internet?

Because Internet is usually like a closed.

Yeah, I think it's supposed to be their.

Environment, yeah, I think.

There's supposed to be a a hard line between them and the new station.

I think that's what they're trying to present as the reason why they have a connection.

Yeah, but.

That wouldn't be an intranet.

Wouldn't it in this scenario?

I mean, but also an Internet, but yeah.

Would not have a hard Direct Line to the studio.

They would have.

It would have been satellite.

It would have not been like.

Right.

So either way, it all falls apart the new.

Station wouldn't have been isolated, so yeah, yeah.

So they they do convince the military that there is a problem.

And the military is like, all right, we're going to blow up Madison Square Gardens.

So they're all trying to get out of there before that happens because they have like 6 minutes.

Now all of a sudden they're just doing it and they go over the fact that they've already exhausted the fish supply again.

And then there's this scene where they're trying to get away and Nick like knocks over a gumball machine and a bunch of the the baby start rolling all over the place because they got tripped up by gumballs.

And they they get to the last room and there's like less than 30 seconds until the attack starts.

But everybody manages to get out because Philippe keeps shooting down chandeliers and it scares the the hatchlings away just just enough.

That they get the most video game ass bullshit I've seen.

Yeah, well and then they barricade the one door they walk out of and the the other doors they don't even touch, which the the Godzilla's don't even like bother with.

Yeah.

I was going to say like I didn't know if I can make video game references here, but it was very like Arkham where like as they're dropping the chandeliers, even though it interrupts them, they very kindly like wait to like bother engaging with either of them.

God, you're so right.

So Madison Square Gardens gets destroyed, but it turns out Godzilla isn't dead, which I know is very shocking to everyone watching.

And Godzilla looks down and sees all of its dead babies and looks and is like, OK, well, you're the first living thing that I've seen.

So I'm killing you so you get to fucking deal with this.

Yeah, and just starts chasing everybody like through an Alleyway Philippe.

Like hot wires, a taxi with a knife.

Which is not how that works.

Hell yeah.

Cool, but not how it works.

They they start getting away.

And this is another scene where they just start naming like, oh, you got to take this freeway, you got to take the FDR, you got to go down this street, got to go down 34th, like, I don't know what any of those are.

So yeah, what all the stuff you're saying, right?

Now, I mean it's all for New Yorkers and also like the other people in the car are not familiar with this, like arguing.

So that part is is both accurate and also like both sides of it is accurate, like the the debates that they're making.

But aside from that, most of these are just like the general like, oh, but in the rain, Like, no, the issue is that people have abandoned their cars and that's like this.

It's a weird ass city right now, but it is true because like Nick and and John Reno are the are the 2 characters that are we're supposed to relate to here.

In that it's like, OK, yeah, the New Yorkers are just bitching about New York stuff, which is exactly what happens when you're with New Yorkers in New York.

Yeah, so there's a lot of cat and mouse between them and Godzilla.

Godzilla just continues to chase them around.

They end up speeding past some military trucks, and Nick has Philippe turned the car around and he ends up throwing like the the taxi number to O'Neill, like the guy that was helping them in the military earlier.

So O'Neill goes to figure out the radio frequency for the cab using like the booklet that they have, and meanwhile they're still running from Godzilla.

Godzilla gets stuck in a tunnel.

O'Neill manages to figure out the radio frequency, and they they come up with a plan.

They're like, all right, you got to get Godzilla somewhere else, which is like, OK, cool, we're stuck in in the tunnel, but sure, so they decide to go to the Brooklyn Bridge, and they do this by blasting high beams into Godzilla's retinas, which that would get me too, honestly.

And they start driving towards the Brooklyn Bridge, and Godzilla manages to catch the car in its mouth, but using a an electrical cable that's hanging nearby.

Like up.

Inside.

Oh, I hate this.

Oh, it's so bad.

Oh, it hurts.

Sticks the cable up in between the tooth and the gum and zaps Godzilla.

Like where you get a popcorn kernel shell stuff.

It's a it's a fucking a live wire.

Yeah, Derek can't deal with like under fingernails or like in between team.

Stuffs.

It's bad, yeah, because we're exposing my fucking weakness now.

My enemies all know how to.

Defeat me so that they managed to get free and drive off.

