Zilla is actually one of the most powerful Kaju - she's lighter and faster, and rapid hermaphrodite breeding means she'd out populate and outnumber her opponents in the long run who are all mostly the last of their kind. What's Godzilla going to do against a thousand Zillas?
@@kingrat2122 Zilla is still a hundred thousand ton Kaju who is able to move around with the durability that implies... I don't doubt an atomic breath blast would kill one but you'd need to hold it on her for a few seconds, and in that time 999 other Zillas have swarmed Godzilla. However Zilla works has to include the same basic adaptations as any Kaju. Zilla at 180 feet is 3x taller than any animal which ever walked on land. He has whatever adaptations other Kaju have minus nuclear metabolism, e.g. he has metallized or similar bones to withstand the sort of stresses skyscrapers have, and some unusually super efficient metabolism like all Kaju so even if he's weak, he's much stronger than a T rex naively scaled up to that size would be, albeit not to the incredible levels of Godzilla. Remember square cube. To add to that, Zilla is 15x taller than a T rex and therefore masses around 27k tons. Less than Godzilla, but still the mass of a navy destroyer running around on land at motorway speeds. He's not using a normal skeleton or metabolism so even though no atomic breath or similar he's still not using normal processes internally. Presumably even the baby Zillas have similar internals.
"You can't really root against him" That's funny because when I was forced to watch this movie at the theaters at age 8, I distinctly remember crying at the end that they killed Godzilla. He didn't do nothing wrong, leave him alone!
"Those guys at Toho may be smart, but I'm sure they couldn't see that far into the future. If they could, they never would have gave Roland Emmerich the rights to make a Godzilla movie." --- NES Godzilla Creepypasta
12:26 When you think about it, it really makes sense for Godzilla to choose New York as a nesting place for one reason - the density and amount of people. It's a perfect food source for grown hatchlings.
The best part about the whole Siskel and Ebert bit, is that Ebert seemed to be annoyed by it, but Siskel said something along the line of "they didn't even have godzilla step on us, what a waste, at least do something with the bit"
Here's what Roger Ebert wrote in his review of "Godzilla": "they let us off lightly; I fully expected to be squished like a bug by Godzilla. Now that I've inspired a character in a Godzilla movie, all I really still desire is for several Ingmar Bergman characters to sit in a circle and read my reviews to one another in hushed tones."
@@HellecticMojoThe same guy who claimed that video games will never be art and only changed his mind after getting tons of responses from people sharing their own positive experiences with video games and how it is, indeed, art.
Funny you mention Zilla being a rival to Godzilla, as he turned up in the IDW comic Godzilla: Rulers of Earth, where they fight. And Zilla is actually allowed to show off those strengths you mentioned. He dodges Godzilla's attacks, buries underground to avoid and flank him, feints a move to get Godzilla hit by a missile and then gets out of dodge when he starts losing. Even shows up in the finale where he kills one of the other kaiju and gets the grudging respect of the others. It's what makes Zilla (aka Toho's version) so fascinating to me. He is essentially an underdog in the kaiju world.
Zilla as a pack hunter would indeed make an EXCELLENT Godzilla villain. Fully embrace the Jurassic Park velociraptor angle, make them fast, make them smart, and have a lot of them. If Godzilla's a bear, make Zilla a wolf.
@@TheWorstPartyMemberThat's like putting a T-Rex against a dozen velociraptors. Sure, it's a dozen velociraptors, but you're putting them up against the most powerful theropod.
The thing about Roger Ebert is that he does have a sense of humor, his number one complaint about the character based off him was "why didn't you kill me in a humiliating way? Have the monster step on me while I was on the toilet or something."
That’s one thing that really confused me the scale of Zilla is pretty inconsistent, some sources say it’s the original 50 meters some say it’s 70 meters some say 60 and then there’s others that say 55 meters and below it’s all just confusing I need an accurate measurement can someone please help me before my brain explodes into mush
@@Cody-ps3wy There is no accurate height, as most films fall under eras. In the Showa Era, Godzilla is about 50 meters tall. In the Hesei era, Godzilla starts around 70 meters, and due to time traveling aliens (I’m not kidding), he grows to 100 meters. The Millennium era, its films self-contained, unless it’s a direct sequel. His height in those films changes between 55 to 100 meters. Due to his evolving nature in “Shin Godzilla”, Godzilla goes from 28 to 118.5 meters. In the Monsterverse era, Godzilla’s height changes due to general growth and power-ups. He starts out around 108 meters at the start. By Godzilla vs. Kong he’s at 120 meters tall. There is no official height for Godzilla in “New Empire,” but it’s estimated to be about 130 meters. Please note that this does NOT count animated films, such as Godzilla Earth and Singular Point.
@@Cody-ps3wy the short answer is that Godzilla is as big as he needs to be to look huge in his surroundings. If the tallest building in a city is 50m, he's about 60m; if it's 190m, then he's about 200m or so.
I always thought Zilla was such a cool design. Yeah she’s not really godzilla, but the design is cool as hell and feels more intimidating somehow. Like godzilla feels so big that you’re mostly only in danger of collateral damage. Humans are like tiny ants compared to it. But zilla is small enough where it feels like it could actually be targeting you. Especially the babies.
Ironically the Zilla swarm was part of the prequel novel for the anime trilogy with the Zilla species being one of the easiest Kaiju to kill but hardest to get properly rid off, a constant infestation of hungry giga iguanas.
Fun fact about Zilla's career as his own thing: he is canon within the anime trilogy universe. In the first prequel book, Zilla basically reenacts the events of the 98 movie, except that the military fails to kill all the babies so the city just eventually crumbles to an invasion of Zillas of different sizes and strategies.
@@motherurck7542 the second one mostly goes over their Mechagodzilla's artillery and how Godzilla just destroyed it before it could ever get into battle
I wouldn’t reccomend watching the Anime Trilogy. It has almost zero Kaiju fights (With the one fight against Godzilla and Ghidorah sucking bollocks) or any non-Godzilla monsters for that matter, has an obnoxious MC who is an Eren Yeager rip-off, and it has crappy & clunky cgi animation.
"RUN!! ITS GODZILLA!!!" "It might look like Godzilla, but due to Toho buying this design and renaming it into Zilla, its not" "STILL WE SHOULD RUN LIKE IT IS GODZILLA!!!" "No it isnt 😏" **scream**
Zilla appears in the second issue of the comic "Godzilla - Rulers of Earth" where the military asks for radio what's the name of the monster, the other soldier tries to warn them that godzilla is approaching but due to interferences he only hears "Zilla" so they assume the monster is called like that, eventually Godzilla and Zilla have a pretty nice fight where Zilla obviously loses but survives the fight and rans away to the sea. Eventually at the end of the comic, Godzilla and other kaijus are fighting an alien invasion, Zilla joins them and helps Godzilla in the fight. It's a pretty nice comic that shows that Zilla, as his own kaiju, works great.
I would want them to. Are you kidding me? A 20 foot tall bright red canine? This thing, even if it’s entirely benevolent, is a danger to everyone and everything around it.
I found your channel bc your The Boys video was recommended to me, and I'm an instant fan. My youtube feed has been so dry these days, so now I'm binge watching your videos.
A slight correction about Zilla's "fire breath," it's actually called Power Breath, and it's achieved just from the methane gasses from him eating fish reacting to the exploding cars which give him that fire breathing look. I wish I was joking and I am fucking glad they fixed that in the Animated Series.
Gods the animated series for this terrible movie is/was so much better than it had any right to be. All these years later it still feels weird for that to be the case somehow.
I’d even go far as to say that the way how the Animated Series breath is charged is one of the best in the franchise. Like the animators genuinely made it stay consistent and it looked so cool.
Fun fact. It’s canon that the Zilla species are the only form of Goji that don’t destroy buildings. This is because the military accidentally destroyed the buildings first.
Honestly, I love how TriStar Godzilla wasn't forgotten or just ignored like alot of bad reboots are, but rather he was taken and added into Godzilla's enemies list as just "Zilla." The community opened their arms to Zilla because he wasn't pretending to be Godzilla anymore, he was just his own thing entirely, and people are more willing to let him into the fandom then
The idea of the last vestiges of humanity desperately trying to hold back a horde of Zillas and/or baby Zillas is actually so good though. I could see a sort of Pacific Rim-eqsue type story, where humanity develops advanced tech to counter the hordes.
and then, amidst the mayhem...the TRUE Godzilla awakens. damn, imagine if this happened in the Monsterverse and it's just Godzilla and Kong teaming up against a legion of Zillas invading the hollow earth. That would be dope.
"You caused more damage than that thing did!" I wonder if this is commentary on the U.S. military or just them being goofy and accidentally striking gold.
@@CoolSmoovie Yeah pretty much, especially non Air Force. Desert Storm was fresh in everyone's mind giving the Air Force a bit of slack, but the US military had been seen as kinda a joke prior thanks to Korea and Vietnam, and thus bumbling military was a somewhat common trope until a near u-turn for 9/11.
Master’s in Biology here. Some lizards do reproduce asexually by parthenogenesis (snakes, insects, fish and crustaceans too). Some species have an all females population since they reproduce strictly like that, like the New Mexico whiptail. Since they are basically cloning each other, the offspring is identical to the mother. Not all of parthenogenesis cases are exactly clones, in other species like Bees, they always lay males unless fertilization occurs because of the genetic process behind it. It’s an interesting subject and yeah, nature finds a way indeed haha.
Yeah, but apparently Zilla is a male, so he can't do partenogenesis. But then again, we're talking about a giant radioactive bipedal iguana rampaging through New York so who knows.
@@theangrysuchomimus5163 true, to be more biologically accurate it has to be female or at least female at some point maybe some sequential hermaphroditism or something. But like you said, giant radioactive iguana lol
Herpetology guy here. A close look at the post cloacal tail region shows that there are no hemipenile bulges. Therefore, Zilla appears to be female. Since Zilla is supposed to be a species of iguanid, the sexually dimorphic features would be well-defined.
I recall Siskel said something along the lines of: "If you guys are going to put us in the movie to mock and get back at us, then why didn't you have your monster kill us at least?"
"Zilla is just a big T-Rex that gets lost in New York." Missed a big chance to segueway to that scene in Home Alone 2 where Kevin encounters Marv and Harry outside of Duncan's, but their faces are covered by Zilla, Devlin and Emmerich respectively.
