Unclear and Present Danger - Godzilla (1998)

Episode Date: July 4, 2026

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched Roland Emmerich’s attempt to bring Godzilla to Hollywood in the appropriately titled Godzilla. Ostensibly a film about the dangers of nuclear testing, Godzilla is a total mess, a miserable failure that deserves its poor reputation.We talked about that deservedly poor reputation, as well as changing American perceptions of the military as the 1990s came to a close. Tune in!In our next episode, we tackle Michael Bay’s masterpiece Armageddon, one of two movies that year about an asteroid hitting earth. And our Patreon, we watched two movies about the Nuremburg trials — from 2000 and 2025 — and talked about them. Listen to that episode, and more, at patreon.com/unclearpod.

Science cannot explain him. We're looking at the dawn of a new species. Technology cannot stop him. The heat seekers can't lock, sir. But unless we outthink him, we believe it may be hiding inside one of the buildings. But you don't know for sure. We won't survive him.

Godzilla, within 1813. Hello and welcome to Uncleared and Present Danger, the podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write the unpopular front newsletter. And I'm the author of When the Clock Broke, Conman, Conspiracists, and how America cracked up in the early 1990s. And I just submitted a new book proposal.

Oh, very exciting. Yeah, I can't talk about it yet, probably. But very soon, I will unveil the new projects. I know what it is. I'm very excited for it. Yeah, Jamel knows what it is, but probably my agent, would yell at me if I, I don't know why. There's all these, like, secrets. You can't do this. You can't say that.

You can't, you know. So anyway, I'm going to just keep, keep quiet for the time being, but sometimes in the next few weeks, I will let you guys know what it is. All right. For this week's episode, we watched the 1998 Roland Emmerich disaster picture, not really an action film, not really a thriller, straightforward monster film. It is a disaster. Yeah. That it is.

It's a disastrous picture. Godzilla, Gojura, as a unnamed Japanese character says in the film. I mentioned directed by Roland Emmerich, starring Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Patillo, Hank Azaria, Kevin Dunn, Michael Lerner, and Harry Shearer. The casting director for this film

must have been a fan of The Simpsons. Because this is basically... The cast of the Simpsons. The cast of the Simpsons. I had forgotten, I actually forgot that Harry Shear was in this, but as soon as the newscast shorts, yeah, it was Kent Brockman. Yeah, exactly. It's unmistakable and you're like, that's very funny, but it's kind of takes you out of the

movie. It really does. Shot by Uli Steiger, who is, seems to be just like a work about cinematographer, done a lot of work, German language films. and has worked with Emmerick a couple times. We're working Emmerc again with the day after tomorrow, 2004. And with 10,000 BC in 2008, which is a film I have never seen. I kind of vaguely know what it's about, but I've never seen it.

Score by David Arnold. There's, I mean, this is a bit of an interesting production. Because it's a joint production of Trice. Star Pictures and Toho, Toho, the company that owns Godzilla, the franchise. And around this time, Godzilla was on a bit of a hiatus in terms of the traditional films. There would be a new Godzilla movie, a proper one, a couple years later called Godzilla 2000. But at the time, it was sort of an in-between period for the franchise. In short, for a while, a bunch of producers have been trying to get an American Godzilla movie made.

There had not been one made. The 1954 Godzilla was recut, and there was some new footage shot for an American release. And in the 50s and 60s, a couple of those Godzilla movies. And there were a bunch of them would get, you know, an American dub, English dub, and then they'd shoot some scenes with American actors to put in. And so there were a couple of those. And the franchise was like popular enough in the U.S. because the movies were just, you know, they were popular with, you know, dollar movie shows kind of thing.

They did well. But there hadn't been like an American one made specifically for American audiences. And in the early 90s, Toho agreed and allowed American studio to begin work on a Godzilla film. A TriStar acquired the rights to this in 1992. It was the rights to produce a trilogy of Godzilla films with the promise of, quote, remaining true to the original series, cautioning against nuclear weapons and runaway technology. There was early support from a lot of the original Godzilla creators.