Godzilla gets stuck in the the bridge suspensions and they just start skewering Godzilla from both sides with with missiles and it slowly dies from the wounds and they they, for I guess the second time in the movie start doing like a wow, what a beautiful creature.

Yeah, type of thing where like Nick is.

Saying as they murdered the shit out of this unique and animal that they just killed all of its babies.

Right, right.

They genocided the species.

It's like what a beautiful creature as it dies.

The.

Creature is beautiful.

It's death is sad.

Yes, everyone cheers.

Godzilla's dead.

It's the end of a 90s movie, so O'Neill get some commendations.

Audrey quits her gross job with with that horrible boss.

Philippe steals animals tape because he's going to scrub it, you know, Audrey and and Nick kiss.

But The thing is, there's the the last scene is that there's one egg still alive in Madison Square Gardens.

I'm sure they're just going to go kill it, but what if?

Yeah, What's if?

And then there's like 10 minutes of credit.

So many credits, it's so long.

You got to play the Puff Daddy Led Zeppelin tie in song.

The soundtrack to this movie was also like, what were you guys doing?

Because none of this, none of the famously like on the Godzilla soundtrack songs made it into the movie for more than 10 seconds.

I was going to say I don't recall hearing anything but the original.

Style.

Yeah, they're all like background shots.

When we're like we're in an office or we're in the bodega, they're playing the song and then they move on to a new scene.

Yeah, yeah, so that's the movie, guys.

This isn't really news to anybody who was alive in the 90s, but holy shit, did people not like this movie?

This might be one of the most aggressive, like high profile Hollywood like backlashes in modern like in in in let's say like pre.

I don't, I don't know, like this is a thing that's starting to become more common in the modern era, right?

But this didn't happen back then.

This Morbius before.

Right.

Well, no, because it because it is actually a box office success.

It's just a critically hated movie.

Like, like it.

Because everybody's.

Going to ask like when you say when you say people hated this.

Like obviously critics hated it.

Probably a long time.

Godzilla fans like the general audience, like I.

Think a lot of a lot of people thought it was like a fine blockbuster, but like I knew, like a lot of people, not just Godzilla fans, like, hated this movie.

People who were going to have strong opinions, period had had strong opinions that were negative about this movie as opposed to a lot of people who were just going to be like, Oh yeah, I saw the movie that had we'd been seeing all the commercials and they told us to go see the summer and it had buildings that blew up and like that's kind of fun.

Which is why it was $150 million budget and it made 379 million at the box office, which is did good.

Yeah, like that allows for the doubling and then some that is required for it to be considered profitable.

Like this is a successful movie in terms of like are the actual business of making movies.

It's just, man, did people not like it?

Well, and like, the thing to remember too, is that we talked about like Godzilla fans didn't like it.

But Godzilla even, like then, right in the 90s, like Godzilla's a massive cultural icon that even people who didn't watch Godzilla movies like understood Godzilla right as a as a nuclear metaphor.

You know what Godzilla's supposed to look like, act like, behave like.

And, you know, people kind of came thinking they were going to get Godzilla.

And like, ultimately, this is not a Godzilla movie.

You know, actually I had a breakthrough watching this movie and I finally realized what it is because people have said for ages that the main defense that a lot of people had for this movie, like to talking to people who like Godzilla but didn't like this movie is well, if you take it on its own merits and and don't see it as a Godzilla movie, it's it's actually a pretty good, pretty fun with Blockbuster.

And I agree.

But his realization it's King Kong.

Yep, it's not Godzilla.

It's King Kong.

Thank you for getting there, King.

Kong.

But it's a lizard.

And that makes sense because to so much of the Western world especially, we are talking about a producer and director who do not really know much about Godzilla.

You give them a giant monster movie.

Their primary frame of reference is King Kong when you talk giant monsters in in Europe and the US.

So they made something that was much closer in spirit to like a king, like how King Kong has traditionally handled Kong as a creature, naturalistic, kind of big, not crazy, powerful, not like not working on that level.

It's a very different approach.

It's very funny because of course in the modern day we've done the opposite.

We've taken King Kong and made him a Godzilla, you know?

But that's that really put a lot into perspective for me.

But like because it's not just like people who saw the movie who didn't like it.

