As a quick aside, I'm a long-time lurker and first time poster, and based on the film industry's seemingly never-ending predilection for rebooting everything I want to revisit the original versions of these upcoming reboots and examine why they failed to achieve their goals, and why movie executives feel the need to try again.
My first target is Godzilla, the 1998 blockbuster directed by Roland Emmerich (of Independence Day fame) and starring Jean Reno (of Leon fame) and Matthew Broderick (of married to Sarah Jessica Parker fame). Eagerly anticipated, overwhelmingly advertised and given a tongue in cheek trailer where Godzilla smashed a T-Rex fossil to bits, Godzilla looked like a sure fire hit. The summer of '98 was going to be hotly contested, with Godzilla facing stiff competition from Bruce Willis vs the asteroid actioner Armageddon and Matt Le Blanc vs acting actioner Lost in Space. Tristar decided that Godzilla needed to be advertised a hell of a lot to stand a chance of winning this box office battle, and put posters, billboards, trailers and tv spots into the public eye at every opportunity. In todays world of sneak peeks, endless clips (Terminator Salvation was practically put online before the films release) and TV spots its hard to imagine a world where films aren't almost completely spoiled before they reach cinemas. However this was once the case, but changed after Godzilla where the first of its kind saturated advertising campaign essentially draped a Godzilla themed blanket over everyone and made them resent the project. as such the public reaction was to say 'Hell no' to Godzilla. The film opened to $44 million, lower than Independence Day, and ended up at number 9 on the highest grossing films in the U.S for 1998, just beating Robin Williams vehicle Patch Adams. However, the film was number 3 for the year worldwide, and can't be viewed as too much of a financial failure. It can be viewed as an artistic failure however.
To start with, Matthew Broderick is a fine, popular actor and entirely believable as a scientist who loves playing with worms. However, putting Matthew Broderick in an action scene is absurd. Nicolas Cage played an FBI scientist in The Rock and while that was a stretch he at least looked like he could cut the mustard in a fight. Broderick looks like he'd rather read an encyclopaedia than run around being chased by lizards. Jean Reno however is well cast as a member of the French Secret Service, except when you watch the film for some bizarre reason it sounds like he's doing an impression of a French accent, like starring in American films has taken the edge off his native tongue. However he looks fine firing guns and zip-lining from windows, so he can be excused. Maria Pitillo meanwhile torched her career and every scene she was in by WHINING, WHINING and then WHINING some more. The lead female role in a huge blockbuster should ignite your career, but Pitillo has since almost disappeared, perhaps now remembered for appearing in an episode of Friends as guess what, a woman who previously slept with Joey! As most women in Friends have done.
After the acting comes the monster itself. To me, the Godzilla creature is a fine special effect. There have been criticisms of the beast and pointed remarks about how New York in Godzilla seems covered in perpetual rain for the sole reason of hiding the poorly rendered beast. I disagree and like the CG monster. However, Godzilla as a character seems to be a mess of ideas. In Alien the monster used it's instincts to hide and attack anyone who dared approach it (only when it jumps Parker and Lambert does the Alien make an offensive attack) but in Godzilla the monster hides, runs, eats, runs, hides, digs and runs. Oh and it swims. One minute it attacks a submarine, one minute it swims away from a submarine. One minute it runs away from chasing helicopters, the next it attacks them. It is also smart (ducking out of the eyeline of a helicopter and popping up to eat it moments later) but stupid, by leaving the comfy confines of its underground nest after smelling some fish about an hour after previously falling for the same trick.
Audience participation is also mixed up during the film. Are we rooting for the pregnant monster, or booing it? When Godzilla sees its fallen offspring and gets mad, are we at that point feeling sorry for it? Even though moments later it chases after our heroes and tries to slaughter them? But then when jets launch missiles at the beast and bring it down we are treated to almost hysterically over the top emotional music as poor ol' 'Zilla is blasted to death hours after smashing the living hell out of Manhattan. Whose side are we on?
Finally the tone of the movie. Action movies can have humour in them and still be serious, just watch Lethal Weapon, Die Hard or Face Off (which has funny lines and funny faces). However Godzilla turns into a slapstick comedy during the misjudged Madison Square Garden scene. Taking the focus away from Godzilla onto his babies (which are blatant, oh so blatant rip offs of the raptors from Jurassic Park) was a mistake, and having these babies lose their footing on gumballs and shy away from falling glass turns the movie into an episode of Laural and Hardy. As the babies tear apart Jean Reno's foreign legion (of which he shows no sadness to the loss) and bumble around the stadium's corridors, the film seems to implode and lose its footing. The running 'gag' (a term I use loosely) about Broderick's characters name (Tato...something) is an overused joke from many movies (it was used in The Relic just a year earlier about Tom Sizemore's character for heavens sake) and just doesn't work. Having a character based on film critic Roger Ebert (R.I.P) doesn't work. Arabella Field's entire character doesn't work (SHOUT SCREAM MOAN WHINE SHOUT) and on the whole the movie just isn't...fun, or at least as fun as it thinks it is.
Hopefully the upcoming reboot won't make the same mistakes by maintaining a serious tone and bringing us realistic characters (although Pitillo's character does something realistic when she provides the press with Broderick's video, something reporters are prone to doing) and will hopefully be more Cloverfield (a film I didn't particularly like but one that carried genuine terror in it's premise) and less like Mega Shark v Giant Octopus or whatever that terrible sounding monster mash movie was called.
Gareth Edwards, it's over to you.