Godzilla 2000: Millennium

Godzilla 2000: Millennium (1999)
Toho Studios
Director: Ōkawara Takao, Suzuki Kenji (special effects)
Also known as: The slightly re-edited American release was just called Godzilla 2000 (2000).

I’ll bet Toho were glad they retained the right to continue making their own Godzilla films when negotiating the terms for TriStar’s Godzilla (1998). Within a year and a half of the American movie’s release, they’d produced the first of a new wave of films that could be seen as reclaiming the daikaiju’s legacy and responding to the choices made by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. Although these all came out during the Heisei era, they’re generally referred to as the Millennium series to avoid confusion with the 1984-95 Heisei series.

The conceit of all but one of the Millennium series films is that each one ignores all the material that’s preceded it except for the original Godzilla (1954). (In practice, how much or how little each film will ignore will vary greatly.) Presenting a string of new takes on Godzilla might have been a way for Toho to show certain overseas film producers how they thought it should have been done. It seems, though, that it was really just a pivot from a planned series after Toho saw the underwhelming ticket sales for Godzilla 2000. Presenting a selection of reboots was an expedient way for them to try other approaches until they found one that worked for Japanese audiences. TriStar themselves undertook to distribute Godzilla 2000 to American cinemas, but ended up trimming and re-dubbing it to create another in the long line of American re-edits. Subsequent entries in the series received limited exposure, if any, in US cinemas.

Ichinose Yuki, a journalist, tags along with independent scientist Shinoda Yūji and his young daughter Io on a nocturnal expedition to track Godzilla. (We don’t initially know it’s Godzilla. Well... we do, because we’re watching a movie with his name in the title, but we’re a few scenes into the movie before anyone says “Godzilla”. All that’s clear from the first scene is that they’re tracking something that registers on seismographs, which implies a natural phenomenon.) Ichinose wants to get pictures of Godzilla to bargain her editor into giving her a job on a computer magazine; sadly, Godzilla’s radioactivity has the effect of ruining her film, so she ends up stuck on the assignment.

Godzilla comes ashore at fogbound Nemuro, up north in Hokkaidō. (In a possible callback to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), there’s a close call with a lighthouse.) Shinoda, Io and Ichinose intercept him and barely escape with their lives, then witness him destroying a local power station. Shinoda theorises that Godzilla might somehow hate man-made energy sources.

Godzilla now has quite a flat, wide head, somewhat greenish skin and extremely pointy, spiny dorsal plates. He’s very snaggle-toothed. His breath ray is orange rather than blue and more fiery than before. His history is never explained in the movie, it’s just accepted that he’s a periodic hazard for Japan with a particular taste for power stations.

Katagiri Mitsuo, the head of the Crisis Control Intelligence Agency (CCI), is schmoozing at a corporate soirée when his subordinate Miyasaka Shirō informs him of the Nemuro incursion. (Presumably the CCI is a kind of quango with responsibility for giving the relevant government departments advance warning of any Godzilla-scale threats. It evidently has broad scope and a generous budget to conduct its own research, as we’ll see in a second. Katagiri is said to also be a deputy cabinet secretary, but at which ministry isn’t made clear.) Later, a submarine under the direction of Miyasaka is planting CCI “G-Sensors” in the ocean trench off Japan’s east coast when it finds a meteorite made of a highly magnetic substance. Katagiri thinks it could be exploited as a new, cleaner energy source and orders it raised. When the operation begins, however, it raises itself and floats impossibly – Miyasaka suggests it could be something alien.

Sent back out by her editor, Ichinose looks for Shinoda at the headquarters of the Godzilla Prediction Network (GPN). (Presumably this is back in the Tokyo area rather than Hokkaidō, given how quickly Shinoda is able to get to Godzilla’s next landing spot.) GPN HQ turns out to be an office in the back of a brewery warehouse – although Shinoda has access to a fair amount of hi-tech equipment, he’s clearly underfunded. The GPN does seem to include at least two other people, in Matsushima and Fukushima. Shinoda defers all the GPN’s business and admin activities to his daughter.

Godzilla approaches Tōkai, where there’s a nuclear power plant. The government orders the emergency deployment of the JSDF. Katagiri has the authority to order the reactor shut down as a precaution. He and Shinoda race there, Shinoda in his truck and Katagiri in a helicopter. Their relative positions are clear: Shinoda wants to study Godzilla because of what he might reveal about the development of life on Earth, Katagiri wants to destroy him because of all the expensive damage he causes. It’s revealed that Shinoda used to work alongside Miyasaka at the university lab where Katagiri recruited his CCI staff; had Shinoda not already resigned by then, he still would have refused any job offer from Katagiri because of their irreconcilable ideologies. Shinoda tries to warn Katagiri that Godzilla might attack other power sources in the area besides the nuclear plant.