A lot of so many people who had worked on the Godzilla franchise over the years like very publicly did not like this movie.

Tons of former like cast and creative like crew walked out famously the I think it was it was Satsuma the the 80s and 90s Godzilla suit actor walked out of the movie.

It's it like Toho basically immediately said, Nope, you don't get to make any more of this.

I don't really know what agreement had to be made because famously there's that late 90s cartoon that is a follow up to the movie.

I don't really know what allowed that to get made, but Toho is famously very protective of the Godzilla license.

They.

They probably had a license where they were allowed to do spin off like material related to this particular movie but not able to make sequels or like what was considered new like new works.

But like, this is the era of like the men in Black cartoon of like a lot of movies coming out with cartoons, even after the the wake of like all the like the 80s properties that were like not meant for children that got cartoons like the Toxic Avengers or RoboCop, Like, but we're still well in that period of like, Oh yeah, well, a movie came out that was a big thing this summer.

They made a movie about it.

Or rather, they made a cartoon about it.

So yeah, like Toho basically was like, we're not approving anything else.

This is, yeah, you're done.

So there were plans to do a whole trilogy of this and and you know nothing.

You know, I think my like because look I clearly was in the camp of like fuck this movie for a very long time.

And I've grown up and I've come around and I really do like the movie on its own merits and respected for it was trying to do.

But like it did not hit.

This is a very divisive movie and it did not hit for a lot of folks.

I mean even.

Talk about some of those reasons, like like let can we can we start with the monster itself?

Like, we've we've all made allusions to our thoughts about the design for Godzilla.

But like, I actually think that this is an interesting spot to look at in terms of like what they were going for in terms of of making it different while also being being on paper the same creature as as the the larger franchise like.

You can see where they they were like, OK, and then we've got the spines and we've got, you know, like they were trying to incorporate some visual elements of Godzilla to not make it, you know?

I I think that like, if you look at it from the perspective of people who wanted to do Jurassic Park but with Godzilla, the but and also Godzilla and also just do like their own like monster movie.

Like there are a lot of things about the design that I think wouldn't have been that big of a deal.

I think that it's posture being more like reptilian or or more bird, like really would have been fine if there were other aspects of it that didn't like look so different, like I think the head's the biggest difference in terms of the overall.

Pack.

It's got a very box.

Like HEAD, which is super is so big it's.

Got that, Jay Leno, Chip, yeah.

It's it's really T Rex and it's really iguana like like those elements are are are there like it's arms are are big or there's enough spots where it's arms are like close to the ground where I'm like oh why isn't a quadruped to begin with And it's because it has to be Godzilla that it's not a quadruped especially like when it's like crawling around and like in tunneling.

But I but I think the overall, like, general look of Godzilla isn't that bad, minus the head.

Because like we were all hyped about like all the commercials that were like just the foot, like where it's like they're actually going to do like a Godzilla.

It's like kind of a runner and kind, you know, like all the T Rex.

Kind of more realistic than than a dude in a suit.

Like, remember right before this The Lost World came out, which had a Godzilla parody in it.

You know, like there's a sequence later, like late, later in the movie where Japanese people are running from a T Rex like on purpose to do those kind of homages, so like.

Well like look at the look at the Stan Winston design that that, you know again I I posted in chat earlier and anyone else can famously look up.

There's pictures everywhere like the biggest differences if you want to get right down to it if you put that dude oh like bent forward more you change his head and you take somebody fat off him you're not that far.

I mean the the spines are slightly different but like you're like you're not far off.

Right.

And also we need to be clear that like some details don't matter in the broader sense of a a redesign, like the shape of the spines.

Some, yeah, some people are going to be very particular about.

But like the presence of the spines is more important than the shape in terms of like, here's a redesign of Godzilla, especially for a new movie and a new franchise, you know?

Like Godzilla's spines have been shaped all kinds of different ways, and they're going to get even weirder in the future.

You know, so matter of fact, the movie that Toho makes to bounce back from this has maybe the most radically different spines on Godzilla we've ever seen in Godzilla 2000.

So, you know, that's not important.

I think the head is a big part of it.

The head.

And he's skinny.

Godzilla's always been a thick.

Boy, it's skinny and also small like.