Fun fact:Zilla was the first femboy,im not kidding.They went with this design so viewers could feel attracted or mesmerized by it but since its a lizard its hard which is funny since today you can technically make everything look like a femboy.
15:55 When godzilla Died i remember as a Kid crying comparable to The moment when Uncle Ben died In spiderman 1,Like If i tell you I experienced for 20 seconds depression on thosw two Moments.
the cut from the dog jumping away from the explosion and the person being instantly disintegrated was funnier than I could have ever expected beforehand
the book series Godzilla: Apocolypse does point out that Zilla is the hardest to fully get rid of, because it reproduces so fast, and even 1 egg can restart the process
There are so many good french animators, this could actually be a relaly cool serious animated series combining Kaiju, nuclear warfare and fallout themes, all set in beatiful french polynesia ahaha
I always felt sorry for Zilla as a kid. Sure, he wasn't exactly the Godzilla people wanted, but there was just something emotional and realistic about him being portrayed more like an animal.
Honestly he deserves his own name. Maybe rebrand GINO (Godzilla In Name Only) as some sort of proper acronym like Giant Irradiated Nautical Organism or something
The way the Cartoon re-invented some of the godzilla monsters was really cool (like having MechaGodzilla be a Cyborg or turning Hedora into a collection of Nanomachines.)
In the comic Godzilla: Rulers of Earth, we made sure to have Zilla literally run circles around Godzilla, it made for a fun fight. I wish we had the opportunity to lean on the "Zilla Swarm" concept as well, what a cool idea!
I have a few ideas they should rebrand "zilla" and give it a new name. Koyomasu, blending the Japanese words for Cayote (Koyote) and Barracuda (Kamasu). Kitsania, blending the words for Fox (Kitsune) and Pirahna (Pirania) Okasame, blending the words for Wolf (Okami) and Shark (same)
The prequel novels for the Polygon Godzilla anime trilogy do have a swarm of Zillas infesting and destroying Paris. They don't have any translations that I know of, but they've been summarized by many. I know WikiZilla's TH-cam channel has a few video summaries, for example.
I remember being so pumped for this. As a kid, I was a huge fan of Godzilla. I had remote control Godzillas, the little eggs that had all the Kaiju in them. And then this movie happened. In its defense, it's how 13 year old me discovered Jean Reno as an actor and HE is excellent. Even enjoyed his role in Onimusha 3.
One thing you have to remember is that this was the first mainstream appearance of Godzilla in the west. You said it yourself: "it works as an independent kaiju movie". If you saw this in a movie theatre in 1998, that is exactly what it was: an independent kaiju movie. That's why many people look back on it so fondly.
What'w funny, it would even work great as a remake of "the creature from 20,000 fathoms" film. They referenced it so hard it's closer to that than to Godzilla.
nah...godzilla 1985 was totally released all across the US back in the day and at 8 years old even i knew it was trash. to this day its still the worse US godzilla movie ever.
When he mentioned 9/11, I'm surprised he didn't mention that one line that aged VERY poorly: "In what city officials are describing as the worst act of destruction since the World Trade Center bombing..."
@@QuickQuips That was a test run for the real thing. Bush did 9/11. He had explosives placed at the bases of the towers. Then on 9/11 he pretended that like 4 planes were hijacked when really we just rerouted them from Pennsylvania then flew two military jets into the world trade center filled with more explosives and shot down all the witnesses in flight 93 with an F-15 after blowing up the Pentagon with a cruise missile.
@@vorpalweapon4814 Because we were alive during the time and Biggie was popular? That's the equivalent of someone saying "Yeah I even saw Eminem post on X, slipped it into his latest diss track."
The soundtrack for this film was the first CD I ever bought, and led to me learning Brain Stew as my first song on guitar. Thanks for unlocking that memory.
13:45 You kinda hit the nail on the head there. Zilla's not a bad monster but his core characteristic is that he's a relatively normal animal that wants evade conflict rather than engage in it. Perfectly sensible but as a Godzilla movie you couldn't have picked a more opposite characterization. Godzilla is like the rocks of the eternal shore, he's gonna beat your ass no matter what. So making him this flaky raptor that reproduces asexually is not only peculiar, it shows a willingness to actively not respect the source material. And rip off Jurassic Park.
@@jvbon646 kind of ironic you say that when toho did that with ebirah horror of the deep which was meant to be a kong film but they just added godzilla in there for the sake of it and at one part, godzilla was gazing at this island native woman in the same vain kong would and he attacks mothra despite the 2 being established as allies by that point. But at least it's not as bad as this film
Its a more realistic take on Godzilla which I don't mind. Godzilla surfacing to trash an entire city for shits and giggles is fun but doesn't really make much sense. At least in this movie his actions are "somewhat" logical
Broderick was a weird choice, but I bet he was affordable. I'm low key offended how Jean Reno was snubbed. "This movie has mostly tv-stars". Even shows him in several shots while going through the b-listers, only to ignore the most succesful of the bunch. For a movie reviewer, that's a bit of an "oopsie" 😅
@@Itcouldbebunnies Now there's a blast from the past. I've been meaning to watch some golden oldies from my childhood that have gone unloved, thanks for the reminder.
Watched it when it originally came out. And I just bought the 4K UHD to watch in my Home Cinema. It's a great sommer movie to watch with friends. I miss the 90s.
Ok the Cloverfield comparison is actually super on point and I’m shocked I’ve never actually heard it before. Also interestingly both movies also had an infestation of smaller monsters too, but where the raptor like mini Zillas were just kinda goofy and all got blown up. The little monsters in Cloverfield were these horrible abominations that if they so much as scratched you, you suffered a slow agonizing death and right at the last minute just get blown up from the inside out by whatever biological attack they had that kills you.
I know Roanoke Gaming had a really good explanation on it. Apparently it was some kind of natural secretion that had a nasty reaction once inside the human body, resulting in rapid pressure buildup and bursting. On the plus side, at least they weren't some kind of deep-sea Xenomorphs.
Siskel & Ebert roasted the movie for including parodies of them but not doing something cool like other movies by having them blown up or squished or SOMETHING Somehow they managed to waste potential at every level of this movie.
It was right there and they didn't even do anything to them but mock them only. Pretty bad the people your mocking are saying you didn't mock them enough.
I seem to recall one expressed gratitude at not getting squished, rhen the other poijted out that it would have been way funnier if they HAD been squished and the 1st changed his mind to agree.
I personally love the idea of Zilla being a Godzilla opposite. He's small and weak but fast and can multiply. He's primitive in comparison, and acts defensively compared to Godzilla's aggressive behavior.
Ironically, Zilla is actually the average size of pre-Legend Godzilla. The original Godzilla, and almost all of them before 2014, were 50 meters tall, the same height as Zilla.
I always thought that zilla was like the first stage of Godzilla till they find another food source and becomes more of the classic chunky Godzilla Kinda like how kamatakun was like Godzilla before he became him in shin Godzilla
The most astonish fact about this movie is that somebody actually bothered to search which coutry tested more nuclear bombs to the date and that that resulted to be the french is incredible to me, like, they could easily said that Zilla was product of the russians or some asian country, like american movies tend to do, I always wondered why they chose France as the main culprit
its actually quite realistic in the 1990s context France did one in 1996 in a tropical region china did one too but that region was a desert so it doesn't fit the story India and Pakistan started doing them in 1998 and had a minor cold war. but i think they already started working on the movie in 1997 or earlier or maybe it was even already out when the tests happened France was the biggest nuke tester in this era
It can't be overstated how cool that VHS Cover was. It was chromatic holofoil, like a rare Pokemon card, and embossed so the texture of the scales stuck out. It shone like the full moon in a dull and starless midnight sky that was the rest of the rental aisle. The graphic designers and print company that made the box deserve the lion's share of the credit for the movie's post-theatre revenue and its nostalgic fondness.
Most things today tend to be somewhat good (or at least acceptable) in their own merits, but terrible as part of their respective IPs. I remember thinking to myself "Halo 4 is one of the best original game stories in recent years, but it's an abyssmal Halo experience", same with pretty much every 5/10 to 7/10 media product since 2010. No respect for IPs, no respect for characters, and no respect for fandoms.
You know I've always felt that Godzilla 98 was, almost, an accidental critique of the war on terror. This is a movie about the US army responding to an attack on New York, bungling it horrible, and then thinking they've won despite experts telling them the threat has not yet passed.
I only just realised. The helicopter fires a missile, THAT GUIDES ITSELF IN TO A BUILDING! (At 14:24) Was the building on fire? Or did the pilot lock the building with radar? You can watch an Emmerich movie over and over, and find new stupid every time. It's impressive, you can't fuck up so much with just ignorance, it takes effort.
Wait... You are telling me that THAT is supposed to be Godzilla??? I thought I was watching a dinosaur movie when I was a kid. Kid me never read the movie title and as I grow up I forget about it. Still fun back then though.
Nope, the show was amature, and filled with animations errors. Nothing good came out from this 1998 movie, that's the truth some people try to ignore in virtue of blind nostalgia.
They wanted to avoid a suit with a human in it, so they ironically gave the monster proportions that closer resembled a human, with long skinny legs and arms.
Tristar throwing away a decent Godzilla film made by people who loved Godzilla in favor of the one we actually got, which was made by people who actively held a negative opinion of Godzilla and just wanted to cash in on the success of Jurassic Park, just because the latter was headed by known faces and the former wasn't really is a microcosm of the demented state Hollywood's been in for the better part of a century now.
The fact we didn't get that version of the movie dispite it having all the right people and stuff and the studio instead settled on the wrong people and stuff that ended up killing off the character's western push for a decade till Legendary got Zilla right in 2014.
What's funny was that Roland didn't wanna make it at first, and then TriStar rejected the other director's Godzilla movie because it would've costed too much to make, and then they brought Roland into it and then proceeded to make a more expensive movie that became the classic beloved film that we all know and love.
8 minutes in the video and I just realise that this was the ''T-Rex'' movie I saw when I was young. Not in a million years did I thought that the creature was Godzilla
Kevin Dunn, the actor for Sam Witwicky's dad is also in Godzilla 1998. Now my headcanon is that Sam's father experienced Godzilla, changed his name, and settled down with his wife and had Sam and now his son is cursed to suffer the same fate of trying to survive giant entities destroying shit. The Witwicky family curse.
