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Warning: the following contains spoilers for "Godzilla." If for some reason this makes a difference to you, stop reading now. Apologists for the new Godzilla movie like to point out that the special effects were good, as if a few megabytes of recycled T-Rex CG make up for the torture of watching Matthew Broderick try to talk convincingly about biochemistry. Atomic breath might have helped a little, but no dice; this is supposed to be a realistic giant mutated tank-eating lizard of doom. It's not as if the movie made any real sense in spite of this. We're used to that by now, but that doesn't mean we won't mock it. In fact, we're going to ask your help. Send us any of the legions of plot problems, inconsistencies, and illogicalities from the movie, using the form at the bottom of this page. We'll post the most insightful and/or witty ones here. Just for fun, we're putting a ban on references to the inverse square law; we know that any vertebrate that size would be crushed under its own weight, but that's exactly as far as we're willing to suspend our disbelief. First off, where do I get headphones like the ones people had
in the movie? You know, the ones that block out sound so completely
that you can't hear a helicopter (in Russia) or a rampaging giant
lizard (in New York) until it's twenty feet away? The helicopters can't outrun him. So why don't they just fly up?
It's not like Godzilla flies or has a great jump shot. Okay, the heat-seeking missiles didn't work because Godzilla is
cold-blooded. Fine. Then how did they get a lock in the first place?
And why did it not occur to anyone in the entire Army chain of command
that reptiles don't have afterburners? How do you lose a twenty-story creature? If he goes underground,
don't you think he's gonna leave some big-ass holes for everyone
to follow? Didn't it seem a little odd that the baby Godzillas could slip around on a bunch of gumballs?
They probably weighed around 1000 lbs., right? They would have just crushed them flat. It would
be like you or I slipping on a bunch of canned peas.
The Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, is apparently the most amazing piece of engineering ever designed by man. Even after Godzilla had taken down half of its superstructure, the span was able to support his weight without crumbling. Godzilla managed to lay a bazillion
eggs all over the interior of Madison
Square Garden. How does a 30-stories-tall
critter fit inside an arena that's
maybe five stories tall? Did he tunnel
up from below and then just stick
his ass in there and fire these eggs
all over? So they evacuate New York, it's completely deserted except for
Godzilla and the Army, right? Meanwhile, Godzilla's breathing fire
breath, helicopters are crashing, missiles are exploding...in short,
there's a lot of flame going around. I know *I* didn't see the
fire department running around - how come the entire island didn't
just burn to the ground? You're going to tell me that two Exocet
missiles (or whatever they were) exploding into the Chrysler building
aren't going to start a fire? [ Editor's Note: Godzilla does not breathe fire breath. What happens is that he uses tornado breath (much lamer) to knock over a few cars which explode Hollywood-style. The tornado breath then blows the flames towards the target. Look closely and you'll see. While it's really not much more plausible than fire breath, it's technically different. But Eric still has a point. Even the rain wouldn't have prevented a few towering infernos. ] Ace Cameraman is climbing out the window, seconds away
from chasing the Big Story. He gives Blond Bimbo one
last chance to follow him, and regain the respect (snort)
of the Man of Her Dreams. She takes the plunge to follow her
heart...and then takes the time to change into a stylish
trenchcoat, high-heeled boots and kitchy beret.
You gotta like the idea of jets travelling at three hundred
miles per hour hanging around a bridge until Godzilla shows up.
That must be easy.
If Godzilla is cold-blooded, how the hell does he move so damn fast when it's cold and rainy in New York? Wouldn't that slow him down?
OK, Here's the deal: Shiva opens his eye and you are born.
You are born a twenty-story tall, pregnant, cold-blooded lizard.
You notice that you were born in the warm, balmy climes of the
South Pacific ocean. You then notice to your horror that there
are not nearly enough skyscrapers and heavily peopled areas nearby
to even begin to whip up a half-hearted token rampage. What do
you do? Exactly! You make a beeline to the more natural setting
for the king (um, actually QUEEN!) of all monsters, New York City,
a mere 12,000 miles away. Clever, aren't you? [ Editor's Note: "Shiva Opens His Eye" is my favorite Tears for Fears single. ] Godzilla sure looked svelte for carrying 200+ kids.
The "stars" enter the Madison Square
Hatching Garden through a Godzilla-sized
hole in the floor that leads to the subway
system. Yet after the Godzillettes hatch,
the humans are concerned only about keeping
the critters from exiting via the doors!
