There was never any realistic way the 1998 movie Godzilla was ever going to measure up to the hype. That summer was a crowded one with lots of movies people were exited about seeing like Armageddon, Saving Private Ryan and The X-Files. But the number one movie that everyone absolutely, positively HAD to see was Godzilla.
The marketing for Godzilla was perfection. It never actually revealed the whole monster but instead would play on the size of it. There were billboards that read, “He is twice as tall as this sign.” With ads on the sides of busses reading, “His foot is as long as this bus.” And everything featured the tagline, “Size does matter.” I remember spending hours that summer scouring the internet for any information on Godzilla I could find, just happy one day to finally uncover an audio clip of its new roar.
Even the poster for Godzilla only ever revealed the monster’s foot smashing down on a New York City street.
I remember how secretive the creators of the film were about anyone seeing the newly designed Godzilla before the movie was released. So much so that reportedly there was a misinformation campaign where certain manufacturers would get fake designs of the monster in order to track down any leaks to the media. I worked retail at the time and remember we received a shipment of Godzilla branded t-shirts with the whole of the Godzilla monster on it before the release of the movie. And instead of reading the side of the shipping box that read, in no uncertain terms, that these shirts should remain in the backroom until the release of Godzilla on May 20, 1998, some employee in fashions worked them out to the floor. And that’s where they stayed until a manager found them, gathered them up by the armful and ran them back to the storeroom where they’d sit for a few more weeks.
People were most excited that Godzilla was the follow-up movie from writers/director Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich who were coming off one of the most successful films of all time Independence Day. It was thought that while Independence Day was hugely successful Godzilla would be even more so since it was based on an existing property people had been clamoring for years to see a big-budget Hollywood version of.
And with Godzilla that’s what they were going to get — the marketing had been telling them that for months before the release of the movie.
The first sign that something was wrong with the film was that when the reviews came out they were tepid at best, negative at worst. I’d spent so much time looking forward to Godzilla over the previous months that I found myself concentrating on one review that said (sic), “The movie might not be good but I still want to see it again,” as a sort of affirmation that the reviewer was wrong since who’d ever want to see a bad movie twice?
I saw Godzilla opening weekend and remember liking it enough when I saw it but not having a lot of time to dwell on it since there were so many movies out that year that I wanted to see coming soon after the release of Godzilla. And watching it again 20 years later I’d say that while Godzilla isn’t a great movie, it isn’t a bad one either. It suffers in that Godzilla feels like three movies stuck together rather that one coherent whole. Still, when Godzilla stomps New York for the first time it’s truly awe inspiring even decades later.
While Godzilla wasn’t the runaway success that Independence Day was a few years before, it made less money than the likes of Doctor Dolittle and The Waterboy also released in 1998, it wasn’t a failure as legend around the film suggests. It made a respectable $380 million at the box office in 1998 which, with inflation, makes it about $578 million in today’s dollars.
In fact, with inflation 1998 Godzilla was actually more successful than 2014 Godzila that was considered a success. Or enough of a success to warrant a sequel movie, Godzilla vs Kong, that’s due in theaters in a few years.