I was going to comment on how we have evidence in the transformer movies that the Witwicky family goes back for centuries, but then I remembered that every movie retcons the transformers origins, so it would only be fair to do that to the humans too.
the funny thing is that Toho did the "silly Americans confused the giant T-Rex with Godzilla" joke twice; they also had that conversation in Shin Godzilla of all movies also, yeah the Cartoon series is great
@@agustinvenegas5238 yeah, it was a super quick line during one of the Briefings one of the characters whispers to another that the Americans also reported Godzilla sightings & the other tells him they probably saw a giant lizard or something
Wait, that happens in GMK, but not in Shin, im pretty sure the whole thing in shin is than "nothing that big can be on land" so there's no presedent of a kaiju attack until Shin Godzilla appears
@@teotlcipactli7530yeah I’m pretty sure the line in Shin is when they were naming him Godzilla. They said in a meeting “Godzilla is an American term for it. We’re calling it Gojira.” Or something to that extent.
This films biggest mistake was the fact that it was called Godzilla. If they called it something different, it would have probably not been so popular, but at least it would have likely been beloved in its own special way.
It IS beloved you dunkus 😂😂😂 To some of us in our early teens/preteens this was the first Godzilla material to ever to bless our eyes. And I absolutely LOVED it!! Even after understanding the tone and meaning behind actual Japanese Godzilla concept, this movie and associated media (like the cartoon series) holds a very special place in our hearts.
Apparently nobody remembers how hated it was or disappointing it was for not being Godzilla. The film would have had much better footing if the name was different.
The single memory burned into my brain brighter than any other regarding this movie, is Zilla going Kool-Aid Man through the Skyscraper purely to slap an Apache. There are some great dumb lines and cool scenes and all, but that one moment is the first thing I think of whenever I think of the movie. Also yes I would 100% love to watch World War Zilla. That sounds amazing.
Given how non-confrontational Zilla is in the 98 movie I'd be surprised if that was even remotely intentional, or if that pilot even died. I don't know if Zilla is responsible for a single death in the movie, I genuinely don't. Final Wars Zilla would match in a World War Zilla or Godzilla vs Zilla swarms scenario much better, that thing charged right in looking for a fight even if it got wiped in 12 seconds
You managed to provide two epic movie ideas in a single video: World War Zilla, and Gojira Vs. Zilla. Also, anyone else laugh at 22:00? Like, she ghosted him, came back to get a story, stole a VHS labeled "Top Secret" (which manages to get him fired), and then is like "You never said it was off the record." I mean, that's some top-shelf Audacity if I do say so myself.
As AVGN had once said, Toho had retired Godzilla with Godzilla versus Destoroyah in 1995 but since America made this movie . . Godzilla 2000 came about. Then of course Zilla's pancake in Final Wars when they really did call it quits
Why no period after "Strange Beast?" You were clearly done with your first point there and started a second point after it ("he literally wanted Godzilla not to be a Kaiju"). You need a period there.
in all fairness, it's not like JP didn't have its moments. seriously, the flocks of Gallimimus from the first movie are the most poorly aged CGI in the franchise, hands down
The Warhammer Tyrranid Zilla invasion is a great idea for the sequel but it will be so cool to see different types of zilla always mutating on something stronger
The IDW Godzilla comics had Zilla as just one of many kaiju living on earth and a rival turned ally after an alien invasion. It was very cool and what I’d like to see more of.
those IDW comics go HARD. Godzilla's design for the majority of them is one of my favorites for the character period, a mix between the 2002/03 and Final Wars suits.
That $69.99 action figure at 25:14 would have cost $135 in 2024 money... Yeah, i totally understand why my parents didn't get me stuff like that when I was 4.
I’m glad you brought up the Cloverfield comparison. As soon as you mentioned “it’s just a scared animal”, I immediately thought of the poor (baby?) Cloverfield just getting harassed by the military as it unintentionally wreaked havoc on NYC. Ironically, tho, despite Zilla being portrayed as a villainous existential threat to humanity, audiences could tell that it was just a scared animal; and while Clover was clearly acting like a lost & scared animal, for the protagonists & audience, it’s basically just another kaiju wrecking the city.
It's weird how he has this terribad reputation nowadays, in the 90s his name was a really big thing that attracted people to the teathre, like Steven Spielberg.
@@n3rdy11It's pretty much his own fault given almost all his films after the IMO overrated but I guess still decent first _Independence Day_ have been rather crappy. His last actually good film was arguably all the way back when he (apparently) did _Stargate_ the movie, which just makes it feel like a fluke given everything that came afterwards. For all of Mr. Spielberg's own recent bad movies after 2000, he at least still has way more than only one or two good films to his name. It's even funnier when Mr. Emmerich basically was being hyped up despite clearly wanting to focus on a genre--disaster movies--that was already overall dying before he even came on-scene. And then basically the same genre died even more after 2001/09/11 but the guy just never really adjusted to that, instead choosing to repeatedly run already questionable ideas that likely woild have struggled with new climate further into the ground with awful writing. It says a lot that even that the closest to mainstream success his films got after 2000 was the conspiracy theory doomsday one that _2012_ was.
Good theory. That would explain why it would lay it's eggs in the middle of a city. But it wouldn't explain why Zilla swam from the middle of the Pacific to the Eastern seaboard, ignoring the warmer waters and all the populated areas along the way.
Seeing this in 1998 with my family as a weeeeee Sonny Jim is such a delightful memory. The Taco Bell chihuahua marketing, the epic eyeball trailer--- it's nostalgia alright, but in such a pure "I went to Disneyland"-kind of nostalgia.
Fun fact: in final wars Toho not only rebranded this design so that all future appearances would go under the name "zilla" but it's CGI model was created by scanning a toy of the '98 godzilla, it's fight scene is the shortest in film clocking in at a measley 12 seconds. But even funnier is the lyrics of the song that plays in the background during the fight. As godzilla incinerates zilla the lyrics of the song are as follows: SUPER SIZE OUR TRAGEDY (A disapppointment! A disappointment!) *BORN IN THE LAND OF THE FREE!!!!*
Slight bubble burst as a Sum 41 fan but the line in parentheses is actually (You can't define me! Or justify greed!) But in a way that also fits Zilla.
Yeah, SUM 41 was pretty big in Japan at that time so they probably heard the lyrics from this American band and thought it fit. And they were goddamned right, that scene is amazing.
If you ever owned the big 1998 Trendmasters Godzilla (I believe just called Ultimate Godzilla?), then you own the hands down most accurate merch of 98 Godzilla/Zilla there is, since that's the one that was scanned for Final Wars also i know it's technically before but you cannot get more 2000s than 98 and Final Wars having both Green Day and Sum 41 music on their sountracks
This movie demonstrates the truest form of the indomitable human spirit: finding joy and comedy in the worst situations. Reveling in the wierd events and f-ups found even in disasters. Instead of becoming an adrenaline-fueled killing machine, you crack a smile and say “Mondays, amiright?” as you clap your buddy on the back.
ignoring all advertent and inadvertent political themes aside, you just simply can't make shit like Godzilla 98 or Final Wars anymore. a kaiju movie would NOT release today with Green Day or Sum 41 on the soundtracks, especially considering the former isn't even in the actual film
The thing I remember most from this era is the cartoon episode where some guy is mad at the world so he sits in his apartment seething so hard it creates a kaiju that Godzilla can’t even defeat. They basically give the guy a therapy session to beat the monster. Edit: Ok it’s called what dreams may come from season 1 and i misremembered it a bit. He’s mad and his dreams create the monster.
28:28 - You saying that "Zilla's like a Bizarro Godzilla" just reminded of a particular funfact. Godzilla 2000, the next Japanese Godzilla movie, introduced Orga, a reptilian kaiju with some of Godzilla's DNA. Its head and posture were modeled after '98 Zilla, with the designers cheekily saying something like "It was so Godzilla could defeat the American Godzilla." I've always liked the designs for Zilla and Orga, so the connection between the two was fascinating to me.
I remember the IDW Godzilla comic series *Rulers of Earth* had Zilla as part of the roster and they actually use him really well as a foil to Godzilla’s style. It was really cool seeing their take on him.
I'll be honest, this is the only one of the movies you covered that I actively dislike Because I hate this thing Hollywood has, where they're always ashamed of the source material and have this "I can do better than 80 years of history" attitude
I used to think like that, but this level of arrogance is kind of just charming now. When something like this happens now, it's not because they think they can do better, but desperation. Hollywood hires a bunch of no name directors with no notable prior work to their name because they're easy to control. If they don't take liberties with what little they're able to, they'll be left doing adaptions for the rest of their career and never have the sway to get any of their own ideas out there. They usually just make things worse, but it's basically their one shot to not just be a cog in the machine for the rest of their lives.
@@fwg1994 What I'm describing is more of a lack of respect for the thing they're working with, like it's beneath them, particularly from creators with more established names (what you said also happens tho) Taika Waititi saying he read one issue of Jason Aaron's Thor run and didn't like it, so he decided to do his own thing; Fant4stic never saying the name of the group at least once; "Blackagar Boltagon? 😂😂😂😂 what a dumb name"; or basically all of the DC Znyderverse I'm not saying you need to worship the original work or anything (the Lego Batman movie makes fun of Batman through the entire runtime, but it's clearly made by people that like the character), and a lot of things don't age well (I don't expect the Fantastic Four to have the same family culture they had in 1967) but you have to recognize the legacy of the source material, and why people like it, what makes it work, etc That's my take on it, but maybe I'm just being a soy wojak
Hot take: I actually enjoyed the design of Zilla. I liked that they went for a more "organic" or "animalistic" approach, as a creature that is a monster, not a monster that is a creature. So, instead of a mutated embodiment of the atomic bomb, we got a mutated wild animal, who's just trying to survive living in the (at the time) modern world. This all said, is it the best Godzilla movie made in the US? Heck. NO. But as you put it so astutely, it's nostalgic, and just plain charming. The acting was goofy, the scenes were goofy: all of it had that goofy charm to it, which (in a sense) nods to the older Showa-Era Toho films, in this respect alone. I think, honestly though, the VFX for the time were SO incredible, which is what encapsulated me as a kid watching this movie: the effects were so jaw-dropping. In fact, I hadn't seen Independence Day until I was a high schooler in 2010-14, which is crazy because Zilla '98 used the exact same VFX techniques from that movie, which again: for the time, was stupendously done. Best scene from the whole movie is the emergences of Zilla, from the Hudson River, and from the underground in front of Nick...these 2 points in the movie were amazingly done, and shot so well...I love it to this day. But yeah, Final Wars Godzilla needed to really slam Zilla into the Sydney Opera house and just obliterate it entirely, Toho needed that closure, haha.
