A 400-foot (122-meter) dinosaur-like beast, awoken from undersea hibernation off the Japanese coast by atomic-bomb testing, attacks Tokyo. En route to an assignment in Cairo, journalist Steve Martin stops off in Tokyo on a personal visit. While there, the local media begins to report on strange happenings at sea with ships being destroyed and entire crews being lost. They travel to a remote Japanese island where they encounter a gigantic prehistoric beast, dubbed Godzilla, which has apparently been awakened by H-bomb testing. Godzilla soon appears in Tokyo harbor but several attempts to destroy it fail and the city is destroyed. Their only remaining hope is a new weapon. I'm going to be reviewing both this and the far superior original film. I'm not a Godzilla fan, in the sense that I haven't really seen any of the movies all that much and for the most part I haven't really gotten into the ones I have seen other than when the Americans tried it in 2014 and the original. If you want my humble opinion, while it does have it's problems the original to me, is one of the best early monster movies I've seen, capturing a grim tone and while it wasn't anything special in terms of story and characters what worked was the execution. Okay the plot? Steve Martin inserts himself into scenes from the original, sometimes dubbed (poorly with nearly racist accents), other times not and having Martin ask another Japanese guy what they're saying or what they're doing. These dubs also conflict with the character of those in the original movie to the extent of… I seriously didn't think a fundamental character motivation could be screwed up as badly as they did with Serizawa. He casually shows his girlfriend (or in this one "Arranged to be wed fiancée") his experiment despite him saying in both the original and this that he doesn't want anyone to know because of how he'd be remembered and how they'd use it later. I'll also say this movie is weird too, when Godzilla is revealed Steve Martin stands for a bit instead of running with the Japanese characters. In short, I seriously didn't think re-editing a completed film would result in so much of what made the original being great lost in translation. And I know this is a given considering but Martin also does nothing to the story! The most contribution he makes is recording a tape describing what Godzilla is doing to his boss… "Yes, I'm sure this tape would survive (if it comes to that) attacks from this monster that's 400 feet tall, can survive H Bombs and breathe heated radiation all over Tokyo." All in all, Don't… Just watch the original. Having watched the original Gojira right before the American produced debauchery which is King of the Monsters, I can't help but be disappointed in it. Adding in American actor Raymond Burr, who did alright in the film didn't mesh at all with the story or editing of the original Japanese characters. The movie didn't have the dark atmosphere like Gojira portrayed which led to the Godzilla scenes being a little duller. Many of the important scenes describing the message of nuclear bombing was cut from the American version leaving a bad taste in my mouth. As a modern day movie watcher I would suggest to definitely skip this movie and check out the original Japanese original since dubbing foreign movie classic is surely an outdated method.
Moodac replied
293 weeks ago