General Takada, in charge of the JSDF response to Godzilla, is confident that his team can take Godzilla down with a new variety of high-penetration missile. A first wave of conventional missiles launched from fighter jets and tanks lures the aggressive Godzilla inland to where the special missiles are waiting for him. Although they break his skin, they unfortunately don’t injure him seriously, and only the distraction of an airstrike stops him from destroying the tanks. Meanwhile, Miyasaka has been shocked to watch the meteorite raise itself upright, levitate out of the water and eventually glide off towards Godzilla’s position. It scans Godzilla, then fires an energy beam at him, knocking him into the water. He retaliates, blasting the rock off what proves to be a metallic UFO. It flies away down the coast and parks itself once more in an upright position in the water. Miyasaka speculates that it’s solar powered and tilts to follow the sun – it could have been buried at the bottom of the ocean for millions of years before the CCI submarine’s searchlight reactivated it.

Shinoda is keen to study some of the scales that the missiles knocked off Godzilla, but needs access to the CCI’s more advanced equipment. He agrees to Katagiri’s condition that he turn over all the GPN’s data on Godzilla, although Io craftily ensures that the CCI receives only a dud copy of the data. Working together, Shinoda and Miyasaka discover that Godzilla’s skin tissues contain a factor that nearly instantly repairs any damage on the cellular level. Shinoda names this factor “Organiser G-1”. (The American re-edit changes this to the more literal “Regenerator G-1”.) He’s soon dreaming of the potential medical applications.

At sunrise, the UFO is re-energised and breaks free of the electromagnetic restraints the CCI and JSDF had optimistically placed on it. It flies over Tokyo’s Shinjuku district and lands on top of the Tokyo Opera City Tower, crushing the top few floors. (Opened in 1996, this building follows in the long tradition of prominent recent constructions to be destroyed in a Godzilla movie.) The surrounding area, including Ichinose’s publisher’s office, is evacuated. Commandeering the tower’s servers, the UFO hacks into all the computers in the neighbourhood and absorbs all the information it can. It also starts to lower the proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere around it. The CCI decides the best way to counter this threat is to plant bombs in the upper floors of the tower. However, Shinoda receives a phone call in the CCI control centre from Ichinose, who’s inside the tower’s server room trying to get the scoop on what specific information the UFO wants. Desperate to get her out before the bombs go off, Shinoda and Io race to the tower and get past the CCI’s guards with Miyasaka’s help. Once they’re there, though, Shinoda takes an interest in the data and stays behind while Io escorts Ichinose out. Katagiri refuses to postpone the detonation to save Shinoda’s life, despite Miyasaka’s protestations. The bombs fail to damage the UFO, which destroys the rest of the tower itself, having apparently got what it wanted.

Shinoda has, however, managed to get out with one of the server room’s computers. Just before it demolished the tower, the UFO broadcast the word “MILLENNIUM” (in English!) on all electronic displays in the area, followed by other words (in English and Japanese) such as “Earth”, “Alteration” and “Dominate”, giving some hint of its apocalyptic intentions. Shinoda shows that it plans to change Earth’s environment to suit an alien form of life, and that it’s particularly interested in Godzilla. With Godzilla’s “Organiser G-1”, it could regrow the physical forms of its original pilots. Godzilla chooses that very moment to wade ashore from Tokyo Bay. Miyasaka suggests turning off Tokyo’s power supply in the hope that he’ll leave again, but Shinoda and Katagiri agree that the object of Godzilla’s attention isn’t the city, but the UFO.

After a short but violent confrontation, the UFO gets the upper hand and samples Godzilla’s DNA, using it to create a gigantic alien organism that resembles a stingray perched on top of a cluster of tentacles. But the creature immediately stumbles and mutates, roaring as it does so. Shinoda guesses that Godzilla’s genetic information, which the aliens have absorbed along with the regenerative factor, is too much for them to control. Godzilla recovers and blasts the shell of the UFO, but is now confronted with an alien that increasingly resembles himself. (Ancillary material from Toho names this daikaiju “Orga”, although it’s never named in the film.) The two clash repeatedly, with the alien instantly healing any injuries Godzilla causes. Godzilla is finally able to destroy the creature by blasting it from within when it tries to swallow him whole. Pausing only to smite Katagiri in a strangely personal attack, Godzilla turns his attention to the city around him and goes on a celebratory rampage. The surviving heroes muse that humans themselves are responsible for the problem of Godzilla.