Im going to be honest, I think the stockier build of him is more accurate for how big he'd be in reality. I see the older or newer cgi build of godzilla to be more organic.
I've always had this thought, 98 Godzilla was so weak because it was simply a mutant marine iguana. But it's offspring, Series Godzilla was stronger and more durable because it was born like that, it was never mutaed in its embryo state unlike its parent. Remember what Nick said, 'The dawn of a new species', 98 Godzilla was the foundation, Series Godzilla was the perfected form. Bigger, faster, possesses an actual atomic breath, able to tank conventional weapons even in its adolesant state. Overall, i believe that 98/Series Godzilla has potential in the long run.
19:34 You know, it would make sense to make Audrey the human level threat second to Zilla, using Nick's emotional baggage to manipulate him and using his military connections to advance her own career at the expense of innocent people. Her story sends the civilians into a panic, but all she cares about is chasing the next big story, disregarding any consequences. Instead of trying to redeem her or make her sympathetic, have her double down on her selfishness and greed, which would ultimately lead to her undoing. The living embodiment of media-driven corporatism and callousness. What a wasted opportunity.
That whole idea about the army trying to exterminate a horde of Zillas a la World War Z is actually really similar to the events of the japan exclusive novel GODZILLA Monster Apocalypse. In the book, many kaiju start appearing around the world, and one of them is Zilla, who attacks France (get it?) and gets killed, but then his offsprings start rapidly reproducing and become almost unstoppable. While way easier to kill, this thing could easily become a bigger threat than even Godzilla himself if given the chance, so the idea of adding him in a future movie would be great.
THANK YOU for mentioning the animated series. That show was actually my introduction to Godzilla as a whole, and was a big part of my childhood. After my love for the series was rekindled by the Monsterverse, I was originally disheartened to hear that people didn’t like the 1998 version. Only to realize that they meant the movie, not the show, which made me happy to hear.
"Did they replace the army with Helldivers?" I feel personally attacked and I'll have you know I average a whopping 65% accuracy against the Terminids.
My favorite thing about Zilla was that Toho briefly made him canon so that Godzilla could pancake him in Final Wars.
Zilla is actually one of the most powerful Kaju - she's lighter and faster, and rapid hermaphrodite breeding means she'd out populate and outnumber her opponents in the long run who are all mostly the last of their kind. What's Godzilla going to do against a thousand Zillas?
@AnythingMachine actually use an atomic breath, lol
@@kingrat2122 Zilla is still a hundred thousand ton Kaju who is able to move around with the durability that implies... I don't doubt an atomic breath blast would kill one but you'd need to hold it on her for a few seconds, and in that time 999 other Zillas have swarmed Godzilla.
However Zilla works has to include the same basic adaptations as any Kaju. Zilla at 180 feet is 3x taller than any animal which ever walked on land. He has whatever adaptations other Kaju have minus nuclear metabolism, e.g. he has metallized or similar bones to withstand the sort of stresses skyscrapers have, and some unusually super efficient metabolism like all Kaju so even if he's weak, he's much stronger than a T rex naively scaled up to that size would be, albeit not to the incredible levels of Godzilla. Remember square cube. To add to that, Zilla is 15x taller than a T rex and therefore masses around 27k tons. Less than Godzilla, but still the mass of a navy destroyer running around on land at motorway speeds. He's not using a normal skeleton or metabolism so even though no atomic breath or similar he's still not using normal processes internally. Presumably even the baby Zillas have similar internals.
It was really funny to see that.
@@AnythingMachinethey kill The Zilla with conventional military arms
"You can't really root against him"
That's funny because when I was forced to watch this movie at the theaters at age 8, I distinctly remember crying at the end that they killed Godzilla. He didn't do nothing wrong, leave him alone!
same.
I completely blocked out Zilla dying for some reason and was thinking, oh yeah, he was chased back to the ocean
Her
I remember also crying because they killed him
"No no hes not suppose to die that way no they cant kill Godzilla"
Same. I just felt so sad at the end.
The fact that Roland Emmerich was able to make a career out of making the same film over and over again makes me feel better about my own prospects .
"Those guys at Toho may be smart, but I'm sure they couldn't see that far into the future. If they could, they never would have gave Roland Emmerich the rights to make a Godzilla movie."
--- NES Godzilla Creepypasta
The JJ Abrams of the 1990's.
@@Sarafimm2 *Sips Tea Aggressively*
It makes you wonder how the guy still gets work today. All his movies have been under performing as of late.
@@mackenziecarver6807 China I guess. Independence Day Resurgence and Moonfall have a lot of China jerking
12:26 When you think about it, it really makes sense for Godzilla to choose New York as a nesting place for one reason - the density and amount of people. It's a perfect food source for grown hatchlings.
Wouldn't eat them.. only reason they chased the humans is cause the smelled like fish! Baby zilla harmless lol
The most realistic thing about this movie is a romantic interest ghosting, coming back saying they've changed, and then ghosting again.
That girl was "Gen Z, before Gen Z even existed." lol
Yup.
New Yorkers are an advanced breed
You'd think Cloverfield would do their relationship thing better.
Yep
The best part about the whole Siskel and Ebert bit, is that Ebert seemed to be annoyed by it, but Siskel said something along the line of "they didn't even have godzilla step on us, what a waste, at least do something with the bit"
Iirc, both of them dogged on how the cameo was lame and barely used
Siskel was so real for that actually
Here's what Roger Ebert wrote in his review of "Godzilla": "they let us off lightly; I fully expected to be squished like a bug by Godzilla. Now that I've inspired a character in a Godzilla movie, all I really still desire is for several Ingmar Bergman characters to sit in a circle and read my reviews to one another in hushed tones."
More I learn about Ebert, more I just learn how much of a no fun grump he is.
@@HellecticMojoThe same guy who claimed that video games will never be art and only changed his mind after getting tons of responses from people sharing their own positive experiences with video games and how it is, indeed, art.
_Sir, a second hellfire missile has hit the Chrysler building_
Bruhhh
“Ahhh”-helicopter pilot
When you miss the automaton with your precision orbital strike stratage
@@jtgdyour honor I claim oopsi daisy
@KurtusOldroyd That's some classic spam right there.
Funny you mention Zilla being a rival to Godzilla, as he turned up in the IDW comic Godzilla: Rulers of Earth, where they fight. And Zilla is actually allowed to show off those strengths you mentioned. He dodges Godzilla's attacks, buries underground to avoid and flank him, feints a move to get Godzilla hit by a missile and then gets out of dodge when he starts losing. Even shows up in the finale where he kills one of the other kaiju and gets the grudging respect of the others. It's what makes Zilla (aka Toho's version) so fascinating to me. He is essentially an underdog in the kaiju world.
Zilla as a pack hunter would indeed make an EXCELLENT Godzilla villain. Fully embrace the Jurassic Park velociraptor angle, make them fast, make them smart, and have a lot of them. If Godzilla's a bear, make Zilla a wolf.
-smash cuts to finals wars where Godzilla dismantle ones in less than 30 seconds
Yeah, that fight time like 5 can definitely hold a movie.
@@taptiotrevizo9415 did you actually *see* Final Wars? Godzilla curb stomps half the kaiju in that film, including heavy hitters like Hedorah
@@taptiotrevizo9415 ONE, my dude. I'm thinking a dozen, minimum.
Yeah Final Wars was pretty horrid. In may ways as terrible or more so then this one
@@TheWorstPartyMemberThat's like putting a T-Rex against a dozen velociraptors. Sure, it's a dozen velociraptors, but you're putting them up against the most powerful theropod.
The thing about Roger Ebert is that he does have a sense of humor, his number one complaint about the character based off him was "why didn't you kill me in a humiliating way? Have the monster step on me while I was on the toilet or something."
That’s one of my favourite quotes by him
Lol you know your a great critic when even your criticism of the jokes about you personally are on point
@@williamkarbala5718 I remember hearing somewhere that the reason he couldn't die is because Toho said Godzilla doesn't kill
yeah but then that would be too much of a rip from Jurassic Park. lol
@@kylenielsen5083 thats BS because he goes out of his way to kill people in the 1954 film and godzilla vs king ghidorah
I think it's pretty funny that the tagline is "Size Does Matter" and the monster is pretty tiny by Godzilla standards.
By Kaiju standards as a whole, in fact
That’s one thing that really confused me the scale of Zilla is pretty inconsistent, some sources say it’s the original 50 meters some say it’s 70 meters some say 60 and then there’s others that say 55 meters and below it’s all just confusing I need an accurate measurement can someone please help me before my brain explodes into mush
@@Cody-ps3wythen there's that one scene in the sewer where Zilla opened its eye and it looks gargantuan.
@@Cody-ps3wy There is no accurate height, as most films fall under eras. In the Showa Era, Godzilla is about 50 meters tall.
In the Hesei era, Godzilla starts around 70 meters, and due to time traveling aliens (I’m not kidding), he grows to 100 meters.
The Millennium era, its films self-contained, unless it’s a direct sequel. His height in those films changes between 55 to 100 meters.
Due to his evolving nature in “Shin Godzilla”, Godzilla goes from 28 to 118.5 meters.
In the Monsterverse era, Godzilla’s height changes due to general growth and power-ups. He starts out around 108 meters at the start. By Godzilla vs. Kong he’s at 120 meters tall. There is no official height for Godzilla in “New Empire,” but it’s estimated to be about 130 meters.
Please note that this does NOT count animated films, such as Godzilla Earth and Singular Point.
@@Cody-ps3wy the short answer is that Godzilla is as big as he needs to be to look huge in his surroundings. If the tallest building in a city is 50m, he's about 60m; if it's 190m, then he's about 200m or so.
I always thought Zilla was such a cool design. Yeah she’s not really godzilla, but the design is cool as hell and feels more intimidating somehow.
