Godzilla 2000: Millennium (1999) Saturday Monster Movies

After Hollywood’s failed attempt at doing Godzilla, Toho Studios launched a new era of films, known as the Millenium Era. This would end up being a series of stand-alone stories rather than a continuous series. (Only two of the six films would be connected.)

Godzilla 2000 is mostly forgettable. It again involves a convoluted plot with aliens and big monsters fighting in cities, producing a lot of collateral damage. Where it does provide an interesting wrinkle is in humanity’s view on Godzilla. Less of a monster, Godzilla is just understood to be a force of nature. Japan has an organization, the GPN, that functions much like the NHC in the real world. (GPN stands for Godzilla Prediction Center, NHC stands for National Hurricane Center.) This is a great story element, because Godzilla really is more like a hurricane than a character. In all the movies, he shows up and wreaks havoc, mostly with no rhyme of reason. Humanity’s response it to merely get out of the way and clean up after he leaves, much like our reaction to hurricanes when they show up.

The secondary plotline involves both humanity and a group of aliens trying to reverse engineer some of Godzilla’s properties to improve themselves. This too reflects a reality of our scientific approach to the world, where we try to decode nature’s secrets to manipulate our reality. Often, these attempts end up in disaster, when nature is misunderstood and altered in unintended ways. Sort of like the increase in hurricane activity we are seeing as a result of climate change, which seems in part to be due to some of our manipulation of nature.

The lesson here might be, “Take care lest your efforts to improve the world end up wreaking it even more.”