And basically beginning in the mid-90s, there was an effort to try to get a director and put this thing together. Jan DeBant was attached to it. A couple of other directors as well were attached to this film. The original script, it looks like, was very much from Godzilla's point of view. And the humans were almost sort of like incidental to the overall story, which is actually a really interesting idea to my mind. And eventually they get the script they have now, which is sort of very much human-centered

story with Godzilla, almost kind of a background character to the whole thing. filmed it in 97 and it was shot in New York, Los Angeles, and the Hawaiian Islands. The basic plot synops of the film is that Matthew Broderick plays a scientist who studies the effect of nuclear waste or whatever nuclear weapons testing on animals. While he is studying worms, he is picked up by members of the U.S. government who bring him out to an island where they show him a giant footstep. And the lead up to the, in the prologue to the film, basically, we get clips of nuclear testing.

Iguana is being affected by it. And it turns out that the nuclear weapons created a gigantic lizard creature of some sort that left the island and made its way to New York City. Once in New York City, it basically is trying to nest to lay eggs and is confronted by the American military. there's a bit of a, you know, the scientist trying to get them to understand, but that falls the pieces. The military is reluctant to believe what Broderick is telling them that the Godzilla, the creature, is laying a bunch of eggs that are going to hatch. It's nesting in Madison Square Garden.

And the back half of the film is Matthew Broderick, a reporter played by Maria Patillo, Jean-Renaudet as this French Secret Service Special Forces guy. and Hank Azaria as a cameraman, news cameraman, discovering the eggs and then working with the military to destroy them. Yeah, that's basically it. That's the film. Godzilla was a critical failure. Although it did pretty well at the box office, it cost about $125 million, pulled $379 million, made its money back. So it wasn't a complete financial failure.

But as far as the critics are concerned, it stank. I'm looking at actually the box office right now. It made most of its money internationally. Domestically, it flopped. It was a total flop. It, like, had a strong start, right? And then it kind of just petered out. Yes.

In part because it wasn't good. Yeah. Yeah, people were like, don't go see it. It sucks. And I'm sure back then, you know, movie critics were a little bit more important as, I mean, commercially. You know, they have a mayor in it named Ebert. And obviously, and the guy was obviously taking. And I think his assistant was actually Siskel.

And like, he's obviously taking a little shot at Siskel and Ebert. And I think Siskel was like, dude, if you're going to fucking take a shot at us, at least have the monster squash us or eat us or something. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's, he was annoyed that Siskel and Ebert didn't like his. movies, but maybe he should have made better movies. That's, that's right. Ebert gave this one one

one and a half stars at a four. Quote, one must carefully repress intelligent thought while watching this film. The movie makes no sense at all except as a careless pastis of its betters, and yes, the Japanese Godzilla movies are in their way better. If only because they embrace direct

instead of condescending to it, this is true, you have to absorb such a film not considerate, but my brain rebelled and insisted and insisted on applying logic where it was not welcome. Man, that's brutal. James Barraardinelli from Real Views, called the film, quote, one of the most idiotic blockbuster movies of all time.

It's like spitting into the wind. American devil and are master illusionists, waving their wands and mesmerizing audiences with their smoke and mirrors. It's probably too much to hope that someday moviegoers will wake up. and realize they've been had. And one more, Stephen Holder of the New York Times.

The film is so clumsily structured. It feels as if it's two different movies stuck together with an absurd stomping finale glued to the end. The only question worth asking about this, $120 million water popcorn is a commercial one. How much further will the dumbing down of the event movie have to go before the audience stops buying tickets? I mean, it's so funny because this movie didn't do well, right? So, like, audiences saw it and we're like, this sucks. and we're not going to, we're not going to, we're not going to go for it. The audiences weren't that dumb.

No, I mean, they, they, yeah, I mean, original, at first the marketing and the hype around it kind of worked and then it stopped. Right. And there was a ton of hype around it. This is, this is the age, you know, right now with Blockbuster, especially with Super Hero films, there's, so they'll be like, you know, production, toy, tie-in productions of various sorts, they'll do toys, all nine yards. But this to me, even with the,

commercialization today, it pales in comparison to the kind of events summer blockbuster movies were in the 90s. So you would have, you know, every fast food company would have some big promotion. You know, it's something you get at McDonald's or Burger King or whatever. You have toys, of course, you'd have apparel. You have all kinds of things. There might be at a theme park. If the movie is attached to one of the Warner Brothers, what have you, you might have a ride of some sort. Just a lot of marketing went into these blockbusters. And this in particular, they heavily promoted the soundtrack, which, of course, you have to remember at the time, movies would have the score and then music inspired by the

movie, which is basically just sort of like a loop playlist of loosely connected songs. This was highly, highly marketed and very, this was arguably more successful. of them a film. The soundtrack debuted at number two and then Billboard 200, being blocked from number one by DMX's debut album. It's dark and hell is hot, which is a great record. I'm having such flashbacks of this era now. Keep going.

