Opiniones de usuarios

Like many people, I wasn't fond of this when it was first released. Revisiting it now nearly twenty years later I can say my opinion has changed quite a bit. It's still not a great Godzilla movie, at least not how I quantify that, but it is an enjoyable "big monster movie" on its own merits. The special effects are great, the action is pretty well staged, and the music is surprisingly nice. The only real problems for me are that the cast is a little too goofy at times (I think they were going for some kind of Jurassic Park humorous/serious blend) and the movie does run a little long. Overall, though, I think it's an entertaining movie that deserves a second look.

(Flash Review)

Starting off relatively well, this turns into Jurassic Park as it felt like a dinosaur chase movie rather than focused on the mythical Godzilla. This new Godzilla also doesn't hold true to many of the original's traits such as what it eats and how it can be killed. Now on American soil of course Godzilla ravages Manhattan while the military try to take him down as they create a ton of (needless) damage. The media desperately looking for the inside scoop also create their own damage by stirring mass hysteria. One special scientist learns Godzilla is pregnant and warns that it's nest of eggs must be found to avoid hatching more of these beasts. As expected, this is full of explosions, destruction, roars, human ineptitude, light romance and heroics. Your typical Hollywood CGI fluff action monster movie with some notable plot holes.

This movie is far from amazing, but it doesn't entirely deserve the maligning it gets. Is the pace plodding sometimes? Yes it is, especially in the middle act. Is the script weak? Yes it is rather. Is the direction unfocused? I think so, but it is Roland Emmerich, a director I never found particularly good anyway, that said I actually think it is one of his better directing jobs here. Is the acting bad? Sort of and sort of not. Matthew Broderick is very bland, and his character is poor, same with the female lead whose acting style doesn't belong but Harry Shearer is fun and Jean Reno is surprisingly dignified.

I did love the idea of Godzilla though. There may be the odd hole here and there, but thanks to a quite riveting final half hour especially it remains interesting. The scenery is splendid, the editing is good enough, some sequences are entertaining and Godzilla while different is very well designed. The score is also memorable. And while there are flaws to Godzilla, I couldn't help being entertained. This film isn't Emmerich's best, but contrary to what others might say I don't think it is his worst either. Overall, it has a lot of problems, but I kind of liked it. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Well, being a longtime fan of the GODZILLA/GOJIRA films as a youngster, I remember seeing this with great anticipation. I, unlike a lot of people, was not at all disappointed. This film was exactly what I was hoping it would be at the time. Sure, it certainly wasn't as charming or as funny as the films I loved as a kid, but it was a lot of fun. I loved the action scenes, the look of the monster was crazy to me, and the plot was simple enough for a first time viewer to get right into. Seeing it again 10 years later, I had the same reaction. My opinion of this film hasn't changed one bit. I guess everybody's complaints stem from how this has no charm or any kind of attempt at being cute or original. I guess that's understandable, but I still don't see what everybody's problem is. This was supposed to be a fun, exciting, and action packed thrill ride. That's all it is, no more, no less. I personally think that it succeeds at what it achieved to be perfectly. Matthew Broderick may not exactly be an action hero, but his character sure was quirky and funny. Jean Reno was as good as usual.

This is an entertaining movie, so i like it anyway, and if you don't agree then fight me

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Godzilla" (1998) is definitely not a bad guilty pleasure movie. It has pretty good special effects, nice pacing and some good action sequences involving Godzilla himself. Well its not entirely a Godzilla everyone knows, its more of a dinosaur but still its a good looking creature, especially when it interacts with environment (city buildings in this case). The downsides of this movie were pretty lame script at the moments, zero chemistry between Matthew Broderick and Maria Pitillo (and her poor performance as well) and just the look of this movie - literally almost all movie time action takes place at night, sure because its much more easier (and cheaper) to make all the big special effects sequences in a bloody dark, but not so much fun to watch it.

Overall, "Godzilla" is a guilty pleasure. As a pure fun flick it does its job, nothing else and nothing more. A pure guilty pleasure.