Like godzilla feels so big that you’re mostly only in danger of collateral damage. Humans are like tiny ants compared to it. But zilla is small enough where it feels like it could actually be targeting you. Especially the babies.
I’m pretty sure this exact reason is why minus one was so scary he knows your there and id actively trying to kill you
big iguana
Well known fact that nuclear radiation carries sufficient energy to increase your mass from a couple of kilos to 400,000 tons
@KurtusOldroydbot
why dad left you: Making fun of bots :
th-cam.com/video/qKXWxCr0Dok/w-d-xo.html
Biguana
@@JohnWickJovanovichbot
Ironically the Zilla swarm was part of the prequel novel for the anime trilogy with the Zilla species being one of the easiest Kaiju to kill but hardest to get properly rid off, a constant infestation of hungry giga iguanas.
Yea, Zilla seems good for swarm attack, win by quantity over quality, like zerglings
@@r3dr4te963 certain large lizards use mob tactics irl too. It fits
If they ever make a Godzilla game Zilla would be the perfect mob to fight in between bosses
@@coolgreenbug7551Do you mean like a Godzilla RPG cuz there’s like a hundred Godzilla games
Giguanas?
Fun fact about Zilla's career as his own thing: he is canon within the anime trilogy universe. In the first prequel book, Zilla basically reenacts the events of the 98 movie, except that the military fails to kill all the babies so the city just eventually crumbles to an invasion of Zillas of different sizes and strategies.
Wait, there is a prequel book? And the fact you said first one, meaning there is more than one?
@@motherurck7542 the second one mostly goes over their Mechagodzilla's artillery and how Godzilla just destroyed it before it could ever get into battle
And it took over Paris instead of NYC IIRC
@@arnahunas4048 yeah I couldn't recall the City. Ig it makes sense as a reference to 98 being mutated from French bombs
I wouldn’t reccomend watching the Anime Trilogy. It has almost zero Kaiju fights (With the one fight against Godzilla and Ghidorah sucking bollocks) or any non-Godzilla monsters for that matter, has an obnoxious MC who is an Eren Yeager rip-off, and it has crappy & clunky cgi animation.
"RUN!! ITS GODZILLA!!!"
"It might look like Godzilla, but due to Toho buying this design and renaming it into Zilla, its not"
"STILL WE SHOULD RUN LIKE IT IS GODZILLA!!!"
"No it isnt 😏"
**scream**
That Austin Powers reference always gets me!
*though it isn't
That about sums it up
I literally just watched Goldenmember yesterday 💀
@@adamg4336super important distinction ngl, good job
Zilla appears in the second issue of the comic "Godzilla - Rulers of Earth" where the military asks for radio what's the name of the monster, the other soldier tries to warn them that godzilla is approaching but due to interferences he only hears "Zilla" so they assume the monster is called like that, eventually Godzilla and Zilla have a pretty nice fight where Zilla obviously loses but survives the fight and rans away to the sea. Eventually at the end of the comic, Godzilla and other kaijus are fighting an alien invasion, Zilla joins them and helps Godzilla in the fight.
It's a pretty nice comic that shows that Zilla, as his own kaiju, works great.
There is no doubt in my mind that the military would kill Clifford if he suddenly appeared in some city.
Either kill or capture to make profit 😆🤣
Humanity first, mutants last.
The iron giant nuke it to oblivion style
Nah but the ATF would
I would want them to. Are you kidding me? A 20 foot tall bright red canine? This thing, even if it’s entirely benevolent, is a danger to everyone and everything around it.
I found your channel bc your The Boys video was recommended to me, and I'm an instant fan. My youtube feed has been so dry these days, so now I'm binge watching your videos.
A slight correction about Zilla's "fire breath," it's actually called Power Breath, and it's achieved just from the methane gasses from him eating fish reacting to the exploding cars which give him that fire breathing look.
I wish I was joking and I am fucking glad they fixed that in the Animated Series.
yup
my brother explained like this to me when we watched godzilla almost a decade ago
I'm 20 now lol
Gods the animated series for this terrible movie is/was so much better than it had any right to be. All these years later it still feels weird for that to be the case somehow.
I’d even go far as to say that the way how the Animated Series breath is charged is one of the best in the franchise. Like the animators genuinely made it stay consistent and it looked so cool.
So he was essentially just burping, got it.
Oh, so it just belched methane... brilliant!
Fun fact. It’s canon that the Zilla species are the only form of Goji that don’t destroy buildings. This is because the military accidentally destroyed the buildings first.
But they do tho…’98 and jr both destroy buildings?
@@connorgolden4 They can't destroy SOMETHING THAT IS ALREADY DESTROYED BY THE MILITARY!!!
@@connorgolden4Was supposed to be a joke.
@@BonquequeBetter in his defense, jokes are also supposed to be funny.
even the building that it ran trough doesn't collapse. like it made the building an upside down U and it still doesn't keel over
Honestly, I love how TriStar Godzilla wasn't forgotten or just ignored like alot of bad reboots are, but rather he was taken and added into Godzilla's enemies list as just "Zilla." The community opened their arms to Zilla because he wasn't pretending to be Godzilla anymore, he was just his own thing entirely, and people are more willing to let him into the fandom then
We like him because he can get his ass kicked
@@masterofdoots5965 Every long running franchise eventually develops its punching bag
1:47 It got even worse 😂
Aged Like a pint of milk in the sun in the middle of July
The idea of the last vestiges of humanity desperately trying to hold back a horde of Zillas and/or baby Zillas is actually so good though. I could see a sort of Pacific Rim-eqsue type story, where humanity develops advanced tech to counter the hordes.
Oh man, like power armor or smaller mechas, Starship Troopers style? That would be killer.
There is an anime Godzilla movie trilogy that's literally that.
@@pedroescalona3842 And that was dogshi 😂, the ending really didnt sit well in my mind
@@Quillian The ending just sets up the cartoon...it's not a dreary ending when you learn that.
and then, amidst the mayhem...the TRUE Godzilla awakens.
damn, imagine if this happened in the Monsterverse and it's just Godzilla and Kong teaming up against a legion of Zillas invading the hollow earth. That would be dope.
"You caused more damage than that thing did!" I wonder if this is commentary on the U.S. military or just them being goofy and accidentally striking gold.
Both? You can't really tell at times.
nuanced commentary about zionism
Taking a jab at the military was almost a requirement in these generation of movies. Pre 9/11. It was popular.
@@CoolSmoovie Yeah pretty much, especially non Air Force. Desert Storm was fresh in everyone's mind giving the Air Force a bit of slack, but the US military had been seen as kinda a joke prior thanks to Korea and Vietnam, and thus bumbling military was a somewhat common trope until a near u-turn for 9/11.
Basically the opening scene of Team America: World Police. Except that was post-9/11 and this was pre-9/11.
Master’s in Biology here. Some lizards do reproduce asexually by parthenogenesis (snakes, insects, fish and crustaceans too). Some species have an all females population since they reproduce strictly like that, like the New Mexico whiptail. Since they are basically cloning each other, the offspring is identical to the mother. Not all of parthenogenesis cases are exactly clones, in other species like Bees, they always lay males unless fertilization occurs because of the genetic process behind it. It’s an interesting subject and yeah, nature finds a way indeed haha.
Yeah, but apparently Zilla is a male, so he can't do partenogenesis. But then again, we're talking about a giant radioactive bipedal iguana rampaging through New York so who knows.
@@theangrysuchomimus5163 true, to be more biologically accurate it has to be female or at least female at some point maybe some sequential hermaphroditism or something. But like you said, giant radioactive iguana lol
This
Herpetology guy here. A close look at the post cloacal tail region shows that there are no hemipenile bulges. Therefore, Zilla appears to be female. Since Zilla is supposed to be a species of iguanid, the sexually dimorphic features would be well-defined.
@@theangrysuchomimus5163I think it was female
I can’t help but see that Godzilla VHS horror thing whenever I see the OG suits for Godzilla
5:00
DAMN what a jawline 😭
I recall Siskel said something along the lines of: "If you guys are going to put us in the movie to mock and get back at us, then why didn't you have your monster kill us at least?"
Missed opportunity
He did. It's just such a weird wasted opportunity.
Roland Emmerich: a man who can't even be petty correctly 🤣🤣
"Zilla is just a big T-Rex that gets lost in New York."
Missed a big chance to segueway to that scene in Home Alone 2 where Kevin encounters Marv and Harry outside of Duncan's, but their faces are covered by Zilla, Devlin and Emmerich respectively.
Wait what lmao
Okay calling this a big chance is a stretch, this is remarkable specific and niche
Fun fact:Zilla was the first femboy,im not kidding.They went with this design so viewers could feel attracted or mesmerized by it but since its a lizard its hard which is funny since today you can technically make everything look like a femboy.
the “ue” in segue is already pronounced “way” so you basically just said segwayway lmao
@@Freaky-Raine What
The knowledge that Matthew Broderick's character eventually animorphs into Finn from Sharknado is a priceless gift, and I thank you for sharing it.
15:55 When godzilla Died i remember as a Kid crying comparable to The moment when Uncle Ben died In spiderman 1,Like If i tell you I experienced for 20 seconds depression on thosw two Moments.
the cut from the dog jumping away from the explosion and the person being instantly disintegrated was funnier than I could have ever expected beforehand
17:28
“They let us off lightly; I fully expected to be squished like a bug by Godzilla.”
-Ebert
I think the bridge too far was calling him Ebert. Even Animaniacs had the taste to make them "Hisskel and Eggbert"
the book series Godzilla: Apocolypse does point out that Zilla is the hardest to fully get rid of, because it reproduces so fast, and even 1 egg can restart the process
The Godzilla earth prequels give so much love to many different Kaiju's, Zilla and Gigan to me are the standout ones.
@@nothisispatrick4644 movies so bad, but books so good. It's strange
They are basically the aphids of kaiju. Born pregnant and can reproduce asexually
As a kid, I always thought how stupid zilla would wander around NYC, without making a noise and destroying buildings left and right.
Im gonna be honest, the French being the ones who made godzilla is one of the best godzilla lore changes ever.
Now all we need is a French Godzilla movie set in Tahiti.
...Yes, I'm serious about this. Make it happen.
I keep upvoting and downvoting your comment, that's how conflicted I am
That's why this Zilla is so good at parcore she was trained by the French special forces from egg.