Sorry. The album went platinum in the U.S., Japan and New Zealand and triple platinum in Canada. It sold two and a half million copies worldwide by. July 98. And it was in the top 100 record bestselling albums of 98, having sold 1.3 million copies in the U.S. by the end of 1998. I remember this soundtrack incredibly well, because I owned a copy. It had a cover of heroes by David Bowie by the Wallflowers. It had the abysmal song, Come With Me, which is Puff Daddy featuring Jimmy Page. I remember that fucking song,

and the music video, of course. In the music video. Because he's like facing off against Godzilla. Right, that's right. Puff Daddy facing off against Godzilla. Which, you, Godzilla, rooting for him in that battle. Yeah. Well, little did we know.

I guess we already knew he wasn't great. Yeah. Deeper Underground, which is the Jamiriqui, a Jamiriqui song. No Shelter, Rage Against the Machine. Wow. What else is on here? Food Fighter's song.

Brain Stew. the Godzilla remix Green Day and some other stuff. So this is like, you know, like everybody claims that their first album was something really cool. This is what people's first album actually. Right, right. Yeah. They're like, oh yeah, I had a pixies, a pexy CD.

No, you didn't. You asked your mom for the fucking Godzilla soundtrack. I mean, I think my first album was the men in black was the music inspired by men in black. Yeah. It was a men in black soundtrack. Yeah, exactly. Because you went to the movie and you're like, I like this music and I like the movie and I just want it. Yeah.

One of my, you know, I talked about, we talked about this earlier when we watched the same. I mean, one of my first records was the CDs was the saint soundtrack because I was really into electronic music and the Mission Impossible soundtrack because I just like the song so much. Yeah. I had, yeah, I had like the black version of those, which is the space James soundtrack. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So, okay.

That is some basic. phone Godzilla. Tagline for Godzilla, size does matter. Nice dick joke there for your monster movie. Yeah. Godzilla was released. Very late 90s too. Very late 90s. Yeah. Godzilla was released. Its initial release was May 18th, 1998, Madison Square Garden, appropriate. So let's check out the New York Times for that day. Oh, I remember this. Wow. Okay. So rarest gem for Yankees Wells, a perfect game. David Wells yesterday as he finished his perfect game. The first that Yankee season since Don Larson's in 1956. Even though I was a Mets fan, I remember this happening.

It was very exciting in New York. People were talking about it. Real quick, just because I'm not a New Yorker. This is somewhat opaque to me. Okay. Are there like geographic distinction between who is a Mets fan and who is a Yankees? Kind of. Yeah, kind of.

So the Mets are in Queens. So like Queens and Long Island has a high. concentration of Mets fans and obviously the Yankees are in the Bronx in the Bronx so the Yankees the Bronx is a really high concentration of fans and then the rest of the city is kind of split in two the Yankees have more fans but the Mets have like a very loyal fan base and then you know both of them have smatterings of fans in Connecticut and in New Jersey so it is somewhat there's like the concentrations are are geographic but then they're all around the city okay all right

There are like people try to do sociological breakdowns and they never quite work. Like they're like, oh, this is the working class team. And that's not. They all have fans of all times. Yeah, that seems silly. Yeah. Okay, what else we got here? Antitrust OX founder on Microsoft's desktop.

Justice Department of bargaining never really started. Oh, we're in the middle again of the antitrust stuff against Microsoft. The last time I think there was really serious antitrust stuff. That can't be right. The stakes and the drama. Under Biden, there is antitrust stuff. Right. But was it at this scale?