I guess they figure that NYC subway rats
can easily mop up the floor with a bunch
of Jurassic wannabees trying to make their
escape in that direction. Either our defense budget must have really taken a bath or no one
in the government really cares about New York City because I find
it hard to believe that a few measly helicopters lobbing bullets
and a scattered pack of poorly piloted submarines was all we could
spare to combat a gigantic lizard stomping out a city.
Godzilla is a giant mole when he needs
to elude his pursuers, but somehow he's
completely blocked by the tunnel the
heroes get stuck in.
How can you be less than a half block from an entire stadium blowing up, and not get hurt? While watching the scene when they pile all the fish in the middle of downtown, my fiancee whispers into my ear, "Why don't they just poison the fish? Why lure him to the fish and try to blow him up? Wouldn't a lot of poison work on him?"
Granted, Godzilla ends up not eating the fish but using it for his kinder. That is irrelevant. Couldn't both the military and
the scientists come up with the most risk-free way to take down the giant beast? In the real world, one dozen helicopters flying in close proximity plus one city street lined with tall buildings plus one thunderstorm equals one large, tangled pile of spare helicopter parts.
Why did they persist in calling it a "he" after they found out that "he" was pregnant? Speaking of destroying Madison Square
Garden, only two missiles? You're trying
to kill 200 monsters that will grow up
able to rip holes through skyscrapers,
outrun helicopters, swim faster than
torpedos, and (when fully grown) take
more missiles than you can shake a stick
at to kill, and you only use _two_ missiles?
Want to get away from Godzilla?
Forget all of those silly helicopters!
Just take a cab! They obviously go much
faster than the choppers and Godzilla,
not to mention through New York's easy-to-navigate
streets.
In the end when they are setting up for the sequel we all see the surviving egg hatch, one would figure that the military would
make a very thorough sweep of the nest area to ensure such a thing does not happen When the two torpedos sink the sub you might figure the subs that launched them could send a self destruct command to the torpedos before they hit the Anchorage. Why were NY and military officials so worried about the video
tape getting to the press? Clearly, people were now aware of
Godzilla's existence. Does the old, dying man muttering God-zil-a
really change anything? Does it really make a difference to people
if they know the name of the monster that's squashing them and
knocking down their homes?
Where can I get a car like that Taxi Godzilla tried (and failed!) to eat... I can see the new GM ads: The new GMC Gristle: It takes a chewing and keeps on moving! -- Bryon DalyThe ground only shakes with Godzilla's passing occasionally. When Ferris needs to be warned, earthquakes all over the place. But when the anchorman's on the phone, it's calm city.
Godzilla is so radioactive that we find out that his footprints, as well as the sole survivor of the cannery boat attack, are irradiated. And yet, when Godzilla "disappears" in NYC, nobody thinks to break out a Geiger counter to track Godzilla down, nor do they think about using one to find the "nest" later in the film.
Li'l question for you New Yorkers, do y'all got lots of kids
runnin' around with missing arms and legs due to them elevators
that ignore obstructions and jest keep closing til they've met?
And sheez, two harpoon missiles and MSG goes up like it was a gasoline
tank, I shudder to think what would happen if someone smuggled a
pipe bomb into a Knicks game.
Physics aside, I doubt that
Godzilla would leave such tidy footprints. and where are the shuffle
marks, the divots where the ground was compressed, and all the
other things that would occur. ah well. I'm just disappointed that
the ending didn't have a sighting of a giant flying turtle. now
THAT would be cool! (Sing with me..."Gamera is really neat...Gamera
is full of meat")
Is that a home pregnancy test I see?
Godzilla has the same protein sequences
as a human? Similar enough my flaming
ass. You know, for a few minutes there I thought they might have
replaced Godzilla's Atomic Breath with a new type of breath weapon:
BOAT BREATH. In the scene just after Godzilla comes ashore in New
York (you know, the herky jerky "we aren't gonna let you see the
whole monster yet" scene) he drops boat after boat on nearby cars,
people, buildings. What did he do? Grab every boat he saw on his
way inland? Why is Godzilla holding so many boats? Why does he
keep throwing them at everything? And why was this movie so bad?
