Unlike the truly awful films made by the Hal Warrens, the Coleman Francises, and the Tony Malanowskis of the world, it's not easy to explain why Godzilla tanked as hard as it did. On the surface, it appears to have everything audiences crave: fast-paced action, terrific stunts, a likeable cast, and fantastic special effects. Sure, the characters were two-dimensional, the plot is full of holes, and the dialogue is often cornball and dopey, but it's not like those things have ever been a problem for big-budget summer blockbusters before. So the reasons this movie fared so poorly are pretty subtle. But first and foremost has got to be the way this movie treated its famous source material.

The original Godzilla was the brainchild of Japanese producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, who in 1954 envisioned a creature to cash on the then-current craze for movies about mutant monsters created by radiation (Them!, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, etc). What he came up with was a 400-foot prehistoric reptillian monster that gets revived by hydrogen bombs and goes on to destroy Tokyo. He called it "Gojira", a combination of the English word "gorilla" and the Japanese word for whale, "kujira". Gojira was produced less than a decade after America dropped nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities, so despite the monster movie trappings, the film contained somber allegory about the threat of nuclear holocaust.

Unfortunately, most of that allegory was lost when an American studio acquired the rights to distribute the film. They renamed the creature "Godzilla", edited Raymond Burr into the film, and released it in this country as Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Nevertheless, it was a runaway hit, and as a result, Toho Studios and Tomoyuki Tanaka released 21 more Godzilla films before Tanaka passed away on April 2, 1997. This was little over a year before our current subject was released, so in some respects, he lucked out.

Tri-Star, a subsidiary of Sony Pictures, acquired the rights to produce an American remake of Godzilla in the 90's, and the concept was kicked around Hollywood for a while until it ended up in the hands of the filmmaking team of producer Dean Devlin and director Roland Emmerich.

Devlin and Emmerich were principally known for big-budget action pictures with lavish special effects like Stargate and Independence Day. Even though both of these films had paper-thin plots and poorly drawn characters, they were both huge hits. People went to these flicks specifically for the thrills and the spectacle, and judging by their respective box office takes, those audiences didn't walk away disappointed.

So an update of Godzilla (showing the big reptile destroying New York instead of Tokyo) seemed like the perfect project for Devlin and Emmerich. Just one problem: As eventually became clear to audiences, neither one of them understood why Godzilla became so popular in the first place. If you watch the DVD, check out the "making of" featurette where Dean Devlin actually has the cojones to say that this is the film Toho Studios would have made if they'd had the special effects technology of the 90's back in the 50's. Of course, Toho immediately proved him wrong the next year when they released Godzilla 2000, which made ample use of computer-generated special effects, but didn't muck with Godzilla at all. We know Godzilla is just a guy in a rubber suit. That's part of his essential charm. And where the Toho Godzilla is full of personality, the Emmerich-Devlin Godzilla has none.

If you don't believe me, listen to fellow Rogue Reviewer Jordan Garren, probably one of the biggest Godzilla enthusiasts I know. In his review of this very movie, he insists on referring to the movie's main creature as "Godzilla", quote-unquote, and I have to agree. It may have the same name and similar origins, but it's not even close to being the same monster.

So, before a frame of this movie was filmed, they had already pretty much lost the hardcore Godzilla fans. So why didn't this movie connect with more casual fans?

First of all, the bulk of the destruction of New York is caused not by Godzilla himself, but by the American military hunting Godzilla. When a moviegoer buys a ticket to a movie called Godzilla, you damn well better believe they want to see Godzilla smashing things up. Sadly, there just isn't enough of that happening in this movie.

Secondly, the characters in this movie are all completely incompetent, especially the military characters. When characters have minor revelations, they're treated like brilliant leaps in logic, even though small children could have made the same deductions. Also, who thought that paying American audiences would want to see their own military portrayed as total boobs? I mean, taking into consideration the presence of a French protagonist, I can almost believe this movie was really targeted towards anti-American French audiences. I don't know how well Godzilla played in Paris, but I imagine it was a huge blockbuster on the level of an old Jerry Lewis film.