Again, this is the Godzilla or the the King Kong comparison, like the the idea of him climbing up around on buildings and stuff like as cool as it is to have him like kind of like curled around the Chrysler Building, that's a different kind of monster concept than what Godzilla typically is.

Godzilla normally towers over the buildings around him, or at the very least is, you know, as big as any of them.

So it's not like there's any sort of like climbing sort of like, you know, arboreal creature to him.

But the fact that I say arboreal creature, that's the King Kong part.

Yeah, yeah, Well, and like, I don't actually think the 98 Godzilla's that much smaller than Godzilla originally was, but.

The city's very big.

That's the thing.

A New York City's way the fuck bigger than any place Godzilla's been before now.

And also, we did spend the 80s and 90s gradually increasing Godzilla size.

You know, he went from 50 meters for however many years to 60 to 80 to 100 fucking meters tall.

You know, we doubled the size of Godzilla over the 80s and 90s, and now we're back down to a littler guy, and we put him around bigger buildings, like, he just feels smaller.

He gets taken out by missiles, which is a thing that Godzilla usually just tanks and gets mad at.

Like, again, it makes sense from the perspective of we're trying to create an animal, not a God, right?

Yeah, officially he's 55 meters, which puts them about the same size as the original Godzilla.

Yeah, but you know, I I think it's because even Devlin will tell you like that.

He thinks it was just ultimately the original sin.

Is the approach to make like a supernaturalistic tone down Godzilla?

That's not a thing that appeals to people when they're looking for Godzilla.

They're looking for the God part.

Matter of fact, this version of Godzilla has been retroactively renamed Zilla by Toho as his own unique thing, rather than as an incarnation of Godzilla because it took the God out of Godzilla.

Is is the the the, the phrase that was used.

I do want to say it's it.

I am happy that Zilla's reputation has kind of come back around where Godzilla fans are much better at appreciating this movie and respecting Zilla as his own thing rather than having to compare him against Godzilla.

It does kind of help that he's taking some licks in the meantime.

I mean, they make some jokes about it in in an upcoming early 2000s movie where there's a joke about like, didn't Godzilla surface in New York?

The Americans thought it was, but it was something totally different.

And then Zilla famously comes back in Godzilla Final Wars and gets his ass beat.

Which kind of like for a lot of folks was the like, all right, we're good now.

That's enough beating up on on the little guy it.

Allows them to come over from from from a deal to a face.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So like it is.

It is.

And I think also like people have come to respect, you know, we brought up that animated series, like people broadly really like that animated series that they made.

So I think that there was this intense initial reaction to this movie, but people have God, it's only been 26 years, but people have cooled over time and really come around on not being so fucking reactionary about this movie.

But it does shape the entire course of things to come, because we were going to have a whole Hollywood Godzilla series.

And the reaction to this movie not only made Toho bring Godzilla back from retirement way earlier than they originally planned, cause Toho was not going to come back to Godzilla for a long time.

They wanted another 10-15 year break, but like it also made them even more protective with the license to the point that basically nobody in the West was allowed to make anything Godzilla for ages.

Pipe Works famously got to make those couple Godzilla games on the, you know, GameCube, PS2, Xbox, the Wii.

But man, if you read some of the stories about how controlling Toho was behind the scenes, like it's pretty clear that even, you know, 7-8 years later, Toho was very defensive of that license.

So it's a super weird that.

Plus, like we talked about the 94, the unmade 94 version of the script, there's a graphic novel out of the 94 unmade Godzilla movie, right?

There's actually been so much more kind of like appreciation and understanding for what this movie was at this point in time nowadays, but but it did change everything going forward.

So I mean, yeah, 'cause, like when you look at this movie as as a whole, like getting back to that whole, like, oh, if you take out the Godzilla part and you just look at as a as a monster movie, there are a lot of things going for it that are pretty similar to like other Godzilla movies.

Like, I just recently watched him Godzilla.

And there's some some straight up similarities in terms of like, OK, yeah, we get our scientist specialist in to try to figure out what the hell this thing is.

That's sort of like coming up and then that he's kind of iguana like when he first shows up, you know, like.

That you?

Could make arguments for this movie to to be fine.

And I I think that you know I talked about this on the another past episode, the the movie itself is dealing with the fact that Roland Emmerich is not very good at having really well developed characters.