Matthew Broderik and Jean Reno star in what in the industry is considered a "bomb." It cost a lot but didn't make much money. However, it would be unfair to consider this movie a bad movie. Instead one can view this English version of the relatively more cheesy 1950s Japanese "Godzilla" movies with Jurassic Park overtones as entertaining, blockbuster-like. It attempts along with Broderik's own wonderful personality to insert a fairly large dose of comic humor throughout the movie. Yet the balance between comedy, drama, and horror is more uneven than the best of these monster movies. There a bit more gore than the typical Jurassic Park movies, but not necessarily over the top considering how gory movies have become. There are also lapses in rational or logical chase scenes were Godzilla seems to speed away from helicopters but can't catch up to a speeding taxicab. The attempt to create a somewhat sympathetic monster is also intriguing though it wasn't completely successful in pulling it off. Overall, this is a feel-good action monster movie that could have been better, but it wasn't nearly as awful as the dollar numbers indicate.

No, I don't think so! I'm still not clear why the American public despises this so much. Can you say "bandwagon"? IT IS NOT BAD AT ALL! What did you people expect? The Sound of Music??? I went in this movie to see awesome special effects, good use of digital surround sound, and stunts. AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I GOT!!! "Oh man, but the dialogue, the acting, blah blah blah". Oh yeah, I forgot THAT'S why I was seeing this movie! And I saw American Beauty for the action, Shakespeare in Love for the stunts, and Gandhi for the special effects! STOP TRYING TO DRAW BLOOD FROM A STONE! If you don't know exactly what your $9 is getting you into when you walked up to the box-office, maybe you should have stayed home and watched Nick at Nite!!!

Rating: an unashamed, much deserved 10 out of 10!!!

"Godzilla" is a great example of a big budget summer movie that doesn't really work. It plays by the big summer movie rules but it misses the mark. The first half of "Godzilla" is very good. But after an hour or so, the story takes a wrong turn. It actually becomes pretty silly for a while. I don't want to say that "Godzilla" wore out its welcome but it is too long by at least twenty minutes. That said, I still enjoyed watching "Godzilla" tonight.

What the heck were they thinking. This is not even close . All they did was use the name. Horrible !!!!!!!!!!!! Give me the Japan Godzilla any day .

What were some of you expecting? Shakespeare? Tennesee Williams? Its a movie about a giant lizard in New York - just accept it for what it is! Its entertainment and no more - and on that level (at least for me) it works just fine! Its's not "realistic" enough? Again, how realistic is a giant lizard supposed to be? It's a FANTASY movie! Besides, I thought the special effects were pretty impressive! And its not as if the ORIGINAL Godzilla movies were good, with their actors in rubber suits and laughable, ridiculous "monsters" (gamera, mechagodzilla, etc etc)- the Godzilla in THIS movie was an animal, not a monster driven by a need to destroy things! I didn't think Matthew Broderick was bad at all - although I DID find Animal's girlfriend extremely irritating with her shrill voice! Really, I didn't think this movie was bad at all - no, its not a profound meaningful work or art, but then who expected it to be? It's an enjoyable diversion - that's all anyone should expect!

I remember sitting in the movie theaters when I first saw the preview in which a giant monster green foot crushed a T. Rex skeleton in a museum. It was a good preview, and I thought the movie would be just as good. I was wrong, the preview was better than the movie itself. The movie was boring, plotless, unfunny and annoying.

The acting is not very good. Aside from Inspector Gadget, I think this is the worst that Matthew Broderick has ever done. The plot was almost nonexistant, much like the original Godzilla movies. The monster Godzilla and its babies were ok, but nothing too spectacular. I was hoping a few of the main cast would be eaten or fried or something, which didn't really happen.

Most of the jokes really didn't work, the story was boring, the characters were flat and annoying and the movie itself, although it had a few fair moments, was very dull. Your kids may enjoy it, though.

The 1954 Japanese classic film Godzilla is very good as a horror film and a fun movie, which was thankfully recently given Criterion treatment. Alas, in the West the film has not always been available in its true form. In 1956 it was butchered thoroughly, massively edited and manipulated into Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, a goofy movie in badly dubbed English. If that weren't enough, in 1998 the Americans decided to butcher Godzilla again, with a movie about as bad- Godzilla, by the makers of the smash hit Independence Day (1996).

Because of my love of Independence Day as a youth, when I saw Godzilla '98 in theatres I assumed I had to like it, and tried to convince myself it was a good movie, much as with Batman and Robin the year before. Time has made me realize how much of that was self-deception, however. Godzilla '98 is loud and often stupid, and the action scenes never really blew me away. Most of the damage to New York City in the film is done not by Godzilla but by the army trying to kill the creature. The moments of comic relief all fall flat (we were supposed to be rolling over laughing every time someone called Broderick "the worm guy"). The movie repeatedly pulls the same tricks, with people thinking they're clear of danger before Godzilla pops up suddenly again. The dialogue is often painful, as adult characters interact as if they were children ("You were supposed to be my friend, I trusted you.")