I'm not so sure. I'm not sure it was at this scale. I mean, Microsoft was huge and was swallowing everybody. The stakes in the drama, it seemed, could scarcely be higher. The Microsoft Corporation, emblematic titan of the nation's high-tech economy, was locked in last-minute closed door with the Justice Department and 20 state attorneys general. The goal was to find a way tovert a major antitrust suit,

a confrontation that could rival the government's assault on standard oil. early this century in defining the ground rules of competition for decades to come. Early Saturday afternoon, word spread the talks had collapsed. But in fact, the negotiations did not break down. By all accounts, they never really started. After an inauspicious first meeting, they coasted to close, they coasted to a close less than a day and a half with little drama. The parting shop was delivered shortly after 1 p.m.

by Jeffrey H. Blatner, special counter for information technology in the Justice Department's antitrust division. division after finishing a phone call his boss, Joel Klein, assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. Mr. Blatner walked into the conference room of Microsoft's Washington law firm and told William H. Newcomb, the company's senior vice president of legal affairs, I guess we're going to have to go our separate ways, people involved with talks called. Yeah, okay.

Well, eventually, I think Microsoft was not broken up, but it had to take some very serious reformations of its business practices. Yeah, I mean, this was disrupted somewhat because Bush took office and Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the administration, yeah, would not seek to break up Microsoft or would insidiki lesser antitrust penalty. Right. The proposed settlement required Microsoft to share its application programming interfaces and APIs, but third party companies and appoint a full, but, but, but, yeah, it was short of,

it was short of a breakup, but still some, some. Yeah, so basically what, I think, I think what Microsoft had been doing, first thing, were bundling software with its operating system, right? So if you bought, if you bought a computer, PC, it had Windows, and Windows was bundled with Internet Explorer, and was accused of favoring its own. programs by merging this. And I believe there are other things about sort of like, you know, you could not use third, it was harder to use third party software on Microsoft computers than on other

platforms. And so I think the upshot of this basically was to make Windows more open to third party to third party software. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. Okay, what else we got here? Our neighborhood gives peace a wary look.

In Washington Heights until recently one of New York's most murderous communities, a disturbing truth reveals itself in the empty stoops on West 1602nd Street and late afternoon, and the thinly people parks overlooking the Harlem River, and the greetings not exchanged by lifelong members on Audubon Avenue. The gunfire may receded in memory, but the fear hangs on. In 1991, there were 119 killings north of 153. Fifth Street in Manhattan. So far, the body count stands at just five,

yet while people in Times Square and other far less violent neighborhoods have greeted far less dramatic drops and crime with responses to border on euphoria, hardly anybody is ready to celebrate here in Washington Heights. Oh, that's changed. Washington Heights is a nice place to live now, for the most part. Yeah, I've walked through there quite a bit,

and it's very lovely. Yeah, I mean, most of the New York City now is very safe. There are some places I would not recommend. going if you were tourist or if you were just anybody but for the most part the city is is is is pretty nice. Which places are those? I would not go to I would not walk around in Brownsville or east New York and expect that you would receive a friendly welcome as someone who was obviously outside of the neighborhood. Yeah like I would I would I would expect that and certain parts of the South Bronx too like I would not go up to sound view and just start walking around. Um, uh, the

likely to be thought to be a cop and not going to get a pleasant welcome. India detonated a hydrogen. I remember this. India detonated a hydrogen bomb experts confirm largest blast of five tests, potential to hasten arms race seen as fairly small at 43,000 tons of TNT. And a disclosure with potential to accelerate further nuclear arms rates with Pakistan, Indian scientists confirmed today that the largest of five hundred, underground nuclear tests they conducted last week, involved a hydrogen bomb, a device with potentially

enormous power that is known in military circles as a city buster. We all know about hydrogen bombs, because we've talked about them many times on this podcast. When the first round of three tests was announced last Monday, India described the largest weapon as a thermonuclear device, a term that set off debate among weapons, the experts around the world about what type of weapon was involved. thermonuclear dive literally refers to a device that burns hydrogen fuel and thus has more punch than an atom bomb that type the United States dropped on Japan in 1945. Yeah, I mean, I remember Pakistan's nuclear test. I remember this.

I remember it being a little scary that, you know, all these powers kind of that didn't like each other. There was a lot of nuclear proliferation going on. That seems to have been controlled. And now we're back to just nuclear proliferation. because that's the world we live in. Yeah, although, you know, this is a topic of this podcast, but it is interesting to think when you look at, you know, Russia has not been able to win its war in Ukraine and it's losing its war in Ukraine.

