Roland Emmerich's Godzilla , which was released 20 years ago this week on May 20, 1998, is still considered to be one of the clunkiest, most ill-advised mainstream action blockbusters of its decade. Some critics have recently noted that the 1990s were a generally bad time for big-budget action blockbusters, and often cite Godzilla as their primary piece of evidence. But after twos decade of rumination, and armed with an extensive knowledge of all things Godzilla, the time has come for us to reconsider where the film failed -- and where it may have succeeded.

A Visual History of Godzilla 29 IMAGES

But to start, a bit of context:In December of 1995, Japan’s Toho studio released Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, which was intended (at the time) to be the final film in the long-running Godzilla franchise. It had been 41 years since the famous kaiju's debut, and Toho felt that it was time to lay their star creature to rest. Godzilla faced off against the giant monster of the title, which was born of the Oxygen Destroyer weapon that had killed Godzilla in the 1954 original. Godzilla managed to best his foe, but was destroyed from the inside due to an ever-growing internal nuclear fire. He melted down like an atomic Viking. It was awesome. And it was a fitting sendoff to a legit cultural ambassador.With Godzilla ostensibly at an end, the market opened up for others to take the reins. Three years later, America attempted, for the very first time, a proper reboot of the Godzilla franchise, re-imagined by an American studio, starring American actors, and directed by the then-reigning sci-fi blockbuster champion, Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day). It was hotly anticipated and promised to be one of the most astonishing monster movies America had ever seen.The ad campaign for Godzilla is well-remembered by those who experienced it first hand in the months leading up to the film’s release. SIZE DOES MATTER, billboards screamed, and ads would compare large outdoor items to parts of Godzilla's body; i.e. “His foot is as big as this bus” or “His eye is as big as this billboard.” The actual creature remained skillfully obfuscated in advertising, leaving audiences excitedly curious as to what this new, American Godzilla would look like. For a few moments in the early months of 1998, the world really, really wanted to see Roland Emmerich's Godzilla.Of course, we all known what happened then. Godzilla stomped into theaters and kind of tripped over those bus-sized feet. Godzilla was not a success with critics (it currently holds a 16% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes), and while it certainly made money, it wasn't as big a hit as the studio was hoping for (despite having brought in over $130 million domestically). The film was rejected by general audiences who quickly pointed out that the tone was too weirdly comedic, the human characters uninteresting, and the climax too closely modeled on Jurassic Park. To this day you can hear pundits and critics laugh off the film's climactic insertion of hundreds of velociraptor-sized baby Godzillas into its action.Indeed, a revisitation reveals that all of the film's purported weaknesses have remained just as weak. In the lead role, Matthew Broderick doesn't strike a very interesting figure, often reading as too slack-jawed and clueless to offer actual intelligent solutions to New York's new Godzilla problem. Maria Pitillo fares far better as an ambitious reporter who remains on the front lines when the monster attacks; she is never taken seriously, and is inappropriately propositioned by her creepy boss (Harry Shearer), and yet manages to extend a huge hand of bravery and professionalism when the pavement begins to fly. Indeed, it is the Pitillo character who discovers the in-film history of the monster, and that it had already been nicknamed Gojira by Japanese sailors.In the film's savviest joke, she then listens in horror as the name “Gojira” is bowdlerized into “Godzilla” by the Shearer character. This is a frustration felt by all Godzilla fans who understand that the American name has always been, since the 1950s, a mispronunciation.There is some debate as to the strengths of the monster design. Smaller than any of the previous Godzillas, this new monster was to be more realistic, more reptilian than its predecessors. It moved more like a lizard and had a large boxy face like an iguana. It was the first Godzilla that was able to slink into the sewers of a major metropolis and actually elude detection; quite a feat for a 200-foot animal.If the goal was to make the new Godzilla more realistic, one could say that Roland Emmerich actually succeeded. While no land-dwelling animal could actually grow to that size, this Godzilla seemed weirdly more down-to-earth than his Japanese counterparts. Previously, Godzilla had been a mean-eyed, upright walking gorilla-whale with the attitude of a cantankerous bar bouncer. This new Godzilla felt more animal, more inscrutable, less emotional. It was simply a wild beast following its instincts. When the Japanese Godzilla beat up a rival monster, it was because that kaiju hated interlopers and loved a good punch-up. This new Godzilla just wanted a place to lay his eggs (Yes, eggs, even though the creature is repeatedly referred to as a male).Indeed, this notion of Godzilla being a mere beast is a concept that has been revisited several times throughout the franchise's various continuities. It's the way the monster was originally seen in 1954, for instance, and in 2016's Shin Godzilla the glorious star monster flails around like a mindless fish. Godzilla-as-animal (rather than Godzilla-as-intelligence) is one of the core launching tenets of the character. Credit must be given to Emmerich and his producing and writing partner Dean Devlin for understanding at least that much.In the last 20 years, 1998’s Godzilla has regained little cultural reconsideration. Most audiences and critics still strongly accept it as the over-long, over-silly, badly scripted pseudo-entertainment that it is. Rewatching it in 2018 only cements much of its bad reputation, unfortunately. At 140 minutes, it is far too long, and the actual story is distracted and uninteresting; who cares about the careers and romantic banter of Broderick and Pitillo when there's a 200-foot radioactive iguana on the loose? And despite myriad attempts at lighthearted humor (the quips, such as they are, fly furiously), Godzilla is surprisingly un-fun. The tone is thudding and lugubrious. Which is hard to pull off in a franchise that has featured space aliens, multi-headed dragons, robotic Godzilla clones, and whatever the heck Megalon is. Audiences have walked away, and few have bothered to return.The one major benefit of Emmerich's failed Godzilla is the reaction by Toho. Repelled by America's attempt to repurpose the spirit of their star creation, Toho rebooted the Godzilla franchise yet again in 2000 with Godzilla 2000. The next four years saw the release of six Japanese Godzilla films, ending in 2004 with Godzilla: Final Wars, and most of those films were pretty spectacular, openly defiant to America's vision. Indeed, in Final Wars, Godzilla – the real Godzilla -- faced off amazingly against the creature from the 1998 film. It was explained that America simply mistook the Emmerich-created iguana being for Godzilla, when it was actually a lesser creature that had since been re-branded as Zilla. Godzilla picked up Zilla and threw him against the Sydney Opera House. It was the shortest monster fight in Godzilla history.So if it weren't for the failure of Roland Emmerich's Godzilla, we may not have had any more Godzilla films. It's entirely possible the series would have ended when the G-Monster melted down in 1995. Instead, thanks to America's clumsy attempt to capture something they may have never properly understood, Toho regrouped and recreated something that was dear to them. When America tried to remake Godzilla yet again in 2014, Toho responded a second time with Shin Godzilla, a superior film in every way. Toho is also currently in the midst of releasing an ultra-outsized animated Godzilla trilogy on Netflix. This new trilogy is set in the distant future, and features the largest Godzilla to date. And then there’s also the American sequels to Godzilla 2014: Godzilla: King of the Monsters is due in 2019 and Godzilla vs. Kong hits the following year.So while the 1998 film is still as clunky and as bad as you heard or remember from 20 years ago, we may owe Roland Emmerich's Godzilla a debt for keeping the franchise alive. Because a world without Godzilla is a world I don't want to live in.