Some parts defy logic. Why can't the military ever actually shoot Godzilla? Are we really supposed to believe Godzilla can pick up a car in his mouth and crunch on it but the car and people inside it are still functioning? The Nostalgia Critic also did a good job illustrating how the "Babyzilla" scenes imitate the raptor scenes in Jurassic Park (1993).

Admittedly, I still love this movie's soundtrack. "Macy Day Parade" by Michael Penn and "Untitled" by Silverchair are beautiful songs, though unfortunately they don't seem to be in the film itself, which favours "Come With Me" by Puff Daddy which is only sort of okay because it sounds like "Kashmir." The special effects are mostly good, although we don't actually get a good look at Godzilla besides his feet. The movie also had an attractive ad campaign. One commercial showed Godzilla stepping on and destroying a tyrannosaur fossil, and that unfortunately isn't in the movie either. Ultimately, Godzilla '98 has none of the charm of the Japanese original, and is more of a cliché Hollywood disaster movie.

This film's legacy is that it was a gigantic misfire that was trashed by critics and hated by the fans it was trying to impress. I think a lot of people hate this movie because they think they are supposed to hate it. If you look at this movie for what it is, not what people wish it was, you will find that is one of the most expertly constructed monster movies ever made. Roland Emmerich is a master action filmmaker. The action scenes in this movie are clear, coherent, breathlessly suspenseful and exciting. Comparing Godzilla to the action films of today makes you realize the extent to which the filmmaking craft has deteriorated. So many action scenes now are a dull, sludgy CGI mess, with quick cuts and sloppy editing that render the action incoherent and weightless. This movie feels so grandly cinematic and epic in a way that movies just don't feel anymore. The lines between film and television have been blurred now, and that cinematic language has been lost.

The main criticism of this movie is that this Godzilla does not have the characteristics of his Japanese counterpart, which is true and valid. This Godzilla is not impervious to traditional weaponry, he runs and hides and uses stealth attacks instead of being a slow, lumbering wall of destruction, and his mighty atomic breath beam attack has been reduced to more of an oral flamethrower. But it is important to realize that a Godzilla movie had not been theatrically released in America for 14 years, the only way most Americans knew of Godzilla was through TV reruns and VHS tapes. He was simply not a major cultural force in America at that time. What was a major cultural force was Jurassic Park, so it makes sense that in order to create the largest draw possible, the filmmakers would reference Jurassic Park more than traditional Japanese monster movies, because that's what most audiences would be familiar with. Indeed, Godzilla and his offspring are more akin to a mutated T. Rex and raptors than to the big G himself. Also, the conception of giant movie monsters is fundamentally different in America vs Japan. In America, giant monsters are mutated animals on the loose, that cause a lot of violence before they are inevitably destroyed by military might or scientific ingenuity. In Japan, giant monsters (called kaiju) are immortal, indestructible, god-like beings. Japanese monster films operate much more in the realm of fantasy than their American counterparts. If Godzilla 1998 had gone for more of a traditional Japanese approach, wide audiences might not have understood it in the same way as they would a giant T. Rex run amok in NYC.

Forget expectations and cultural baggage. Watch this movie for what it is, and you will have a good time.

There oughtta be a law that says, if you purchase the rights to a recognized entertainment franchise for your own use, you are required to USE THE REAL PRODUCT, OR AT LEAST TRY TO REPRESENT IT. This is TriStar buying a famous monster's name and then trying to use it to sell a totally different monster.

Not that this is necessarily a bad monster. Heck, I actually LIKED the monster, even if they are just animating the Jurassic Park 'raptor' model on a macro scale, especially for the baby monsters.

The point is, this is obviously not Godzilla, not by any stretch of the imagination. They don't even take the time to explain WHY the beast is CALLED 'Godzilla' (or actually, 'Gojira', as they take enough time to make a lame joke about). The solution: don't call the movie 'Godzilla'. Give your new monster a new name and put the movie out.

Still, even if they HAD done this, it would have been a pathetic movie nonetheless. The monster, interesting though it was, is a big part of this problem.

GINO (Godzilla In Name Only), as the monster will hereafter be referred to, simply doesn't seem to exist. Yes, the rubber-suit Godzilla was hokey and campy, but he had some stage presence, for crying out loud. GINO is nothing but a special effect. Since it can't actually be filmed against a real background, even a campy miniature of downtown Osaka, it never gets the chance to truly interact with its environment. When your audience can't believe in your title character, your movie fails.