There are so many good french animators, this could actually be a relaly cool serious animated series combining Kaiju, nuclear warfare and fallout themes, all set in beatiful french polynesia ahaha
Now it makes sense that The Spy wanted to kill it so badly
I always felt sorry for Zilla as a kid. Sure, he wasn't exactly the Godzilla people wanted, but there was just something emotional and realistic about him being portrayed more like an animal.
Nope did it better kinda
Honestly he deserves his own name. Maybe rebrand GINO (Godzilla In Name Only) as some sort of proper acronym like Giant Irradiated Nautical Organism or something
@@dracodracarys2339 This or the fan beloathed name is good, I wouldn't mind Zilla to come back
The way the Cartoon re-invented some of the godzilla monsters was really cool (like having MechaGodzilla be a Cyborg or turning Hedora into a collection of Nanomachines.)
@@pengwin_ the nano bots were not hedorah they are a anti hedorah as it eats pollution
In the comic Godzilla: Rulers of Earth, we made sure to have Zilla literally run circles around Godzilla, it made for a fun fight. I wish we had the opportunity to lean on the "Zilla Swarm" concept as well, what a cool idea!
You worked on it?
@@alpacaofthemountain8760 Matt Frank is one of the main artists of the IDW Godzilla comics
yoooooo, I grew up reading those comics
I have a few ideas they should rebrand "zilla" and give it a new name.
Koyomasu, blending the Japanese words for Cayote (Koyote) and Barracuda (Kamasu).
Kitsania, blending the words for Fox (Kitsune) and Pirahna (Pirania)
Okasame, blending the words for Wolf (Okami) and Shark (same)
The prequel novels for the Polygon Godzilla anime trilogy do have a swarm of Zillas infesting and destroying Paris. They don't have any translations that I know of, but they've been summarized by many. I know WikiZilla's TH-cam channel has a few video summaries, for example.
I remember being so pumped for this. As a kid, I was a huge fan of Godzilla. I had remote control Godzillas, the little eggs that had all the Kaiju in them.
And then this movie happened. In its defense, it's how 13 year old me discovered Jean Reno as an actor and HE is excellent. Even enjoyed his role in Onimusha 3.
One thing you have to remember is that this was the first mainstream appearance of Godzilla in the west. You said it yourself: "it works as an independent kaiju movie". If you saw this in a movie theatre in 1998, that is exactly what it was: an independent kaiju movie. That's why many people look back on it so fondly.
LoL. I love this movie. I watched it over 20 times as a kid. And it always made me feel good. XD
Exactly! And for me and a lot of other people this was the Gateway into the Godzilla franchise
What'w funny, it would even work great as a remake of "the creature from 20,000 fathoms" film. They referenced it so hard it's closer to that than to Godzilla.
@@ClockworkCrow7 that is exactly how I view it, as a remake of that movie, not Godzilla. On that point it’s much better.
nah...godzilla 1985 was totally released all across the US back in the day and at 8 years old even i knew it was trash. to this day its still the worse US godzilla movie ever.
When he mentioned 9/11, I'm surprised he didn't mention that one line that aged VERY poorly: "In what city officials are describing as the worst act of destruction since the World Trade Center bombing..."
To be fair that happened in 93 and was accurate. Biggie Smalls mentioned it too. Thankfully he's not around to see what Diddy did.
Yeah i remember nostalgia critic poking at that one.
@@QuickQuips That was a test run for the real thing. Bush did 9/11. He had explosives placed at the bases of the towers. Then on 9/11 he pretended that like 4 planes were hijacked when really we just rerouted them from Pennsylvania then flew two military jets into the world trade center filled with more explosives and shot down all the witnesses in flight 93 with an F-15 after blowing up the Pentagon with a cruise missile.
@@QuickQuips Out of every other reference to the trade center bombing made in the 90s why would you pick Biggie Smalls?
@@vorpalweapon4814 Because we were alive during the time and Biggie was popular? That's the equivalent of someone saying "Yeah I even saw Eminem post on X, slipped it into his latest diss track."
I feel this is the perfect example of a movie BAD under an already existing IP while being GOOD as an indipendent work
That's the name of the game nowadays
I kinda wonder if there are any other examples of this, 'cause I can't think of any.
@@hlibushokI'd put pacific rim 2 in that category. Maybe the newest Star wars movies too
Bayformers 1 and 3, Stallone's Dredd, literally any "bad" Pixar sequels
The new d&d movie @@hlibushok
The soundtrack for this film was the first CD I ever bought, and led to me learning Brain Stew as my first song on guitar. Thanks for unlocking that memory.
13:45 You kinda hit the nail on the head there.
Zilla's not a bad monster but his core characteristic is that he's a relatively normal animal that wants evade conflict rather than engage in it. Perfectly sensible but as a Godzilla movie you couldn't have picked a more opposite characterization. Godzilla is like the rocks of the eternal shore, he's gonna beat your ass no matter what. So making him this flaky raptor that reproduces asexually is not only peculiar, it shows a willingness to actively not respect the source material. And rip off Jurassic Park.
the movie is also incredibly cheesy but that was par on course for the 90s
Not exactly a great villain.
It's basically "lets take Godzilla and turn it into King Kong"
@@jvbon646 kind of ironic you say that when toho did that with ebirah horror of the deep which was meant to be a kong film but they just added godzilla in there for the sake of it and at one part, godzilla was gazing at this island native woman in the same vain kong would and he attacks mothra despite the 2 being established as allies by that point. But at least it's not as bad as this film
Its a more realistic take on Godzilla which I don't mind. Godzilla surfacing to trash an entire city for shits and giggles is fun but doesn't really make much sense. At least in this movie his actions are "somewhat" logical
we got sam's dad from transformers, fin from sharknado and roland emmerick. it all comes full circle
It’s all connected.
"That's a lot of fish."
- Matthew Broderick 1998
Broderick was a weird choice, but I bet he was affordable.
I'm low key offended how Jean Reno was snubbed. "This movie has mostly tv-stars".
Even shows him in several shots while going through the b-listers, only to ignore the most succesful of the bunch. For a movie reviewer, that's a bit of an "oopsie" 😅
@@VikingTeddyHe’s “just some insurance guy.”
@@Lopez_the_heavy You're just some insurance guy! 🙎
@@VikingTeddy
A bit odd maybe, but not nearly as weird a choice as letting him play Phillipe 'The Mouse' Gaston in Ladyhawke.
@@Itcouldbebunnies Now there's a blast from the past. I've been meaning to watch some golden oldies from my childhood that have gone unloved, thanks for the reminder.
Watched it when it originally came out. And I just bought the 4K UHD to watch in my Home Cinema.
It's a great sommer movie to watch with friends.
I miss the 90s.
Ok the Cloverfield comparison is actually super on point and I’m shocked I’ve never actually heard it before. Also interestingly both movies also had an infestation of smaller monsters too, but where the raptor like mini Zillas were just kinda goofy and all got blown up. The little monsters in Cloverfield were these horrible abominations that if they so much as scratched you, you suffered a slow agonizing death and right at the last minute just get blown up from the inside out by whatever biological attack they had that kills you.
Those damm things were more scary than Cloverfield itself
Those bastards could be the stars of there own monster film
I know Roanoke Gaming had a really good explanation on it. Apparently it was some kind of natural secretion that had a nasty reaction once inside the human body, resulting in rapid pressure buildup and bursting. On the plus side, at least they weren't some kind of deep-sea Xenomorphs.
Siskel & Ebert roasted the movie for including parodies of them but not doing something cool like other movies by having them blown up or squished or SOMETHING
Somehow they managed to waste potential at every level of this movie.
It was right there and they didn't even do anything to them but mock them only. Pretty bad the people your mocking are saying you didn't mock them enough.
"You put parodies of us in your monster movie and didn't have the monster eat us? Disappointing."
I seem to recall one expressed gratitude at not getting squished, rhen the other poijted out that it would have been way funnier if they HAD been squished and the 1st changed his mind to agree.
Nah, parody route is actually more funny.
Thank you for pointing this out. Your comment should be pinned
I personally love the idea of Zilla being a Godzilla opposite. He's small and weak but fast and can multiply. He's primitive in comparison, and acts defensively compared to Godzilla's aggressive behavior.
So your telling me its a "Bizarrozilla"?
@@ProjektTakume am bizaro
Ironically, Zilla is actually the average size of pre-Legend Godzilla. The original Godzilla, and almost all of them before 2014, were 50 meters tall, the same height as Zilla.
I always thought that zilla was like the first stage of Godzilla till they find another food source and becomes more of the classic chunky Godzilla
Kinda like how kamatakun was like Godzilla before he became him in shin Godzilla
I’d honestly love to see zilla and her babies against godzilla
The best gag in the whole movie is when the French special forces team all starts chewing gum so that they look more American
The most astonish fact about this movie is that somebody actually bothered to search which coutry tested more nuclear bombs to the date and that that resulted to be the french is incredible to me, like, they could easily said that Zilla was product of the russians or some asian country, like american movies tend to do, I always wondered why they chose France as the main culprit
France tested enough nukes in (the paradise!!!) of the South Pacific I'm surprised the water isn't glowing Cherenkov blue
Well Emmerich is German. Not surprised he wanted to poke at the French ego.
@@DuvalSt1European favorite past time
its actually quite realistic in the 1990s context France did one in 1996 in a tropical region china did one too but that region was a desert so it doesn't fit the story India and Pakistan started doing them in 1998 and had a minor cold war. but i think they already started working on the movie in 1997 or earlier or maybe it was even already out when the tests happened France was the biggest nuke tester in this era
@@kameronjones7139Making fun of Fr*nch "people" is one of the few things that unites Euroeans and Americans.
It can't be overstated how cool that VHS Cover was. It was chromatic holofoil, like a rare Pokemon card, and embossed so the texture of the scales stuck out. It shone like the full moon in a dull and starless midnight sky that was the rest of the rental aisle.
The graphic designers and print company that made the box deserve the lion's share of the credit for the movie's post-theatre revenue and its nostalgic fondness.
As a long time Godzilla fan, the best way to describe the 98 movie is that it's a decent movie on its own merits.
It's just not a good godzilla movie.
Most things today tend to be somewhat good (or at least acceptable) in their own merits, but terrible as part of their respective IPs. I remember thinking to myself "Halo 4 is one of the best original game stories in recent years, but it's an abyssmal Halo experience", same with pretty much every 5/10 to 7/10 media product since 2010. No respect for IPs, no respect for characters, and no respect for fandoms.
