The 1998 Hollywood reboot of ‘Godzilla’ was an outright flop for fans and critics and now Dean Devlin is sharing why he felt the movie went wrong. While Toho had released a tried and true formula up to that point, Hollywood wanted to do their own take on the King of the Kaiju and just weren’t able to get it together.
When talking about the film, it sounds like there wasn’t a single factor in the movie that Devlin had envisioned that ended up on the big screen. TriStar Pictures wanted to bring this creature feature out but wouldn’t approve it until Devlin and Roland Emmerich made their names on ‘Independence Day.’ After that, the studio was suddenly very interested in franchising ‘Godzilla’ in the hopes that it could be a billion-dollar payday for the studio.
That was the first problem:
“There was enormous pressure. That was probably the biggest problem in making Godzilla, this assumption that it was going to be as big or as original or as strong as Independence Day. I don’t think it ever had that chance.”
The 2014 release of ‘Godzilla’ was considered a huge success by making $529,076,069 at the worldwide box office which is half of what Tristar was hoping for in 1998. Realistically, this just wasn’t going to happen. However, Devlin will own up to some of his own decisions contributing to the film’s flop as well:
“I think part of the biggest problem was that I pushed Roland into doing the movie because I was a huge Godzilla fan.
I grew up with Godzilla, and it wasn’t something that Roland had grown up with. He didn’t have a giant passion about Godzilla. He was able to find a story with me that he could get passionate about and he was passionate about the movie we made, but this was his take on it as opposed to honoring the Godzilla legacy in a way that would make the people who loved Godzilla happy.”
The problem was, though, that not only did it drive ‘Godzilla’ fans away but it didn’t make a substantial impact with casual moviegoers either.
Do you think Dean Devlin is addressing every issue with the 1998 take on ‘Godzilla’ or was he blinded to other mistakes in the film? What was your biggest beef with the movie? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Syfy