Another little suggestion for future filmmaking: either DO, or DON'T. I'm referring here to the tacked on 'fire-breathing' scenes that appeared twice in the version I saw.

Being a longtime Godzilla fan (the real one), I was involved in several discussion groups and online lists while this movie was in production. One of the questions that kept recurring was, 'Does the new Godzilla breathe fire?' The answer we finally got from the source was 'No, it does not,' but they didn't have the guts to stick by that. In a pathetic attempt to win the true Godzilla fans over, they spliced in two post-production scenes of Gino bending low over burning debris and apparently just exhaling forcefully enough to LOOK like it was breathing fire. Bad, bad choice.

Speaking of bad, bad, how about that dialogue? How hard IS it to pronounce 'Tatopoulis', anyway? It's a FOUR-SYLLABLE-NAME. It's not even a remotely challenging Greek surname, so the attempt to make a running gag out of it falls as flat as the acting itself.

This movie can't be fairly compared to the Toho Godzilla series, because the two are totally different. Apples and oranges, as the saying goes. However, taken on its own merits, TriStar's 'Godzilla' is still pathetic.

I was there when people were seeing it in theaters, people were enjoying it and telling other people to go see it, the vast majority of people didn't walk out and say, "This was certifiable garbage". - Critic 2021

It won a lot of awards and it sold a lot of tickets. Cinematically it was cutting edge (at the time), and it was entertaining. I would argue this film is the reason so many people watch/know Godzilla today. Before 1998 it was just an old monster movie mostly cult fans cared about (at least in my part of the world).

I can't say it's flawless or has everything (no film does). It isn't scientifically accurate, but it's a monster/disaster film all of them are unbelievable (look at King Kong, or Planet of The Apes). It doesn't have monsters battling the whole time, quite frankly it was more believable than the newer one with mothra, and had better characters. (Not that the newer one doesn't have advantages).

In all, watch the film if you are interested, it may not be as true to the source material (I don't know, nor have I ever cared to) but so many people these days say it's bad just because that has become the expected perspective. Or maybe modern critics can only stand out by bashing formerly popular films?

Some corny parts and bad acting but still pretty entertaining overall. Fast-paced with lots of great action throughout. And Godzilla is a beast!

I can't argue it's good, but it's fun.

(about 4 viewings, 8/12/2025)

After bizarre attacks on a Japanese freighter, first the French then the U.S. learn of the existence of an apparent modern "dinosaur". When it's suspected that radiation from nuclear weapons testing in French Polynesia may have instead produced the monster, biological radiation specialist Dr. Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) is called to the scene. While investigating the monster's path of destruction, a new sighting arrives--just off the coast of New York City!

It's no secret that Godzilla has been much maligned. Even Fangoria editor Tony Timpone stated in an editorial that he thought it sucked, and he's usually willing to give movies the benefit of the doubt. The reasons why director Roland Emmerich's version of Godzilla is hated are as varied as people stating opinions. But I tend to think that there is also a strong bandwagon effect with this film that will be tempered by time. There are already signs of a number of people giving it a second look and lessening the severity of their criticism.

The chief complaint seems to come from a very vocal but relatively small crowd of fanboy purists--they dislike that Godzilla is different here. In the Japanese films, made by the Toho production company, Godzilla is a guy in a rubber suit who stomps on models of buildings and such. He tends to lumber, as irrelevant military attacks on him provide pretty fireworks. Most Godzilla films feature him fighting some other monster, "professional wrestling" style, and Godzilla arbitrarily falls down and gets back up as he is attacked and attacks with various "death rays" from his mouth, eyes, etc. Now that might sound like I don't like the typical Godzilla film, but that's not true. I like them quite a bit, but a big part of the reason why is that most of them are very cheesy. I'm a fan of bizarre cheese/camp, and you get tons of that in Godzilla films.

But I'm not a purist. To me, there's no good reason why Emmerich's Godzilla needs to be similar to the Toho incarnations, which in fact are often quite different from and inconsistent with each other, too. At this point, I see Godzilla more as a recurring character type--think of the various instantiations of Dracula or Frankenstein throughout the 20th Century. The Toho films can't really be seen as chapters in a single, long story. But whether their arguments are wrong or not, the fanboy purists are at least noisy and prolific, and too many people are followers.