You know I've always felt that Godzilla 98 was, almost, an accidental critique of the war on terror. This is a movie about the US army responding to an attack on New York, bungling it horrible, and then thinking they've won despite experts telling them the threat has not yet passed.
Sounds more like a Russian thing tbh.
You know the one incident in the school...
But there was no "war on terror" at that time.
@@moritamikamikara3879 That doesn't narrow it down, sir.
@toweypat That's why I said accidentally. It's impossible for their to be any intent, but coincidentally, the connections are there.
I only just realised. The helicopter fires a missile, THAT GUIDES ITSELF IN TO A BUILDING! (At 14:24)
Was the building on fire? Or did the pilot lock the building with radar?
You can watch an Emmerich movie over and over, and find new stupid every time. It's impressive, you can't fuck up so much with just ignorance, it takes effort.
Wait... You are telling me that THAT is supposed to be Godzilla??? I thought I was watching a dinosaur movie when I was a kid. Kid me never read the movie title and as I grow up I forget about it. Still fun back then though.
Dude the cartoon they made based on the movie actually rules so much, it’s crazy.
Oml yes, that thing is amazing
Nope, the show was amature, and filled with animations errors.
Nothing good came out from this 1998 movie, that's the truth some people try to ignore in virtue of blind nostalgia.
@@Acaciuus brother I wasn't born in that time and I think it's awesome
@@Acaciuusman star trek TAS is a piece of shit, that piece of shit is so much fun
@@Acaciuus it didn't have a bunch of black lesbians, that alone makes it better than todays slop
They wanted to avoid a suit with a human in it, so they ironically gave the monster proportions that closer resembled a human, with long skinny legs and arms.
genuinely look at the behind the scenes for the raptor suits in Jurassic Park, it's basically the same
I don't know wtf humans you've been looking at lol
Tristar throwing away a decent Godzilla film made by people who loved Godzilla in favor of the one we actually got, which was made by people who actively held a negative opinion of Godzilla and just wanted to cash in on the success of Jurassic Park, just because the latter was headed by known faces and the former wasn't really is a microcosm of the demented state Hollywood's been in for the better part of a century now.
The fact we didn't get that version of the movie dispite it having all the right people and stuff and the studio instead settled on the wrong people and stuff that ended up killing off the character's western push for a decade till Legendary got Zilla right in 2014.
If it makes you feel better, Godzilla was an Atlantean Bioweapon in that script.
What's funny was that Roland didn't wanna make it at first, and then TriStar rejected the other director's Godzilla movie because it would've costed too much to make, and then they brought Roland into it and then proceeded to make a more expensive movie that became the classic beloved film that we all know and love.
@frick_____you
Hey, it worked for Gamera lol
@@frick_____you Oh God No
8 minutes in the video and I just realise that this was the ''T-Rex'' movie I saw when I was young.
Not in a million years did I thought that the creature was Godzilla
Kevin Dunn, the actor for Sam Witwicky's dad is also in Godzilla 1998.
Now my headcanon is that Sam's father experienced Godzilla, changed his name, and settled down with his wife and had Sam and now his son is cursed to suffer the same fate of trying to survive giant entities destroying shit.
The Witwicky family curse.
The Witwickys aren't just cursed to deal with transformers, but all giant creatures
Godzilla VS Shia LaBeouf
Who’s coming out on top?
I was going to comment on how we have evidence in the transformer movies that the Witwicky family goes back for centuries, but then I remembered that every movie retcons the transformers origins, so it would only be fair to do that to the humans too.
The Witwickans will never leave them be.
@@nickthebabba7767 OPPPTIIIIMMUUUUUUSSSSS
the funny thing is that Toho did the "silly Americans confused the giant T-Rex with Godzilla" joke twice; they also had that conversation in Shin Godzilla of all movies
also, yeah the Cartoon series is great
Wait fr? I watched that movie like half a dozen times and don't recall that😂
@@agustinvenegas5238 yeah, it was a super quick line during one of the Briefings
one of the characters whispers to another that the Americans also reported Godzilla sightings & the other tells him they probably saw a giant lizard or something
Wait, that happens in GMK, but not in Shin, im pretty sure the whole thing in shin is than "nothing that big can be on land" so there's no presedent of a kaiju attack until Shin Godzilla appears
@@Artista_Frustrado I think that's from one of the Kiryu Mechagodzilla movies, isn't it?
@@teotlcipactli7530yeah I’m pretty sure the line in Shin is when they were naming him Godzilla. They said in a meeting “Godzilla is an American term for it. We’re calling it Gojira.” Or something to that extent.
Watching this as a kid has left core memories in my brain. The Godzilla design might not be authentic but it was super cool to a 6 year old
Didn't expect to see you here
@@Shark_boiiiiisame
The US military destroying NY and attacking a peaceful Zilla is the most true to life part of this movie
This films biggest mistake was the fact that it was called Godzilla.
If they called it something different, it would have probably not been so popular, but at least it would have likely been beloved in its own special way.
People did like this movie
It is beloved in its own special way
You just described what it is already lol
It IS beloved you dunkus 😂😂😂 To some of us in our early teens/preteens this was the first Godzilla material to ever to bless our eyes. And I absolutely LOVED it!! Even after understanding the tone and meaning behind actual Japanese Godzilla concept, this movie and associated media (like the cartoon series) holds a very special place in our hearts.
Apparently nobody remembers how hated it was or disappointing it was for not being Godzilla. The film would have had much better footing if the name was different.
The single memory burned into my brain brighter than any other regarding this movie, is Zilla going Kool-Aid Man through the Skyscraper purely to slap an Apache. There are some great dumb lines and cool scenes and all, but that one moment is the first thing I think of whenever I think of the movie.
Also yes I would 100% love to watch World War Zilla. That sounds amazing.
Given how non-confrontational Zilla is in the 98 movie I'd be surprised if that was even remotely intentional, or if that pilot even died. I don't know if Zilla is responsible for a single death in the movie, I genuinely don't. Final Wars Zilla would match in a World War Zilla or Godzilla vs Zilla swarms scenario much better, that thing charged right in looking for a fight even if it got wiped in 12 seconds
I agree with your opinion.
You managed to provide two epic movie ideas in a single video: World War Zilla, and Gojira Vs. Zilla.
Also, anyone else laugh at 22:00? Like, she ghosted him, came back to get a story, stole a VHS labeled "Top Secret" (which manages to get him fired), and then is like "You never said it was off the record." I mean, that's some top-shelf Audacity if I do say so myself.
It is nice to know Zilla became cannon and wasn't forgotten like most 1990s - 2000s things
As AVGN had once said, Toho had retired Godzilla with Godzilla versus Destoroyah in 1995 but since America made this movie . . Godzilla 2000 came about. Then of course Zilla's pancake in Final Wars when they really did call it quits
4:14 For those who don't know, Kaiju literally translates to "Strange Beast" he literally wanted Godzilla not to be a Kaiju
Why no period after "Strange Beast?" You were clearly done with your first point there and started a second point after it ("he literally wanted Godzilla not to be a Kaiju"). You need a period there.
@@TheGrammarPolice7 "The Grammar Police7" 😂
@@kawanvictor21bro sucked the life out of the room 💀
Insane how good Zilla looks in some scenes, almost as good as Jurassic Parks dinos, and then in some he's just no-clipping thru buildings
in all fairness, it's not like JP didn't have its moments. seriously, the flocks of Gallimimus from the first movie are the most poorly aged CGI in the franchise, hands down
The Warhammer Tyrranid Zilla invasion is a great idea for the sequel but it will be so cool to see different types of zilla always mutating on something stronger
THIS is how I find out Clifford the Big Red Dog had a live action movie?
Infohazard!
The IDW Godzilla comics had Zilla as just one of many kaiju living on earth and a rival turned ally after an alien invasion. It was very cool and what I’d like to see more of.
those IDW comics go HARD. Godzilla's design for the majority of them is one of my favorites for the character period, a mix between the 2002/03 and Final Wars suits.
Man, 9/11 had a way bigger effect on cinema than I thought.
You're now just realizing this?
What makes you say that
You'd be surprised on its effect with the whole world
You must be young, that changed the culture of our country (assuming you’re American)
Deberías ver spiderman y Lilo y Stitch
That $69.99 action figure at 25:14 would have cost $135 in 2024 money... Yeah, i totally understand why my parents didn't get me stuff like that when I was 4.
I’m glad you brought up the Cloverfield comparison. As soon as you mentioned “it’s just a scared animal”, I immediately thought of the poor (baby?) Cloverfield just getting harassed by the military as it unintentionally wreaked havoc on NYC.
Ironically, tho, despite Zilla being portrayed as a villainous existential threat to humanity, audiences could tell that it was just a scared animal; and while Clover was clearly acting like a lost & scared animal, for the protagonists & audience, it’s basically just another kaiju wrecking the city.
Roland Emmerich never fails to disappoint us in new and inventive ways.
It's weird how he has this terribad reputation nowadays, in the 90s his name was a really big thing that attracted people to the teathre, like Steven Spielberg.
@@n3rdy11It's pretty much his own fault given almost all his films after the IMO overrated but I guess still decent first _Independence Day_ have been rather crappy. His last actually good film was arguably all the way back when he (apparently) did _Stargate_ the movie, which just makes it feel like a fluke given everything that came afterwards. For all of Mr. Spielberg's own recent bad movies after 2000, he at least still has way more than only one or two good films to his name.
It's even funnier when Mr. Emmerich basically was being hyped up despite clearly wanting to focus on a genre--disaster movies--that was already overall dying before he even came on-scene. And then basically the same genre died even more after 2001/09/11 but the guy just never really adjusted to that, instead choosing to repeatedly run already questionable ideas that likely woild have struggled with new climate further into the ground with awful writing. It says a lot that even that the closest to mainstream success his films got after 2000 was the conspiracy theory doomsday one that _2012_ was.
I mean, that many babies need a lot of food so... it kinda makes sense to lay eggs in a place full of easy prey.
Yeah, a major city like New York!
Or Tokyo!
Or Los Angeles. Maybe even Seattle.
