Godzilla (1998) is the movie for this Sunday's "monsterdon" watch party over on Mastodon, our fediverse sibling!
- Just start watching that movie this Sunday, January 11th at 9pm ET / 8pm CT / 6pm PT which is 2am Monday UTC
- and follow #monsterdon over on mastodon for live text commentary. For example, you can follow that hashtag here: https://mastodon.social/tags/monsterdon
- I usually open two web browser windows side-by-side on a computer. But you could follow the mastodon commentary on a phone app while watching the movie on TV or something.
How to watch the movie:
- tubi (availability varies by country): https://tubitv.com/movies/694144/godzilla
- uBlock Origin adblocker on Firefox should work for that tubi link
- archive: https://archive.org/details/godzilla.-1998.-uhd.-1080p.-blu-ray.x-264.-dd-5.1
- it's usually streamed on https://miru.miyaku.media/ at that time
- if you want to pay and/or watch ads, look here: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/godzilla-1998
a reboot of Toho Co., Ltd.'s Godzilla franchise.[8] It is also the 23rd film in the franchise and the first Godzilla film to be completely produced by a Hollywood studio.
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Godzilla received generally negative reviews from critics.[14][73][66] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 20% of 150 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "Without compelling characters or heart, Godzilla stomps on everything that made the original (or any monster movie worth its salt) a classic."[74] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 32 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[75] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B−" on scale of A to F.[76] Criticism highlighted by film critics included the film's script, acting, and directing,[77][78][79] while fans targeted the film's reinvention of Godzilla, which included its redesign and departure from the source material.[b]
Roger Ebert from the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four, noting that "One must carefully repress intelligent thought while watching such a film. The movie makes no sense at all except as a careless pastiche of its betters (and, yes, the Japanese Godzilla movies are, in their way, better—if only because they embrace dreck instead of condescending to it). You have to absorb such a film, not consider it. But my brain rebelled, and insisted on applying logic where it was not welcome." Ebert also pointed out in his review that the characters Mayor Ebert and his assistant Gene were Devlin and Emmerich's jabs at his and Gene Siskel's negative reviews of Stargate and Independence Day.[77] Gene Siskel particularly singled out this aspect, writing "why place us in the movie if you aren't going to have us be eaten or squashed by the monster?" Siskel placed the film on his list of the worst films of 1998.[citation needed] James Berardinelli from ReelViews, called the film "one of the most idiotic blockbuster movies of all time, it's like spitting into the wind. Emmerich and Devlin are master illusionists, waving their wands and mesmerizing audiences with their smoke and mirrors. It's probably too much to hope that some day, movie-goers will wake up and realize that they've been had."[84] Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote that the film "is so clumsily structured it feels as if it's two different movies stuck together with an absurd stomping finale glued onto the end. The only question worth asking about this $120 million wad of popcorn is a commercial one. How much further will the dumbing down of the event movie have to go before the audience stops buying tickets?"[85]
Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post queried, "The question is this: Are the awe-inspiring creature effects and roaring battle scenes impressive enough to make you forget the stupid story, inaccurate science and basic implausibility?" Thoughtfully disillusioned, he wrote, "The cut-rate cast seems to have been plucked from the pages of TV Guide. There's Doug Savant from Melrose Place as O'Neal, a scaredy-cat military man who looks like Sgt. Rock and acts like Barney Fife. There's Maria Pitillo (House Rules) as Nick's soporific love interest, Audrey; The Simpsons' Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer as a wise-cracking news cameraman and superficial reporter; Vicki Lewis of NewsRadio as a lusty scientist. Shall I continue?"[86] Owen Gleiberman writing for Entertainment Weekly thought "There's no resonance to the new Godzilla, and no built-in cheese value, either. For a while, the filmmakers honor the sentimental paradox that seeped into the later Godzilla films: that this primitive destroyer, like King Kong, doesn't actually mean any harm." He opined that the film contained "some clever and exciting sequences", but ultimately came to the conclusion that, "It says much about today's blockbuster filmmakers that they could spend so much money on Godzilla and still fail to do justice to something that was fairy-tale destructo schlock to begin with."[87]