As is often the case, the new Godzilla movie riffs on a recent Hollywood blockbuster. Here it’s Twister (1996), following a plucky scientific team with their off-road vehicle and their ramshackle equipment as they race a better-funded rival to pursue and study a natural disaster. This may be significant, as Twister was the film that director Jan de Bont took on after he walked away from TriStar’s Godzilla project. We’d rather have seen de Bont’s take, Godzilla 2000 seems to say. That the kaiju antagonist is (initially, at least) a computer-generated image that tries to imitate Godzilla could also be a subtle dig against Godzilla (1998).

Of course, it could equally just be a knock-off of the end of Godzilla vs Biollante (1989), in which Godzilla defeated a foe mimicking his form by firing his atomic breath ray down its throat. Pale shadows of Godzilla can also be seen in Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla (1994) and the three films thus far to feature Mechagodzilla (1974, 1975, 1993). This isn’t a new idea in these movies... but it does take on a new significance in the wake of the Devlin/Emmerich movie.

The nuclear plant that Godzilla attacks at Tōkai is, in fact, the oldest in Japan. In March 1997, there’d been a serious radiation leakage at an attached nuclear waste management facility, which might have had a bearing on its choice as a location in this movie. It only plays a minor role, though. A far worse incident happened at a nearby enrichment facility at the end of September 1999, only a couple of months before the movie’s release and almost certainly too late to have influenced the script. We’ll hear more about that in the next blog post.

There’s another reference to a nuclear power station, more (in)famous now than it was at the time, when Shinoda checks in with a colleague in Fukushima. It seems the GPN keeps an active watch over Godzilla’s most likely targets. Interesting, then, that the other GPN operative we hear from is based in Matsushima. There are a couple of towns of that name, but presumably this is the one down south in Kyūshū, which is home to a large coal power station. Shinoda firmly believes that Godzilla is interested in attacking other energy sources besides nuclear, an idea that really isn’t followed up on in this film, but which, again, will be explored further in the next film. I can’t find any indication of any large power stations in the Nemuro area, so what kind of facility Godzilla attacks there must remain a mystery.

The introduction of “Organiser G-1” and, with it, the suggestion that Godzilla is functionally immortal is quite a departure from earlier films. Hitherto, Godzilla has been resilient, certainly, but not invulnerable. The nearest any previous film has come to this is the broad suggestion in Godzilla vs Biollante that Godzilla’s cells hold some sort of regenerative factor and, at the other end of the rationality spectrum, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II (1993) resorting to mysticism to bring him back from the brink of death. A quarter of a century later, Godzilla Minus One (2024) will show a Godzilla with a similar super-healing ability, but without any explanation.

As far as the visuals go, the cinematography is far too dark in some crucial scenes, notably across the entire last half hour, making it difficult to follow what’s going on. The American re-edit goes some way towards mitigating this, turning the brightness up a bit as well as tightening up the pacing. The compositing is noticeably better than in the Heisei series movies, and director Ōkawara Takao seems to have got the memo about shooting from street level for greater impact, although that’s more in the earlier scenes. The climactic (and too damned dark) fight falls into much the same pattern as in previous films, with characters watching the events unfold from a nearby rooftop as if to deliberately justify the default use of kaiju-eye-level long shots.

Having all the lights go out in Nemuro as Godzilla wades in and crashes through the power lines is a nice touch, too often overlooked in similar scenes in the past. There are a handful of other moments I’d consider highlights of this film. One is the title caption scene, as a spooky moment in a fogbound lighthouse becomes the reveal of Godzilla carrying a ship past the window in his teeth. Another is Ichinose’s first encounter with Godzilla as Shinoda reverses his truck out of a tunnel with the kaiju in pursuit, plunging his feet through the tunnel roof. (But why on Earth did the effect of the windscreen shattering need to be realised with CGI?)

Old hands might notice two familiar faces among the cast. Shinoda is played by Murata Takehiro, who had a secondary role in Godzilla vs Mothra (1992) as Andō Kenji, the company man with a conscience. Apparently he got a lot of positive attention for that performance, and he proves to be a capable leading man here. And the villainous Katagiri is surely unmistakeable to anyone who’s seen Yamato Takeru (1994), in which he played the evil Moon god Tsukuyomi. He chews the scenery just as much here – in what might be the movie’s most bizarre moment, he seems to try to outroar Godzilla seconds before being swatted with a gigantic forelimb.