If Emmerich would have given us a guy in a rubber suit, acting just like the Toho Godzillas (not "Godzilla"), with the typical gobbledy-gook of a Toho script, this film would have bombed even worse (if we can call a 100 million dollar film that made a profit a "bomb") and the fanboys would have still found something to complain about. Even though I love the Toho Godzilla films, too, we can't deny that they do not tend to be bestsellers on video in the U.S., despite the fact that they're readily available for purchase.

So what Emmerich gives us instead is an epic, expensive-looking film that spans a number of genres, features more coherent dialogue and subplots than a typical Toho Godzilla film, and showcases a redesigned, mostly cgi cast of monsters, where Godzilla looks and behaves much more like a "real" giant, mutant lizard. For those of us who are not purists, who do not care if our opinions match the majority, and who evaluate films on all or their technical and artistic levels, it's difficult to deny that Godzilla has many merits.

For example, the cinematography in this film is gorgeous. The sound design is superb and the soundtrack (score and songs) works well with the film. All of the action sequences, and they comprise a large percentage of the film, are expertly staged--Emmerich doesn't resort to darkness, blur-cams and overly quick cuts like many other directors. It's always easy to follow the narrative during action scenes, it's always easy to see what's going on, and it's always coherent. That goes for the non-action scenes, too--the entire film is ingeniously designed in terms of the progression from one sequence to another. Also, the cgi is amazing--it's often difficult to tell where it stops and mechanicals/models begin.

But the story is great, too. Broderick's Tatopoulos is an attractive anti-hero, a nerdish scientist who solve dilemmas with his professional knowledge. The other hero is Jean Reno as Philippe Roache, a humorously enigmatic French "insurance agent". The obligatory romantic subplot, involving Tatopoulos and Audrey Timmonds (Maria Pitillo) surprisingly avoids clichés, and Timmonds provides a launching pad for an all-too-honest satire of the media.

Satire is high up on Emmerich's agenda. Godzilla not only satirizes the media, but the military, New York/New Yorkers, film critics, and even monster movies. While the film is simultaneously giving us a lot of genres--sci-fi, horror, adventure, war film, drama, etc. the most unexpected motif is the almost cartoonish, spoof-like humor. Godzilla is more frequently laugh-out-loud funny that anyone expected it to be. It's not just one-liners and overt jokes, although those are certainly present, but the amped up intentional absurdity of situations such as the final taxi cab "chase".

Even if you think that Godzilla has some internal problems as an artwork (and I agree that there is a slight clunkiness in parts of the narrative flow--it caused me to subtract a point), there's no way it deserves the trashing it's received so far. This is at least a well-made film on a technical level, and if you have any taste for slightly campy sci-fi/monster flicks, you should find much to enjoy here.

This is in fact a really decent movie in my opinion. Sure the human characters can be annoying at time,that doesn't mean it is a bad flick. Now that doesn't mean I like the movie, it is decent but think to yourself, what is really wrong with this movie?

• Follows more on Jurassic Park then Godzilla - Rain Overdose - Annoying Human Characters - And much more.

The reason why a lot of Godzilla fans hate this movie, is not for the reasons above, it is just the fact that is called "Godzilla". If it was renamed something else (or renamed 'Zilla' to 'keep' it in the Godzilla Movie Family) then this movie wouldn't be as hated. But still if you are able to push the flaws somewhere else and tell your brain that this isn't a Godzilla movie, then I encourage you to watch this movie.

Ouch. I show up at the theater, innocently expecting a movie about a big lizard running around eating people. Unfortunately, I get a movie about a bunch of poorly-written characters trying to deal with Godzilla. Come on, Godzilla is who we all came to see, not a bunch of pathetic characters! The damsel in distress flops her way through every scene, amazing me with exactly how little energy she can have. I don't even see Godzilla until about an hour or so into the film (yes, I know, that was a marketing ploy for the commercials to make people want to see the movie, but once you're in the theater, they've kind of got you), and I'm in serious pain from the gargantuan plot holes. Godzilla leaves his/her home in the middle of the Pacific, swims through the Panama Canal and around Florida to New York because that was the most convenient place to lay eggs??? Matthew Broderick is brought to the group because he specializes in mutations caused by radiation, but when he suggests that Godzilla is perhaps (this is a shocker) an animal mutated by radiation, everyone acts shocked and thinks he's crazy! What??? This movie is just so horrible until the end, so my suggestion to anyone who hasn't seen it is to show up with only a half hour left in the movie. That's the only possible way I can see someone enjoying Godzilla.