GODZILLA's Original Director Reveals One Big Way His Version Of 1998 Movie Differed From Roland Emmerich's

GODZILLA's Original Director Reveals One Big Way His Version Of 1998 Movie Differed From Roland Emmerich's

Speed director Jan de Bont was originally set to helm Godzilla before Roland Emmerich took charge, and he's now revealed the very different way he planned to approach the titular Kaiju. Check it out...

By JoshWilding - Sep 20, 2022 07:09 AM EST
Filed Under: Godzilla
Source: Yahoo Movies (via SFFGazette.com)

1998's Godzilla was directed by Roland Emmerich and ended up being considered a disappointment. It didn't perform too badly at the box office, but still failed to live up to expectations given how much it cost to make. Critically, the movie was a bomb, though it was, in many ways, ahead of its time due to the heavy use of VFX that technology hadn't quite mastered at the time.

VFX aside, Godzilla was hampered by a muddled story and terrible performances, so it's no great surprise that Kaiju fans don't exactly look back on the blockbuster all that fondly. 

Originally, the plan had been for filmmaker Jan de Bont to helm the movie. He started his Hollywood career as a cinematographer on movies like Cujo and Die Hard, and later helmed Speed. The director had a much different idea for how to approach Godzilla than Emmerich, though we'll leave it up to you to decide whether it was better or worse than what we got. 

"I really wanted to make Godzilla, I wanted it so badly. I loved what he was in Japan. I love that it wasn’t so perfect," de Bont tells Yahoo News (via SFFGazette.com). "It was a guy in a suit! It was so great. The movements, there was something human about it. The guy in the suit was sweating like a pig and he said he was losing two pounds every minute because it was 125lbs and it was rubber."

"We had a really good script and everybody loved it. [But] the reason they got rid of me is because they said my budget was higher than Roland Emmerich," the filmmaker reveals. "I said that’s impossible because they’re going to use the same effects people as I do and they’re going to charge exactly the same."

"Because the guy was in the suit, the motions were very different to what a dinosaur would do and that was very attractive to me."

So, he basically planned to use a guy in a suit, relying more on practical effects than CGI. We're certainly intrigued by what that might have looked like in the late 90s, though enhanced with the rudimentary effects of the time, it could have actually looked pretty damn amazing. 

Jurassic Park had already mastered CG dinosaurs, of course, but Emmerich's sci-fi approach to Godzilla meant the end result didn't work quite as well. We'll never know what might have been, though it's always fun to wonder, and at least the franchise has been given another chance in recent years.

Check out our interview with Emmerich for his latest movie, Moonfall, below:
 

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WarMonkey
WarMonkey - 9/20/2022, 7:46 AM
One of my biggest complaints of that movie was that Godzilla was basically just a giant raptor who gave birth to a bunch of raptor babies so IDK maybe I would have liked his rubber suit idea.
Razorface1
Razorface1 - 9/20/2022, 8:30 AM
@WarMonkey - Honestly the movie feels like a Jurassic Park ripoff. T-Rex... but bigger! Raptors... but more!
Dredd97
Dredd97 - 9/20/2022, 8:01 AM
the rubber suit movie sounds 100× better if only because that hasn't been done in so long. The Godzilla TV show should do man in a suit.
Fares
Fares - 9/20/2022, 9:34 AM
I actually quite liked Godzilla 1998.
Jacory
Jacory - 9/20/2022, 9:45 AM
@Fares - Same, I found it quite entertaining. Even more entertaining was the cartoon show, which was basically a sequel of the movie.
Fares
Fares - 9/20/2022, 9:53 AM
@Jacory - Oh yeah, that and the MIB cartoon (which has the greatest intro ever btw) were my jam back in the day.
Yuhio
Yuhio - 9/22/2022, 2:55 AM
@Fares - Haters gonna hate. It was one of the best Monster movies of the 90s. Also the animated series made as a sequel was awesome.
CyberBishop
CyberBishop - 2/9/2023, 10:34 PM
@Fares - Yeah.. It is a guilty pleasure movie of mine. I remember waiting in line to see it and getting the special cel from the movie in the cool Godzilla packaging.
ManofSteel23
ManofSteel23 - 9/20/2022, 10:02 AM
I was about 7/8 at the time this came out with obviously no real adult thoughts about how it doesn’t look like the Japanese version, I like it now for nostalgia purposes and I can see why guys my age at the time wouldn’t have liked this film, I just think of it as americas Godzilla which is fun and cheesy 😅
Godzilla2000Zer
Godzilla2000Zer - 9/20/2022, 10:05 AM
Read the original screenplay definitely would've been an exciting and way superior movie especially Stan Winston's awesome redesign. Glad we got the MonsterVerse now but I no longer hate the 98 film.
campblood
campblood - 9/20/2022, 11:40 AM
I cried because of what emmerich did to Godzilla. I was a HUGE fan and he just took a dump all over the franchise
Reeds2Much
Reeds2Much - 9/20/2022, 11:54 AM
GODZILLA's Original Director

I for one am impressed anyone got an interview with someone who has been dead for like thirty years.
CyberBishop
CyberBishop - 2/9/2023, 10:37 PM
@Reeds2Much - Huh? Jan de Bont is still alive unless you are referring to the 54 Godzilla director Ishirō Honda who passed in 93. This is about the 98 American film with the big iguana.
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