It is already being dubbed 'Jurassic Park 3: Dinosaurs Eat Manhattan'
All the angry NYC residents want to go back in to the city
without a body proving the lizard is dead. If it were someone from
central NY we would leave a number where we could be reached in
ohh say LA. I know NYC has unpredictable weather, but I noticed that it would be raining when they showed a scene in Perspective A, and when they showed the same scene from Perspective B, it wasn't raining...and when they returned to Perspective A, it was raining again. Wow, that's crazy weather. Is it just me, or did they evacuate all ten million
residents of New York City in a couple of hours. That include hospitals, old folks homes,
and those annoying people that would want to have a
disaster party and not leave their home until they're
dead. It'd take longer than that to get Wall Street cleared.
Obviously, the army brass felt that the
best and most efficient way to debrief
M.B. the scientist on the appearance of
a gigantic mutated lizard was to let
him stumble into a radioactive footprint
while babbling about earthworms. I
mean, no need to actually tell him
about it on the twenty hour trip from
Chernobyl to Panama or anything . . . Why were the baby 'zilla's eating popcorn? I thought they were busy tracking down the 'heroes" because they "smelled like fish"! The government brought in Ferris because he is an expert on atomically-mutated animals. Why does Ferris have this big revelation that Godzilla is--gasp!--an atomically-mutated lizard halfway through the movie? And why is the gov't so surprised? Why? Why? In Madison Square Gardens, the phone lines were down, but hey! The MODEM was still working!
When my college was rattled by an earthquake one morning, classes were cancelled for an entire day so that buildings could be inspected for life-threatening structural damage. When our hero the lizard (and I really was gunning for him to devour everyone and anything in this piece of crap movie) is proclaimed dead, it's an immediate all clear? Sure, return to Beirut...no problem. Personally, I liked the equating of the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean. Since when is any modern sub (let alone three) able enter and maneuver successfully in a river that's barely deep enough to accomodate cruise ships. Wow, Godzilla attacks the city, takes down
a few buidlings, stomps cars, etc, etc,
and there's not ONE DEAD BODY!!! I challenge
you to find one dead body on screen! Where
are the fire engines? The ambulances?
Ok, this is a bit more specific, than, say, why not make a nest somewhere the
missle dropping, helicopter flying tiny humans live, but for those who know anything
about military gear, the planes fired anti-SHIP missles at Mad. Sq. Garden to sink (?)
the nest. Why? Because they look cool. Just like every B- Sci-Fi flick uses paintball
guns to look "futuristic." Nobody else got this one, so I'll step in here. Blondie finally
gets her moment in the spotlight with her "Live from Godzilla Square Garden"
scoop, easily the story of the century. A quick goo-goo eyed interview
with dorkboy, a quick shot of the nursery, and then she signs off,
giving the whole story slightly less air time than a human
interest piece on a local crafts fair. Any real reporter would have
kept broadcasting till the camera was eaten. Whenever my factory ship gets attacked in the middle of the Pacific in moderately bad weather, and its [sic, dammit, there's no apostrophe in the possessive] hull's integrity was breached with several massive gashes, it doesn't bob merrily across the waves and get deposited high and dry on a beach. No, my factory ship, and indeed, 4 out of 5 ships surveyed, recommend sinking under these circumstances. -- Eric Slosser Did the prop master run out of non-black umbrellas? -- Eric Slosser Godzilla-Raptor's most impressive ability is being able to grow and shrink as needed. Running through buildings, he is relatively small and nimble, eating fish in Central Park, he is bigger than all the buildings. Godzilla stomps, cars shake. Godzilla stomps, telephone poles stay perfectly still. No one can find Godzilla, not even with a seismograph.
How come, when Gojira was really far away, every taxi cab and police car within miles was bouncing three feet into the air, and then when GZ was right on Ferris's butt in the Taxi, it had a fairly smooth ride? Also, did all that happen in one night? The sky never got light. If so, then they got all the residents out in one day? Where were all the traffic jams that we saw in Deep Impact (tm)?
Okay Godzilla is highly radioactive, so are his footprints, the boat he eats and the people on it, yet they are walking in the foot prints, climbing on the boat and interviewing the survivors without protections next thing you know they will mutate into huge humans with 7 hands and will be able to have babies by clicking their heels
I knew the military was cuttign costs, but when did they get rid of a backseater in Apache's? Did they jsut get a really good auto-pilot? Ok, we know about Godzilla, we have an idea of where he's headed, so why don't we intercept him? We've got tons of ships out in the Atlantic, yet none of the do anything! Update: Okay, that's enough for now. Thanks, everyone. |
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