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Godzilla
Directed by	Roland Emmerich
Written by	Roland Emmerich & Dean Devlin
Produced by	Dean Devlin
Starring	Matthew Broderick Jean Reno Maria Pitillo Hank Azaria
Music by	David Arnold
Distributed by	TriStar Pictures
Release dates	May 19, 1998
Running time	139 min.
Language	English
Budget	US $125,000,000 (according to The-Numbers.com)

Godzilla is an American science fiction film directed by Roland Emmerich and starred Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria, Michael Lerner and Kevin Dunn. It was inspired by the Japanese film Gojira (Godzilla).

Tagline:

• Size does matter.

Plot

Nuclear testing done by the French off the French Polynesian islands, causes an iguana to mutate into Godzilla. Godzilla then travels to New York where it wreaks havoc and uses Madison Square Garden as ground zero to use as its nesting grounds.

Music

The film's soundtrack featured songs by such artists as Puff Daddy and Jimmy Page ("Come with Me"), Jamiroquai ("Deeper Underground"), Rage Against the Machine ("No Shelter"), Ben Folds Five ("Air"), and Green Day ("Brain Stew (Remix)" ). The David Bowie song "Heroes", covered by the Wallflowers, can be clearly heard in the background during a restaurant scene early in the movie. David Arnold's orchestral score provided the music for the rest of the movie, and roughly four minutes of it is included on the album.

Sequels

A film sequel would have involved Godzilla battling a mutant insect creature, and the story bears a resemblance to the official Godzilla film Godzilla vs Megaguirus.

The filmed spawned an animated series which continued the storyline of the movie. In this series, Nick, the professor hired to provide information on Godzilla, discovers an egg that survived the destruction and becomes almost a father-figure to the youngling, who imprinted on him as a parent. Subsequently, he and a group of friends form an elite research team, investigating both Godzilla and numerous other monsters, including an alien invasion that recreated the Godzilla seen in this movie as a cyborg (This caused some confusion in the new Godzilla, who was unsure whether to side with the cyborg or Nick, but, in the end, chose to accept Nick as his 'parent').

Marketing campaign

The marketing campaign for Godzilla was multi-pronged in its execution:

• The tagline, "Size Does Matter", immediately became indistinguishable in the public consciousness with Godzilla.
• In the month or so before its release, ads on street corners made references to Godzilla's size in comparison to whatever medium of advertising the advertisement was on.
  • Examples: "His foot is bigger than this bus", "His eye is bigger than this billboard", etc.
• Bits and pieces of different body parts of Godzilla were shown on TV commercials and posters, but never the entire body; this was to add a bit of mystery as to the design of the creature, ideally prompting people to see the film because that was the only way to see the whole creature.
• Taco Bell had tie-ins such as cups and toys that promoted the film. The Taco Bell chihuahua was also at the height of its popularity in Taco Bell's television commercials. During the summer of 1998, several commercials pairing Godzilla with the Taco Bell mascot were produced and aired, including several with the chihuahua trying to catch Godzilla in a tiny box, whistling and calling, "Here, lizard, lizard, lizard." When Godzilla appears, the chihuahua says, "Uh-oh. I think I need a bigger box."

Box office

Godzilla grossed $136,314,294 domestically and $379,014,294 worldwide, bringing back its $125 million budget. Here is the chart when the film was on the top 10.

Trivia

• Zilla also appearns in Godzilla: Final Wars, and is annihilated in short order by the "true" Godzilla in Sydney. The commander of the alien invasion remarks upon Zilla's destruction, "I knew that tuna-eating monster was useless"; this could be taken as Toho getting back at TriStar for their perceived mistreatment of Godzilla.
• Some people believe that Roland Emmerich hates the Japanese Godzilla, but this is not true; in an interview, Emmerich actually said that he was a Godzilla fan and understood why some fans dislike his creation.
• Many fans of the original Godzilla gave this Godzilla nicknames like "Zilla" (taking "God" out of it), "Deanzilla" (because of Dean Devlin), "Fraudzilla", and "GINO", an acronym for "Godzilla In Name Only."
• The old cook from the ship refers to the monster as "Gojira" when he is in a semi-conscious state. Gojira is and always has been the proper name of Godzilla in his native Japan, but was somehow mangled (intentionally or otherwise) in the process of translating the original film into the American Godzilla, King of the Monsters; in the film, Audrey Timmonds comments on this in the cantina.

• The characters of the mayor (Lerner) and his advisor are clearly caricatures of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. Reportedly, the less-than-flattering portrayal was because both had given negative reviews of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich's earlier film, Independence Day. When the actual Siskel and Ebert reviewed Emmerich's Godzilla on their show, it received two thumbs down and Siskel commented on being spoofed in the film, saying it was "petty."
• The American version of Godzilla is shown in a 2006 Doritos commercial, which parodies the bait scene, replacing the tons of fish with a Doritos trailer.
• In the film Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, it is mentioned that a creature had attacked New York City and that American officials thought it was Godzilla but the Japanese knew it was not the monster; it is obvious that they are referring to TriStar's remake of Godzilla.
• The Histeria! episode "More Explorers" opened up with a cold opener in which a gigantic Big Fat Baby rises from the sea and goes on a rampage. The film is directly referenced right at the end of the segment by way of the caption "Smell does matter."
• The Japanese freighter attacked and destroyed by Godzilla in the opening of the film is named Kobayashi Maru, in homage to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
• The extra killed in his car when Godzilla first arrives in Manhattan was cast as a look-alike for J.D. Lees, editor of G-Fan Magazine, because he said disparaging remarks about the information that leaked out about the film prior to its release.
• The music that plays on an elevator in a scene with Matthew Broderick is "Danke Schoen", which Broderick lip-synchs in a memorable scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
• The first sequence of the AH64-Apache gunships chasing after Godzilla through the streets references both Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back with the line, "Echo 4 to Echo Base", and Star Wars with "He's right on my tail! I can't shake him!" Both lines were spoken by Luke Skywalker.
• Matthew Broderick's character's last name is "Tatopoulos." Godzilla's designer and supervisor is Patrick Tatopoulos.
• The film is dedicated to Tomoyuki Tanaka, who produced all of the Japanese Godzilla movies and died only a month before this film began actual production.
• The film's first teaser trailer began appearing in theaters a full year before the movie was released. The trailer featured a shot of Godzilla's foot coming through the roof of a museum and crushing a T-Rex skeleton.
• Dean Devlin maintains that the tagline for this movie, "Size Does Matter", was meant simply to differentiate the movie from Jurassic Park, hence the original "museum" trailer, but that the advertisers for the studio took it too far with their overzealous campaign (e.g. "His foot is as long as this bus"). The ads became the biggest focus of the backlash against the movie, especially considering that size was what ultimately ended up killing the monster.
• Three voice actors from the comedy series The Simpsons appear in the film: Harry Shearer, Nancy Cartwright and Hank Azaria.

External links

• GODZILLA 1998 Database
• Barry's Temple of Godzilla
• Toho Kingdom
• Godzilla Stomp
• The Godzilla Shrine
• Godzilla at IMDb
• The 1998 Taco Bell commercial used to promote the film.
• A recent Doritos commercial featuring the creature (Under "ads")
• Godzilla vs. The Gryphon (the original Godzilla script)

• 1998 films
• American films
• Godzilla films
• Worst Picture Razzie Nominee
• Films directed by Roland Emmerich
• Films shot in Super 35
• Film remakes
• TriStar films