(It's certainly possible I see elements of Godzilla as ludicrous only in light of what happened on September 11, 2001, or as they say in New York, "The Events". Without a doubt, the actions of the military in this movie come off as doubly idiotic considering we've seen similar things happen in real life. Now, obviously it's unfair to attack filmmakers based on events they couldn't have anticipated, but still, I'd be willing to bet that a lot of the criticism I level at this movie was also on the minds of audiences who saw it in theaters five years ago.)

And lastly, what probably did this film the most damage was how it so unabashedly swipes ideas from the Jurassic Park series. Godzilla himself, after all, is nothing but an overgrown version of the T. Rex, and there's even a scene late into the movie that feels like a sequence from Jurassic Park has been directly edited in. As a result, the entire movie feels like a retread. And when your primary draw is the spectacle, the last thing you want your audiences to walk away and tell their friends is, "You've seen it done before. And better."

The film opens on grainy, sepia tinted footage of waves rolling in. A map superimposed over the waves informs us that this is French Polynesia. There's grainy footage of an atoll accompanied by a superimposed "radiation" symbol, letting us know that something distinctly nuclear is about to happen. We get an underwater shot of some normal, non-mutant lizards swimming around. This cleverly sets up what's about to happen, because, you see, Godzilla is a big lizard.

The lizards appear to watch as palm trees are cleared away by bulldozers and stock footage guys wearing gas masks [?] survey the area. A lizard nuzzles its egg, and then we see stock footage of an army base being built on the atoll. Around here is when we get the credit, "Godzilla Designed and Supervised [?] by Patrick Tatopolous", so it's pretty clear who inspired the name of Matthew Broderick's character. However, we're still left wondering why Godzilla needs supervision.

Eventually, we see stock footage of people staring through binoculars, a clock ticking down, and a loudspeaker broadcasting a countdown in French. Then there's some Shakycam footage of a lizard crawling over some fake eggs. Suddenly, in the stock footage, there's a bright flash over the water. We see men looking at the flash through binoculars as the lizard starts to get mighty pissed.

Then, the shockwave of a nuclear bomb hits in the stock footage, blowing tons and tons of water up into the air. It stands as a testament to the unbelievable power of a nuclear blast that, even in a movie this crappy, atomic test footage is still nothing short of awe inspiring. A mushroom cloud forms, and superimposed over the test footage is a lizard slowly crawling away from its eggs. As the orange tint fades into realistic colors, we zoom in on the eggs.

There's a bolt of lightning and we cut to a fishing boat cutting across the sea. This will turn out to be the first of many scenes in this movie where it's raining. Collect 'em all! The caption onscreen informs us that we're in the "South Pacific Ocean".

Sitting at the controls of this ship is a Japanese guy watching sumo wrestling on TV while eating noodles with chopsticks. Because that's what Japanese guys do. Now, I know some of you might find this odd, but I actually used to follow sumo wrestling, so I recognize one of the wrestlers on TV as the great Chad "Akebono" Rowan, who could probably take on Godzilla all by himself and win. Sadly, this is the full extent of his cameo.

We briefly get a shot of other Japanese guys gutting and cleaning fish below deck, then it's back to Noodle Guy as he hears an alarm. He checks out a display that is supposedly "radar", but looks more like a Shockwave animation. On the "radar", he sees a huge blip headed right for the ship. He sounds another alarm, which I guess is the Big Ass Blip On The Radar Alarm and the guys cleaning fish start scrambling in random directions. Another guy runs into the control room and gets on the radio, yelling lots of stuff in Japanese.

Then we cut to more guys running through the corridors in a panic. One of them stops to tell an Old Guy something, but suddenly the ship is violently rocked. This knocks the Old Guy out of bed and stuff comes tumbling down on him, including four knives that just happen to land perfectly point-down, sticking straight up out of the floor. Um, yeah, that could happen.

All of a sudden, there's a moment of quiet. This doesn't necessarily mean something really bad is about to happen, just like pigs aren't necessarily about to fly out of my ass. All the men pick themselves up and look around, including a dead ringer for Tommy Chong. Anyway, as expected, a giant claw comes bursting through the hull, pulling some guys out into the water and causing the ship to flood and instantly start sinking. The Old Guy just stares at all of this happening.

Back in the control booth, a giant, scaly tail swings across the deck and slams directly into the windows of the booth, slamming Japanese guys against the back wall.