That usually the the strength of the pieces that Emmerich has are that we have so many of them and this movie doesn't have that many of them.

And the ones that are there in a lot of spots feel like that they that their parts were like deliberately cut shorter.

So like I alluded to that the one scientist lady who's like hitting on on on to Topless the whole time up until he's like Ousted.

I feel like that was supposed to be the Canon romance of this until they decided to sort of shifted around to this like the the reporter subplot and sort of make that the the main through line.

Like I think this movie should have been more of a like the way that at the end of Independence Day Goldblum and Will Smith like are together.

But they've been apart this whole movie, and they have totally different arcs throughout the whole thing.

And that they they bring everyone together a little too soon and then just kind of together Ish, you know, either either directly physically together or thematically together from that point on.

Because like the Audrey fight with with Topless isn't like really enough to be make them no longer like connected characters in this world.

Like in fact it almost like makes it like, well, you know, they're going to get back together.

So they have to get physically back together so that they can romantically get back together.

Like the movie itself is like, it's just a little too small for, for what it is when when you get down to it.

The monster threat of this movie is actually one of the bigger monster threats of all Kaiju movies.

Like the idea that we could have an ace actually reproducing, you know, 180 foot tall creature.

Out there that is just going to keep breeding 200 or more at a time and that they're just going to keep on showing up and becoming, you know, this this crazy thing like like that's a dune level event like that.

Godzilla 98 is fucking tyrannids.

Like, if you want to get down to it, like it's a swarm creature that's going to devour everything if you let it get out of control, you know?

And I think that's a really, it's in fact like I'm kind of surprised that nobody has ever tried to like bring Zilla back and like lean into that a bit and.

The form of Zilla's is actually really terrifying to humanity in a way that a single Godzilla is not.

Yeah, yeah.

I just think like I I.

Yeah, I was going to say, I've got like some similar thoughts about like again just you know, watching this and and the original one kind side by side like on paper there is a lot of like the classic like it starts with the fishing boats, there's kind of, you know, tracking it towards.

The there is standing in the footprint.

Yeah, which I was like surprised, like watching the.

I was like, oh, this is like almost verbatim.

But I think the structure of the movie isn't as much the problem for me as, you know, like you just mentioned, like the characters, but like, the script is the big one, right?

And it's like, it's fine.

I watch a dumb movie.

I'm not surprised that there's dumb characters, but it's like whereas like watching the original 1 or some of the more recent ones like -1, like you always have like the science exposition dump or like you know, the either the science plan or the military plan.

In the better ones it feels like real scientists speaking about real sciency things or like a real military strategy.

And then this, like the words that they say, it's just like does not sound like anyone in that role would ever speak that way because it's obviously written by someone who has no idea what they're talking about.

And like, normally I don't get hung up on that stuff, but it's just like how everyone just it's hard to sit through when it sounds so dumb and there's so much very early.

50 in terms of or or rather hastily rewritten me, I guess would be a more accurate term, since again, I do legitimately think that the like the the other scientist character was supposed to be a bigger part.

Well, Sony had already spent all this money on the original version of the movie for like so many years, and was was really trying to get this thing out the door, only to find out in 94.

Like, OK, now we've got to start over from scratch because of the people we picked.

And I mean, like, they're clearly willing to keep investing in it, but you can't tell me that there wasn't, like deadlines and budget limits hanging over these people's heads to get this thing out the door.

So, you know, like, yeah, it was.

This was clearly not the cleanest.

Production.

Yeah, 'cause there's a lot that you could also feel like bring a a consultant in to talk a little bit about the science here, or talk a little bit about the thing here.

Or just a script doctor, just like tighten up some of the interactions between people and you would have had a much stronger piece.

Because the beats are fine ultimately.

Yeah.

I also think like we mentioned Independence Day a few times, like that movie really rides on the chemistry and the strength of Goldblum and and Will Smith obviously.

Like, I think most of the cast and this is fine, like Hank Azaria definitely is the best character in the movie like you guys said.

But I vehicle history aside, I like Matthew Broderick.

Like, I enjoy him as a comedic actor, but like still to me in this, even every time I watch it.

I don't know if it's the writing or the direction, but he just stands out a little bit.

I feel like I would have been interested to see the movie with someone else in the lead role just to John.