The U.S. recently lost its war with Iran. You know, nuclear weapons are still probably the most of the world. reliable deterrent. But it is interesting to think about, I think, what Ukraine and Iran demonstrate is that it's actually still quite difficult even for superpowers to win conventional wars. Yeah. Unless they're, yeah, well, unless they're willing to, you know, you have to mobilize the population. Like, look, in World War II and World War I, there was a draft. There was direction, government direction of the economy for production, there's not going to be any of those things. And in Vietnam, there was a draft, very unpopular, and, you know, Vietnam's, the inflation caused

by the spending on the Vietnam War contributed to the crisis in the 1970s. So it's not inconsiderable, like what a country, even a huge power has to do. Total mobilization is a big deal. And you have to have enormous amount of public buy-in for the war. It's not like, you know, we're used to these high-tech wars and they just, if you're fighting a determined enemy that's just like not that easy to, you know, to knock over, they're going to outlast you because you're not going to fight a total war. Right. Trump used the rhetoric of total war without any of the preparations to fight one.

Thank God, because that would have been horrible. I'm very glad that anyway, we'll talk about this more on our politics podcast. But that's all to say, yeah. To some, thermonuclear weapons are bad. To some of it, okay, let's see. Light cast on ties of insurers to Nazis. Newly on Earth documents suggest that German insurance companies went beyond what was previously known in conniving with the Nazis

to avoid playing Jewish policy holders after the rampage through German cities in 1938, known as Crystal Nocht. That's not surprising. Okay, what else we got here? I think that looks like pretty much it. Yeah, so one of these, you know, mid to late 90s papers that looks pretty, you know, not news like we have it now. But I mean, I think very, I think this is very representative of some of the concerns that we've talked about in this podcast. You have crime.

You have sort of technology. And, I mean, really, the looming, the threat of sort of like the Omni Corporation, right? Microsoft was sort of that's what people were afraid of. And then nuclear proliferation. Yeah. Post-Cold War, nuclear. Yeah, true. You're right.

Yeah. It's very much sort of like these were the things that were at the top of mind for many Americans, for many people in the 90s. And speaking of nuclear proliferation, I mean, the reason we're doing Godzilla is because it ostensibly is a film that is about nuclear weapons. of course, the original 1954 Godzilla, an absolute stone cold classic. We've never seen it before. I remember the first time I saw it, maybe like seven or eight years ago. I was actually really struck by how much this is, that's very much a movie about the experience of the atomic weapon and coping and dealing with it. Real gem of post-war Japanese cinema.

And if you've never seen it, highly, highly recommend it. and this movie attempts to sort of integrate some of the kind of anti-nuclear ethos of the Godzilla series but it totally falls fucking flat this this this this movie sucks uh i apologize i yeah in my memory in my memory i was mad it's like oh this wasn't too bad but this this this is real trash uh did you see this this when you're yeah so i did i think i saw either the theater and I don't think I even liked it then. Like I was old enough at this point in my I was like 13. I was old enough at this point in my life to be or 12 or 13 to be like this shit sucks. I'm not into it. Like I wasn't like oh wow every action movie rocks. I had not yet turned. I was 12 years old when this movie came out, which you would think I would think I would be the prime audience for it. But I was not into it. I think I was like I was a little you know into Japanese culture. So I was excited that they made a good Godzilla movie. Godzilla. was kind of like, you know, something that we as kids were like interested in and in a campy sort of way, especially around that age.

Like, oh, Godzilla is cool. And then the fact that they made such a bad Godzilla movie, I think was disappointed to all of us. And I remember the Puff Daddy song also being the target of fun. And it just was not good. Yeah, Jamal, I mean, I was like, what the hell were you thinking? with this movie. I mean like, look, the other thing,

okay, then this, what can I even say about this film? So, you know, the interesting thing that struck me about this movie is, it comes out before 9-11,

but it has all of these images of destruction of New York, which, not that fun to watch if you're 9-11. I'm not going to say I'm a 9-11 survivor. That would be ridiculous. I wasn't that close. of us or anything. But I was in New York.