Yeah, keep that copium rolling 😂
Good theory. That would explain why it would lay it's eggs in the middle of a city. But it wouldn't explain why Zilla swam from the middle of the Pacific to the Eastern seaboard, ignoring the warmer waters and all the populated areas along the way.
Come on man, the Knicks aren't THAT bad.
Seeing this in 1998 with my family as a weeeeee Sonny Jim is such a delightful memory.
The Taco Bell chihuahua marketing, the epic eyeball trailer--- it's nostalgia alright, but in such a pure "I went to Disneyland"-kind of nostalgia.
Nobody talks about the true greatest disaster movie, Pixels 2017 featuring Adam Sandler.
I loved it😊
God that movie felt like a fever dream
It's actually 2015 though
Fun fact: in final wars Toho not only rebranded this design so that all future appearances would go under the name "zilla" but it's CGI model was created by scanning a toy of the '98 godzilla, it's fight scene is the shortest in film clocking in at a measley 12 seconds.
But even funnier is the lyrics of the song that plays in the background during the fight. As godzilla incinerates zilla the lyrics of the song are as follows:
SUPER SIZE OUR TRAGEDY
(A disapppointment! A disappointment!)
*BORN IN THE LAND OF THE FREE!!!!*
Slight bubble burst as a Sum 41 fan but the line in parentheses is actually (You can't define me! Or justify greed!) But in a way that also fits Zilla.
Yeah, SUM 41 was pretty big in Japan at that time so they probably heard the lyrics from this American band and thought it fit. And they were goddamned right, that scene is amazing.
If you ever owned the big 1998 Trendmasters Godzilla (I believe just called Ultimate Godzilla?), then you own the hands down most accurate merch of 98 Godzilla/Zilla there is, since that's the one that was scanned for Final Wars
also i know it's technically before but you cannot get more 2000s than 98 and Final Wars having both Green Day and Sum 41 music on their sountracks
Babe wake up pointleshub uploaded
Babe left you. Remember?
@@jtgdshe was busy with you the whole night
@@remuslazar2033 "It was me Barry"
This movie demonstrates the truest form of the indomitable human spirit: finding joy and comedy in the worst situations. Reveling in the wierd events and f-ups found even in disasters. Instead of becoming an adrenaline-fueled killing machine, you crack a smile and say “Mondays, amiright?” as you clap your buddy on the back.
That green day song with a Godzilla roar mixed in is by far their best work. Ever.
ignoring all advertent and inadvertent political themes aside, you just simply can't make shit like Godzilla 98 or Final Wars anymore. a kaiju movie would NOT release today with Green Day or Sum 41 on the soundtracks, especially considering the former isn't even in the actual film
Just something of note: Female iguanas _can_ lay eggs asexually, but the eggs they lay won't actually be fertile or hatch unless they mate properly.
All egg laying vertebrates can I think, and there is a surprising amount of lizards that can reproduce completely asexually, via parthenogenesis.
I believe that there is a lizard called the whiptail that can lay fertile eggs asexually
@@totalNERD-eo7wx A few monitor lizards can too.
@@purplehaze2358 Neat
Pathenogenesis does occur in monitor lizards, but rarely.
(0:54) The *'That's a lot of fish'* line perfectly sums up this entire movie.
Before I even got to that part I knew what the line was gonna be
Same. Doug Walker's legacy is eternal
Godzilla calmly waiting in the locks of the Panama Canal while on his way to terrorize New York is the best image.
The thing I remember most from this era is the cartoon episode where some guy is mad at the world so he sits in his apartment seething so hard it creates a kaiju that Godzilla can’t even defeat. They basically give the guy a therapy session to beat the monster.
Edit: Ok it’s called what dreams may come from season 1 and i misremembered it a bit. He’s mad and his dreams create the monster.
What
the fuck?
Huh?
The man snorted so much copium over failing in life, it created a kaiju LITERALLY out of thin air.
thats VERY japanese.
28:28 - You saying that "Zilla's like a Bizarro Godzilla" just reminded of a particular funfact.
Godzilla 2000, the next Japanese Godzilla movie, introduced Orga, a reptilian kaiju with some of Godzilla's DNA. Its head and posture were modeled after '98 Zilla, with the designers cheekily saying something like "It was so Godzilla could defeat the American Godzilla."
I've always liked the designs for Zilla and Orga, so the connection between the two was fascinating to me.
I remember the IDW Godzilla comic series *Rulers of Earth* had Zilla as part of the roster and they actually use him really well as a foil to Godzilla’s style. It was really cool seeing their take on him.
I'll be honest, this is the only one of the movies you covered that I actively dislike
Because I hate this thing Hollywood has, where they're always ashamed of the source material and have this "I can do better than 80 years of history" attitude
yeaaaaaaaaaah that's a common prevailing issue with things
I used to think like that, but this level of arrogance is kind of just charming now. When something like this happens now, it's not because they think they can do better, but desperation. Hollywood hires a bunch of no name directors with no notable prior work to their name because they're easy to control. If they don't take liberties with what little they're able to, they'll be left doing adaptions for the rest of their career and never have the sway to get any of their own ideas out there. They usually just make things worse, but it's basically their one shot to not just be a cog in the machine for the rest of their lives.
@@fwg1994frankly both exist, Hollywood has no shortage of hacks akin to David cage
Zack the Hack Snyder in a nutshell
@@fwg1994 What I'm describing is more of a lack of respect for the thing they're working with, like it's beneath them, particularly from creators with more established names (what you said also happens tho)
Taika Waititi saying he read one issue of Jason Aaron's Thor run and didn't like it, so he decided to do his own thing; Fant4stic never saying the name of the group at least once; "Blackagar Boltagon? 😂😂😂😂 what a dumb name"; or basically all of the DC Znyderverse
I'm not saying you need to worship the original work or anything (the Lego Batman movie makes fun of Batman through the entire runtime, but it's clearly made by people that like the character), and a lot of things don't age well (I don't expect the Fantastic Four to have the same family culture they had in 1967) but you have to recognize the legacy of the source material, and why people like it, what makes it work, etc
That's my take on it, but maybe I'm just being a soy wojak
Hot take: I actually enjoyed the design of Zilla. I liked that they went for a more "organic" or "animalistic" approach, as a creature that is a monster, not a monster that is a creature.
So, instead of a mutated embodiment of the atomic bomb, we got a mutated wild animal, who's just trying to survive living in the (at the time) modern world.
This all said, is it the best Godzilla movie made in the US? Heck. NO. But as you put it so astutely, it's nostalgic, and just plain charming. The acting was goofy, the scenes were goofy: all of it had that goofy charm to it, which (in a sense) nods to the older Showa-Era Toho films, in this respect alone. I think, honestly though, the VFX for the time were SO incredible, which is what encapsulated me as a kid watching this movie: the effects were so jaw-dropping.
In fact, I hadn't seen Independence Day until I was a high schooler in 2010-14, which is crazy because Zilla '98 used the exact same VFX techniques from that movie, which again: for the time, was stupendously done.
Best scene from the whole movie is the emergences of Zilla, from the Hudson River, and from the underground in front of Nick...these 2 points in the movie were amazingly done, and shot so well...I love it to this day.
But yeah, Final Wars Godzilla needed to really slam Zilla into the Sydney Opera house and just obliterate it entirely, Toho needed that closure, haha.
Im going to be honest, I think the stockier build of him is more accurate for how big he'd be in reality. I see the older or newer cgi build of godzilla to be more organic.
I like Zilla's design because she's hot. Smash. Next question.
YES. Thank you! Exactly what I'm thinking
I've always had this thought, 98 Godzilla was so weak because it was simply a mutant marine iguana. But it's offspring, Series Godzilla was stronger and more durable because it was born like that, it was never mutaed in its embryo state unlike its parent. Remember what Nick said, 'The dawn of a new species', 98 Godzilla was the foundation, Series Godzilla was the perfected form. Bigger, faster, possesses an actual atomic breath, able to tank conventional weapons even in its adolesant state. Overall, i believe that 98/Series Godzilla has potential in the long run.
I can’t believe you made it this long without seeing it. I refuse to believe it lol
19:34
You know, it would make sense to make Audrey the human level threat second to Zilla, using Nick's emotional baggage to manipulate him and using his military connections to advance her own career at the expense of innocent people. Her story sends the civilians into a panic, but all she cares about is chasing the next big story, disregarding any consequences. Instead of trying to redeem her or make her sympathetic, have her double down on her selfishness and greed, which would ultimately lead to her undoing. The living embodiment of media-driven corporatism and callousness. What a wasted opportunity.
At least DieHard got that one right.
@@Dat-Mudkip Which is weird considering how much Die Hard loves corpos
The Man™ sticking it to The Man™
That whole idea about the army trying to exterminate a horde of Zillas a la World War Z is actually really similar to the events of the japan exclusive novel GODZILLA Monster Apocalypse. In the book, many kaiju start appearing around the world, and one of them is Zilla, who attacks France (get it?) and gets killed, but then his offsprings start rapidly reproducing and become almost unstoppable. While way easier to kill, this thing could easily become a bigger threat than even Godzilla himself if given the chance, so the idea of adding him in a future movie would be great.
Look up shin godzilla ending
I think I even saw somewhere that Zilla was one of the hardest monsters for the world to take out
@@f2t948 That's even worse. If those humanoid godzillas happened to also be somewhat smart, humanity would truly be fucked.
@@chasmocosmo6571 they had to nuke all of france to even stop the zillas I think
@@f2t948 Shin was pretty close to pull that kind of scenario with Humanzilla spawn yet it (luckily) never happened
THANK YOU for mentioning the animated series. That show was actually my introduction to Godzilla as a whole, and was a big part of my childhood. After my love for the series was rekindled by the Monsterverse, I was originally disheartened to hear that people didn’t like the 1998 version. Only to realize that they meant the movie, not the show, which made me happy to hear.
To this day, every now and then for some reason, I will say "and Godzooooooooookyyyyyyyy"
The old cartoon was awesome.
The helicopter pilot responding to blowing up a building wit “AH DAMN” is the funniest shit to me
"Did they replace the army with Helldivers?"
I feel personally attacked and I'll have you know I average a whopping 65% accuracy against the Terminids.
Incidentally, now I want a faction of kaiju. How fun would it be to unload into 200 foot monsters?
@@kirant Honestly, it’d be really dope if they introduced a 4th, newer faction after they eventually re-add the Illuminate in Helldivers 2.