Reno kills, but he's not in that much of movie.

And then the young lady who plays Audrey is, I mean, she falls flat to me completely.

Well, and she doesn't have much of A career after this either.

Like this would have been a star making turn for her, but it's just not a movie that she did much of A service to and did no service to her career.

I don't want to say she's not like a good actor, you know, or anything.

I don't, you know, I mean, again, like, it can just as easily be like, you know, bad writing doesn't help, you know.

If she's not getting directed correctly, that can tell you a lot.

But it is weird that like you have several actors in this movie who have a lot of natural charisma.

Like you all pointed out Broderick, you know, I said Renault, Hank, Azaria.

And you just don't get a lot of those guys with all the charisma interacting.

You know it's usually people talking to background characters or it's Nick and Audrey who again like Audrey has no chemistry and not a lot of like presence or charisma.

So yeah it's it's it's missing that that that Smith and Goldblum chemistry is is a great call.

But, you know, I mean it's I think, I think this is going to be, this is, I didn't know when I was setting out that this was going to be the podcast where I ask people to take it easy on Godzilla 98 but will go so hard on Shin Godzilla when the time comes.

I'm the most backwards fucking person, apparently.

But you know, like, I do think, like it's this is a messy movie, but it's time for people to move on.

You know, the the impact it made on history and on how this franchise would develop in the future is set in stone.

This marks the very much like an opportunity that became the end of an era, and everything will change after this.

But like people who are still holding on to, like, strong, negative feelings about this, it's time to move on.

Guys.

It's OK.

It's fine.

Yeah.

And ultimately like this is the thing about a lot of like hated properties of of older eras where like in a lot of cases the reason we're we're you know looking at them again and and taking in this all is that the sting has gone away because we are getting good material since you know we've we've gotten plenty of great Japanese Godzilla movies.

We've gotten plenty of Great American ones now like.

So it's hard to look at this and see it as like well, this was the end.

This screwed up everything for everyone.

Like, it didn't, obviously.

It did take time.

And like, for people who wanted like a new American Godzilla movie that was, you know, strong and like, you know, scratched all the itches that they had related to the Godzilla franchise and this, didn't they?

They did have to wait a long time for it.

And there I understand that like, I've I am a giant comic book nerd.

For a long time, that was a problem.

But also now I do look at the glut of stuff we have there, and it's hard to look back at the things that I used to be annoyed about and not feel like, well, yeah, at the time it kind of sucked.

But now we've like, we've gotten enough great ones.

We've gotten enough great ones.

Of all the of.

Whatever nerd property you have that you can spend all your time watching it and not have to, like, rewatch that much.

Yeah.

Let alone I think it's kind of a bad ones.

I think it's kind of a great diagnosis that like at the time this felt like the end, you know, and and that probably drove a lot of very that drove a lot of the backlash is like this was the one shot we were going to get to like big like legitimate.

Godzilla is probably how some people viewed it.

And then that chance was ruined for quite a long time.

And then for Godzilla fans in in general who didn't see a lot, it's like, oh, well, who knows what's going to happen to even the Japanese stuff after this, whether it gets brought over, you know, foreign movies making it to the US was still not as consistent a thing at the time.

So it felt like the end and it so clearly wasn't.

I have one one last little note because this, this is shaping up to be one of our longest, if not our longest episode.

But I have one last note of a thing that for all my defenses sits a little weird with me because like, this is a movie that is absent of ideology, right?

That is not the kind of movies that that Emmerich makes.

You know, they're they're about big chest beating, like, you know, nationalism, parentheses.

Head empty, right.

Yeah, 37 helicopters.

It's a helicopter movie.

It's a big helicopter movie.

That's that's a genre.

And I'm so glad you invented that term, Jeff.

But it feels weird to make a Godzilla movie, to keep his origin as like a thing that was mutated through, like the dangers of nuclear testing, for so much of that stuff to be kept right, but then to shift it to the French.

And it's not like, here's the thing, in the grand scheme of things, like Europe needs to catch a few strays, right?

Like, it's not like America has a has a a, a a monopoly on like nuclear testing and like the the damage we've done to the environment and like, you know, kind of cultural imperialism over like the global South and the global east, likeable east isn't really a term.

Whatever.

