Godzilla: Zilla
by White43
An even leaner, even more serious version of Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla.
member ratings:
(12 votes, average: 6.75 out of 10, rated)
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Original film name: Godzilla
New film name: Godzilla : Zilla
Film studio name: TriStar Pictures, Centropolis
Original Film Released: 1998
Fan Edit Released: April 2009 by White43
Original Runtime: 2hrs 10 min (which include 10 minutes of credits)
New Runtime: 1hr 40mins
Amount of time Cut: 30 mins (of the film, not the credits)
Time taken for edit : On and off 4 months
Tagline: Comedy does not matter.
About this edit:
I started looking at Godzilla before Xmas 2008. It has always been a unanimously crap film and it just happened to be on. As I’d recently joined the FE community, I started looking at the film differently – could I remove elements to improve it? The love subplot always bothered me, plus painfully bad dialogue and humour. The military seemed to be completely inept, so I did the first edit – V1.0 which trimmed 18 minutes, but was my firstling effort and contained many rookie mistakes and inevitably didn’t go far enough. Boon23 and Tranzor suggested changes and I decided to start from scratch again. This time, I was much, much harsher with the material, cutting psychotically to the point where we began to wander into incoherence….fortunately, a couple people such as JMB and Zeppelinrox saved me from that and now I believe we have a much leaner, tighter and overall serious version of the Emmerich nightmare.
Cut:
- – An enormous list of cuts and changes can be found in the original thread here: viewtopic.php?f=36&t=5775
- – Essentially, I’ve removed 95% of the comedy aspects. Tiny pieces remain where I thought they were OK – Jean Reno doing Elvis is still there for example, but all that Mayoral slapstick isn’t.
- – Scenes and lines that dumb Nick down are removed. Not all, but most. Also, any scenes which harm his character and anyone else for that matter are largely removed. The character of O’Neal has had most of his stuttering removed.
- – The love subplot is utterly gone. Audrey is merely someone Nick knows, who steals his tape. Elsie Chapman no longer expresses interest in Nick which almost makes her utterly pointless – but then she was in the original anyway.
- – Audrey is utterly reduced down. We don’t have introductory or development scenes for her, Animal or Lucy. They’re just there and take advantage of the situation. So no blubbing Audrey and diner/work scenes for her.
- – Some military incompetence which is actually Emmerich just wanting to blow stuff up has been removed.
- – The start of the film is completely changed, as is the ending.
- – Some re-scoring has taken place, where the music was harming the mood of the film.
BIG thanks go out to JMB and nOmArch who assisted on a couple sequences (especially JMB who has given alot of advice and help). Also to Boon23 for the cover.
Tools Used:
- Dvd Decrypter
- Womble
- TMPGENC DVD Author
- AutoGK
- CCE
- AudioDub MPEG
- DGPulldown
persons involved: 1
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IMAGES:
green cover art by boon23 (download here):
blue cover art by boon23 (download here):
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This is a good edit! This movie is now quite pleasant to watch. BUT I think one big annoying thing (to me) still remains… the constant overt the top music. In many scenes that music kills the tension. I don’t know if it would have been doable from a technical point of view to completely remove the music during some scenes and/or replace it by something less shiny and heroic, but I think it could make this edit even better. Just my two cents. Other than that, great job!
Review by TMBTM — May 20, 2009 @ 12:01 pm
Thanks for the comments TMBTM! I agree – the score is all out kiddish and typical of an Emmerich flick, but it would take an enormous amount of effort to change the score and would it improve the film much? A little. The score was changed for Nick’s introduction and I think that works quite well.
Review by white43 — May 23, 2009 @ 3:01 pm
I enjoyed this edit. It knocked out all the crappy comedy and side stuff and keep the action going as much as possible.
Review by rmania — May 23, 2009 @ 10:16 pm
I loved it until the ending. It just ends suddenly. You should have started the ending song like a minute before the credits and faded to black a little bit slower. Pretty good nonetheless.
Review by AbsolutFireman — May 25, 2009 @ 8:44 am
This was a good edit. I never had any real problem with the original, theatrical version of the film; although that being said, I haven’t watched it for a while, and watching this version did make me remember things that irritated me about the original.
As far as the story goes, I thought it was brilliantly done. The film now has a different tone which I’m gonna compare to the likes of Cloverfield, even though in my opinion Cloverfield is a far, far finer example of a monster movie (Cloverfield is among my favourite films). The movie is much more action packed and exciting, as opposed to the original, where there was a whole bunch of scenes halfway through that just stopped the film dead in its tracks. This I think is one of the biggest flaws of the theatrical film; the human characters were much less interesting than Zilla himself, and even less so when we have to put up with them for twenty minutes at a time in between one of Zilla’s midcity romps.
The start was well paced, with Zilla making his intro just ten minutes in. Good choice here. The movie is quick and to the point. As we get further along, it almost felt like the whole “search for the eggs” subplot was the main story arc – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, although I do prefer to see a giant monster smashing up a city to its hearts desire. But to me, Zilla in this version had more of a goal than he did in the original, which was simply ephasised by, again, the notable fewer scenes involving the human characters.
I liked how you reduced Audrey’s character, and I also liked how you introduced her as a minor character and then brought her forward to be a much more major character. That was nicely done. Oh, and good job of reducing the news reporter, the mayor and the mayor’s assistant – the smaller their roles were, the easier it was for the movie to flow.
The action scenes worked better for me in this more tightly knit version of the film, so bravo on the pacing and plot.
However, having given you this praise, I do feel a desire to point out a few things I had problems with… The audio frustrated me. There were many, many hard audio cuts that I noticed, where I felt a less subtle fade would have been more appropriate. Examples of this are after we have the shot of the bridge during the evacuation, we instantly cut to a shot of the mayor’s helicopter, and the audio is a slow “euphoric” (for want of a better word) melody in one shot and then in the next is more of a “military” trumpet tune. Sorry, I’m terrible at describing music cues, but my point is it just happened too suddenly for my liking – and I was disappointed to find that there were several more as the movie progressed. However, this may also be due to the fact that I’m actually a perfectionist, so don’t get too worked up about it
Nevertheless, I praise you for making this somewhat dragging monster film into a real, high-paced action flick, that actually had a monster in it. As soon as I get unlimited broadband, I’ll download the DVD and add it to my shelf; I think this one is one that deserves to replace the original. For the brilliantly laid out storyline, albeit with a few technical issues I had problems with, I give this edit seven stars out of ten.
Review by Joelio — February 5, 2010 @ 2:19 pm