As a response to the horrid 98 American adaptation, this movie makes fun of the idiotic scenes and tropes that film used but does not justify its own tropes and dumb ideas.

This is a bad Godzilla movie. Godzilla is portrayed at his worst here, not given any sort of build to the usual grandeur he is used to. Instead, he's more so a matter of fact, and not treated as much of an issue besides one or two army scenes. Instead of making Godzilla worthy of the name God like the 98 robbed him of. This movie doesn't actually doesn't even try to restore that title. In fact, I'll go as far as to say that the 98 movie, built up the fear and powerfulness of Zilla more so than Godzilla here (Mostly due to those first few opening scenes where we don't see Godzilla at all).

This story is dumb, but that's the usual with Godzilla. What I didn't like is the whole Godzilla Network storyline and idiotic CCI rivalry they have. I don't care about any of these characters. And it's not like other Godzilla movies where the characters are so generic or barely seen that I shouldn't care. It's that it feels to me that they expect you to. The close-ups and focuses on the little girl are bad. I don't feel for her, and she clearly doesn't feel anything because every time the camera is on her, she emotes nothing. There is overacting, but this is just too much of the opposite end.

One thing I did like about the 98 adaptation was some of the special effects and CGI. But, Toho should know that with their budget constraints and how amazing every other movie in the Heisei series looked without over-the-top CGI implementation; that having THIS MUCH CGI is a terrible idea. It looks plain bad. Especially that underwater scene. Not to mention the horrific colour correction when something in the shot is clearly using greenscreen.

Also, I'm not sure if it's just for the dubbed version, as that's the only version on my DVD, but the 98 Godzilla roars coming in are godawful when this movie is supposed to distance itself from that.

The monster? It's unique yeah sure. I love the very end of the fight as any fan would. But everything else felt lazy. They made Godzilla fights look good in the Heisei series. Not a good start to what I was hoping to be a more advanced era of kaiju brawling.

**3/10**