You know what I'm trying to fucking get at?

But like, this sin was ours, right?

We're the ones who bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right?

We're the ones.

Yes, we're the ones who did the Operation Castle nuclear tests that, like sank that fishing boat that so heavily inspired the original Godzilla movie along with the bombs.

It feels really weird to have a even if the director is German, to have like, an American Godzilla movie where we go.

Actually, the French did it.

Yeah.

It feels a very American way to do it though, considering like it is it.

Is.

Like we're the only nation to have actually done a nuclear strike on another nation and and all this stuff.

But fuck the French.

Yeah, yeah.

And it again, I don't think I'm not even going to like accuse like anybody of like thinking that through of like we're going to shift the blame.

I don't think it's anything like that.

But I do think if you understand the importance of like the nuke, you understand like, where all of this comes from, the origin of everything.

It is ultimately America's sin, right, that we dropped the bombs.

So Godzilla like, despite the fact that so much of this franchise has been and and you know, original director Ishero Honda like clearly had an attitude of like we have to look beyond national borders.

And you know, very much like did that that sort of thing that was a lot of classic pulp sci-fi did were like the good things that that people do are emblematic of all of us and the bad things that people do are emblematic of of the worst of all of us.

And those things are not defined by lines on a map like.

And even the original movie I think sometimes can be softer on America than people remember.

Like we're still the ones who dropped the bombs, and it feels real fucking weird to have France make Godzilla.

But there is a very obvious reason for why it happened that way, though, which is the the United States Marine Corps participated in the filming and provided materials and it.

Absolutely.

And you and I don't think the American public was really ready for a movie that was like, hey guys, just like there's people today who still defend dropping the bombs.

Like a a shocking number of left wing people who defend dropping the bombs.

Like, 1990s America is not ready to face, like, the the weight of what we did to Japan, right?

Yeah, it's and just.

And again, movies made, you know, sponsored by the US military, like presented by never be critical.

Like in no way.

And like unfortunately, this is sort of a continuation of, you know, the rah rah militariness that is President Emrich's stuff prior to this, even though that it's usually subversive to a degree.

Like we are allowed to have a military that fucks up a lot in this movie, which is not something Michael Bay would have done.

Yeah, you're allowed to be subversive to a certain degree, but we're not allowed to interrogate real world history.

Yeah, we're not allowed to just like outright say like man, like there are consequences.

Even if it even if you came down being like what's it, it was the right call at the time.

Like you could not imagine.

Like the Defense Department.

Like okaying just the phrase there were consequences to our actions.

Yeah, no, no, no.

We got to make Captain Marvel a fucking Air Force recruiting ad, right?

It's somebody who likes that movie because I like Marvel trash.

Don't judge me.

But yeah, like anytime you get the military involved because you want to use their their fun vehicles instead of CGI ING them in, like that's kind of what you rush.

You can't.

Or not just CGICGI the men and have like make it not look like specific planes or helicopters or anything like that, if exactly.

Like, if you want 37 helicopters, you do got a cozy up to the US military.

Going on going on a lefty rant for a hot second because I can't help it.

Like, God damn it, every movie that has like any sort of backing from the US military should have a disclaimer that it's presented by the US military or by the Defense Department.

Like it is an insidious thing in in our movie making that like is constantly there.

It doesn't have a similar.

Disclaimer is like the no animals were harmed during the making of this movie.

Like you can't throw that in there in the credits like like this and the NFL should both.

Like it should be above the above the title presented by the US Defense Department because Jesus Christ like that it causes so many script changes.

Like I guarantee that's why the why it was written that way where they were like originally was going to be the Secret Service or something related to military intelligence and they were like well, no, we actually can't do that.

It has to be something different otherwise, you know, XYZ reasons and had to rewrite it to be the French and they're like, well, we can get Jean Reno and it would be oh great, great.

Everyone will love that part of it and he's.

It's a classic guy, Jean Reno.

And he's great for for the purposes like, like the the his involvement in the way they are involved make enough sense that we're not like really like thrown too much by it, but like, God damn it, this movie is is sponsored by the US military, as are so many others.

And that's why the US is not allowed to, like, have anything that looks bad remotely in it.

It's still not the most rah rah America thing in a Godzilla movie.

