"Godzilla" 1998 vs Godzilla 2014: side-by-side comparison

You know, when I was a kid, I loved Godzilla (98).  I thought it was B.S. that he died, but there were a lot of great moments. When Niko first meets Godzilla, that was a genuinely great moment.  He smashes up out of the ground, accidentally destroys some stuff, sniffs the Dr and then eats some fish.  It was nice to watch this big animal just do it's thing, and get to know it a bit.  

They pulled off the whole "wait to reveal your monster" thing ten times better than the new movie did.  Who can't still visualize Zilla's foot smashing into the crowded intersection, stopping traffic, the boats falling in the street, just catching glimpses up to his shin or his tail as it whips around a building.  That was COOL, and when the Tatopoulous finally meets him, it feels like payoff.

There's a helicopter chase, a submarine chase, and a car chase.  All were genuinely exciting and well directed, AND HAD THE MONSTER ON SCREEN FOR MORE THAN A MINUTE.  The characters had more to do, were more fleshed out and their arcs lasted the whole movie (instead of wasting a whole hour on Joe Brody, who just got killed anyways, making almost his entire presence in the movie pointless).

Yes, the writing was bad, and they ripped off jurassic park and star wars and whatever else.  But there was a sense of fun.  I think the new movie could've used some silliness, less seriousness.  

OF COURSE, it wasn't Godzilla, it was an irradiated iguana who was killed by getting caught in a bridge and shot by a few missiles.

I think I can say that if Zilla had survived, I might've preferred it over the new one.  But he died.

That said I prefer the new design and hope they make more movies.

G98:

Production Budget: $130 mil
WW Gross: $379 mil
Gross::Budget Ratio: 2.92 (379/130=2.915)

G14:

Production Budget: $160 mil
WW Gross: $489 mil
Gross::Budget Ratio: 3.06 (489/160=3.056)

G14 has a better WW Gross::Budget ratio, hence it did better, that much is irrefutable. It also cost a lot less to market in today's dollars than it.

And BTW, for anybody harping on the "oh, it's the first movie to open to $90+ mil and not get to $200 mil" 1)there's still secondary screens, which it hasn't reached yet. It only needs $1.9 mil more to get there, with yesterday's totals not even posted yet. 'Thor 2' made $3 mil at secondary theaters, so there's no reason to think this can't make $2 mil at them, and 2)TASM2 also needed secondary screens to get to $200 mil despite opening at over $90 mil, little food for thought.

@Panthalassan, you're comparing apples and oranges. G98 had a way bigger budget in today's dollars than G14, like I said, its $130 mil budget back in 98 would be $220 mil in today's dollars, G14 had a $160 mil budget which, while not exactly cheap, isn't enough to throw money at the screen with the kinds of effects and CGI used in this movie and not exactly a whole lot for a big summer film, so they couldn't keep the cameras on the monsters for long intervals because every second they were on screen is $$$ driving up the movie's production costs. I surmise the sequel will probably have a bigger budget to the tune of $190 mil so we can see the monsters on a more consistent basis and less cutting away, but they were just making due with what they had. They couldn't throw money at the screen because it only had a $160 mil budget.

Furthermore, let's go over those action scenes: the helicopter chase. He just runs and hides from the military, hardly what I'd call exciting. It gets worse, though: the bumbling military literally fired all over the place, and couldn't hit it once, even when it stood perfectly still for a split second or so, they somehow still managed to completely miss Zilla with their machine guns, logic?! And BTW, this consisted of most of the action scenes in the entire movie.

Submarine chase: good for you if you're amused by seeing a lizard who once again changes size for like the umpeenth billionth time swimming by submarines, but me personally? I prefer something a little deeper than that, a lot more, actually.

Car chase: the fact that it couldn't outrun a taxi cab when it could outrun choppers with ease earlier aside, whatever tension this scene brought was completely ruined by the fact that they could outsmart Zilla just by flashing their headlights at it, and they get caught inside its mouth and there was somehow no holes left in the car when it was being chewed up. It also led to the revolting climax of getting killed by a few missiles inside of a bridge that shouldn't have been able to support it in the first place.

Same with the NYC romp: what little suspense it gave was completely ruined by him stomping around and somehow never actually stepping on anyone, in the crowded streets of a city of 8 million people no less. And the fact that he somehow "suddenly disappeared" without anyone seeing where he went, again, in a city of 8 million people. Now how is that possible?!?! And the camera guy scene with Hank Azaria was completely dumb and tried to senselessly add humor when we were supposed to be terrified.

As for the characters being more polished, are we watching the same movie? Because the whole movie as I recall mainly consisted of some corny plot about a nerdy scientist trying to get back with his ex girlfriend all while completely forgetting that there's a giant monster roaming about or standing around and somehow not noticing there's a giant monster stomping right outside their complex. At least when Ford tries to get back to his family in this, the fact that there's giant monsters decimating things isn't completely pushed aside. And you wanna talk about the characters being fleshed? Okay: when Ferris Bueller goes to buy pregnancy tests that somehow deduce that Zilla was pregnant despite the fact that a HUMAN pregnancy test will never work on a giant iguana, keyword: human pregnancy test, his bumbling reporter asks: "what's the fun in that?" Yes, this is an exact quote! One of many examples of completely lulzworthy characterization (or lack of) in the 98 film. 

BTW, Destroya-X, I can't believe I didn't mention this earlier, but this movie actually had better daily drop %s than 'Cap 2' before 'X-Men' came out, so that completely refutes every single one of your tired arguments that you keep repeating over and over and over again. And again, dare I say, your argument wouldn't explain why Seltzer & Friedberg and the Wayans brothers keep getting work, they've both made a career off of making money off bad films no one likes (except 12 year old years) nor would it explain why critically-acclaimed films like 'Pacific Rim' and 'Edge of Tomorrow' both flopped (that's actually only half true for PR, but EoT bombed big time, yes, worldwide). By your own "logic" 'Grown Ups 2' is a better movie than 'Pacific Rim' since it lost to that garbage on OW, let's not forget.

PS, it's common knowledge that user scores reflect what the general public thought of each film, so yes, my argument does hold water. The number of tickets sold is just the demand for the movie in question, which =/=WOM, I just gave you a couple perfect examples. Whereas user scores actually do reflect what people thought of the movie. Like I said, it had better daily drop %s than 'Cap 2' before 'X-Men' came out, it has nothing to do with so-called "bad word of mouth" which only exists in your head. Fact is: nothing you or I said about the film was going to convince people to flock the theaters for it in week 2 and beyond, they've already made up their minds to see 'X-Men' the following week since comic book films have a much bigger following than creature films, again, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, this is common knowledge. And that just happened to be followed up by another $200 mil film, 'Maleficent' coming out a week later.