Less than a year after a Hollywood studio put an Americanized, digitized spin on the Japanese rubber reptile, the company that created Godzilla in 1954 announced this week it will revive their old-school, analog version of the beast next December, citing Japanese fans' umbrage at the bastardization of their gargantuan cult hero in the big-budget U.S. film.
"The shape of the American version of Godzilla was so different from the Japanese version that there was a clamor among fans and company officials to create a Godzilla unique to Japan," a spokesman for Toho Studios in Tokyo said in a release.
According to Variety, three screenwriters are now working on Godzilla Millennium, which will go into production in April and be released next December. The feature will pick up where Godzilla vs. Destroyer (1995), the 21st Godzilla sequel, left off. At the end of that film, the Big G perished in a nuclear funeral pyre and young Godzilla Junior matured into a fully-grown mutant to carry on the four-decade-old, city-stomping tradition.
No details about the new project were released but, as in all previous Japanese Godzilla movies, the monster will be brought to life by an stunt actor in a cumbersome costume, trolling through those oft-ridiculed miniature cities and battling model tanks and fighter planes. The most recent Godzilla movies were budgeted at about $10 million each.
Sony Pictures-TriStar's $120-million Godzilla, made by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (the guys behind Independence Day) and released May 20, made about $137 million in the U.S. and about $365 million worldwide--respectable numbers but, considering all the "Size Does Matter" hype that preceded the movie, Godzilla's box-office bite was much less than many had anticipated.
On both sides of the Pacific, fans of the prehistoric palooka judged TriStar's remake harshly. Not only did Newzilla eschew any thematic ties to the Toho films, it bore only vague resemblance to its Japanese progenitor (it was lean, muscular and fast, whereas the original is stout, bulky and ponderous).
Still worse, it hardly acted like its namesake. For Toho's Godzilla, a typical day at the office involves trampling major landmarks, eating nuclear reactors and taking on the Japanese military in daring all-versus-one battles. TriStar's monster ran away from the army, ate fish, and was more interested in tunneling underground than trashing Times Square.
Thus, devotees lamented, the possibilities inherent in a high-tech, modern remake of the king of monster kitsch and camp went unfulfilled. When the picture was released in Japan in July, one distraught fan told the Los Angeles Times, "That's not Godzilla...He got killed with four missiles, but the Japanese Godzilla is almost bulletproof. And the Japanese Godzilla is handsome, but the American Godzilla is not."
On Toho's Japanese-language Website, producer Shogo Tomiyama (who will oversee the making of Godzilla Millennium) issued a statement this week, pledging to deliver "an undefeatable monster" in a story with "new style" and "new mystery."
"Godzilla is Toho's cash cow," said Ed Godziszewski, author of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Godzilla. "Especially in Japan, they probably feel that Godzilla's image took a hit [with the TriStar movie], and they want to restore it. The best way to take the bad taste out of people's mouth is to make their own Godzilla movie again."
Meanwhile, Sony Pictures officials have said in recent months they still believe Godzilla can become a franchise property in the U.S., and they plan to make a sequel, probably for release in 2000. Emmerich and Devlin have said they likely will not be involved, except perhaps as executive producers. A Sony spokesperson said Toho's new movie--which is being made for domestic consumption in Japan, and would likely only receive a direct-to-video release in the U.S.--won't affect the future of any American Godzillas.
"Sony Pictures has asked us not to make our own version of Godzilla, but there is no contractual relationship barring us from bringing back the [Japanese] version," a Toho spokesman told Variety. "We do not want to lose the diehard Godzilla fans."