Which is still Godzilla that shot in Godzilla, King of the Monsters, The 2016 one where fucking Godzilla.

Or 2018 whenever it was where Godzilla's like advancing on Boston, framed and escorted by US fighter jets.

Well, that's the difference between.

Your post 911 right there.

Which is which is the most America fuck yeah bullshit to ever make it into this franchise.

But I do love it because I'm trash.

Guys, Do we have anything else?

I mean, fuck, we've covered a lot of ground with this movie, but does anybody else have any burning things to say?

Nope.

All right.

I'm going to take that as a no from everybody, folks.

That is a wrap on this episode.

Thank you all so much for joining us on our journey so far.

And this season, the end of season three, we're going to be taking a break for a while, a much needed break.

I know season three went on a lot longer than we anticipated because there were a lot of delays due to horrible life circumstances on my part.

But we're going to take us a much needed break before we come back.

Jeff, you got anything you feel like plugging for our listeners?

Not really.

Just our good old SDGC live show Every Thursday, not Easter.

It's You got interest in video games.

Make sure you tune into that.

But no.

Otherwise I'm I'm happy to do my own thing.

I've got a.

Free of social media and and otherwise content creation outside of SDGC and it's such a beautiful space to be in.

I'm envious.

Yeah, Case.

What about you, bud?

I am not free of social media or of content creation.

So you can find me on most of the social media platforms at Case Aiken except for Instagram where I am still holding on to my pretentious aim Screen name from high school which is Ketzel.

Collateral 5.

Which is yes, a Brainiac 5 reference not just in a randomly assigned number because this was so early on that no one thought that they would have multiple ketzel collateral but so that's where you can find me on the socials.

If you want to find more things where I am talking I host two podcasts actively right now.

One is another pass which as we talked about did an episode on this movie and I I I feel really good about it.

I I didn't want to retread too many of the things I said in that one.

So if you would like to hear our speculation on like what could have been done.

And also, I used to live in New York, and my coworker, or pardon me, my Co host is a like a a a lifelong New Yorker.

And if you want to hear her ranting about like the high highways or like like what should have been going on in the background of of various shots.

And then check that episode out, 'cause it was a lot of fun.

Or check out the episode of of that we did on King Kong with Derek and Charlotte.

Like both really fun entries or you know like lots of other good episodes in there you could check out there.

It's it's a fun show.

I I like making it it's it's fun to do.

I also do Men of Steel which is a Superman and Superman adjacent show where we talk about the Superman archetype, why it's alluring how it can be subverted sometimes.

You know great great examples both from Superman comics but also from things you know like Invincible or the boys or or whatever.

You know we we talk about the archetype more than anything in particular and on that note I do a YouTube series called Superman Analogues which is part of the certain POV media YouTube channel where I do like 5 to 10 minute like little rants about like this is what's important about this character who was kind of inspired by Superman.

So check all those out.

The podcast you can find anywhere you get podcasts.

The the YouTube series you can find on certain POV media or on at YouTube on or on YouTube at certain POV media.

Pardon me pronouns or not pronouns.

Articles are hard sometimes.

We've been at this for two hours.

So, like, we're all a little.

Yes, and and like I said.

What's the English?

Language at within this for two hours.

All of these are different words that kind of mean the same thing here anyway.

So check all that out and and yeah, yeah this is so much fun coming back on because I I really enjoyed the show it it had quickly become part of my regular rotation when it launched and I'm just happy to be back talking repping a weird one that I just like.

I just can't get the the Led Zeppelin like cover that Combs did out of my head.

When we talk about it like that marketing campaign was real hard and I was 14 in the exact target audience.

Truly the strangest thing.

This was before.

This was before Sony got Eminem to do everything but what we could have had, huh?

Folks, if you've enjoyed this episode of Castle Bravo, please consider rating and reviewing us on your podcast app of choice, and recommend the show to your friends and cohorts to help us beat the whims of the almighty algorithms.

That's all we've got this week.

That's all we've got this season, so we'll see you next whenever.

Take care, everyone.

Castle Bravo is a production of Derek Van Dyke and Charlotte Landale.

All editing is performed by Derek Van Dyke.

Special thanks to Kyrie Lamont for our art assets and to David Van Dyke for our theme song Pools of Memory.