Speaking as a 9-11. So who is a comedian who was like, yeah, I survived 9-11? Steve, right is easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is like I survived 9-11 or, anyway, no, I'm not going to complain

claim that I survived 9-11. I think there was a bit on Kirby enthusiasts that, too. So, yeah, speaking as a 9-11 survivor, I found that the the images weren't that pleasant to watch or they like made me remember 9-11 and i just thought that that was so interesting like i think sloy juzek pointed this out a couple times in his writings

about movies he's like okay look it's weird that 9-11 happened just after there was like a trio of films that kind of fantasized about the destruction of new york independence day godzilla and deep impact. It came around the same time. And it kind of seemed to erupt into reality. And he was like, oh, this is like very, it was especially traumatic because like Americans had already been fantasizing about it. So like it weirdly made sense in a certain way as a kind of apocalyptic moment. And there's something to that. Like it was so strange. There was something very uncanny to me about the imagery of New York being destroyed and how some of them actually looked like footage from 9-11. So I found that to be kind of uncanny even though it's beforehand.

It's so strange. Like there's some weird interpenetration of the zeitgeist like goes outside of space and time where it's like, is this movie about 9-11? But it can possibly be about 9-11 because it's before 9-11. You kind of see this in films like when you go back in history and you're like, this is like before the war. But it seems to have some kind of weird conversation with it. I don't know what that is. it could just be that the event and you could just take the very

conventional, positivistic, empirical approach to say, well, you know, your perception of the movie is being filtered by your experience of that event. But I do think there's something very weird going on there. The other thing about the movie is the whole politics of resituating in the United States

is something to be thought about. Because Godzilla is really about Japan's trauma of the war and especially atomic bombing. The destruction of cities actually happened. The monster was kind of America. And also like the fear, you know, the suffering that happened because of the atomic weapons and the fear, you know, that, you know, atomic radiation was still causing.

So, you know, Godzilla was really like a country that's like processing its defeat in a war, the destruction of its cities, having been atomic bombed. And like the way that they do it is really interesting because like Godzilla is kind of like a I mean this movie tries to do the same thing. And this way is maybe it's what didn't resonate with American audiences like because it's like a force of nature. He's not like evil. You know, he's not like he's nature kind of out of control and like he's not good, neither good nor evil really. I mean, in later Godzilla movies correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure you know way more about this than I do. He kind of becomes a hero and like, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. You can, you can, you can, you can, you can fit all of that in sort of like the larger political context of Godzilla too, right? Sort of as, as the decades move on, the U.S. becomes like a close partner of Japan, atomic energy, nuclear energy. Japan, you know, gets much of its power from nuclear energy. Nuclear ceases to be as scary. Godzilla kind of transforms into this guardian of Japan. against other kinds of threats. Yeah, right, right, right, right.

It becomes a guardian figure. So, I mean, what does he represent to the United States? I mean, he's the next big thing that we didn't see coming around the corner. It was terrorism. It was 9-11 in a certain way. The other thing is, like, weird that the bombings that caused Godzilla, like, took place in French, Polynesia. that's because isn't that kind of passing the buck to the French?

But I think there's a reason. I think that the French, like, because of the, like, continued atomic testing much later than other powers. Yeah. And so it would make sense. They kind of just kept doing it for whatever reason. So that would make sense. But it does strike me as like, oh, well, you can't blame the United States for this one.

So, yeah, that was strange. And I guess they wanted to incorporate Jean Renoe in the movie and like the French people kind of give this weird comic relief in the movie, which is pretty stupid. Yeah, so it's like technology, technology out of control. Environmentalism is a big thing in the 1990s. I can see all these things percolating. And then, you know, Matthew Brock's character is like the archetypal like guy who was idealistic. And then he against nuclear power. Then he becomes a researcher.

And, you know, they're kind of young. People whose dreams have not quite worked out. Godzilla gives them another chance to do something meaningful with their lives and to get back together, as they do. The effort. So among the many problems with this movie are the effort to make Matthew Broderick a serious dramatic lead. He's just too much of a comic actor in disposition to work. And the films, this film's tone is so muddled. Like, it's not, yeah.

Like, obviously, these big monster pictures aren't, like, comedies. There are dramas. They, they continue the mix of everything. They have comic relief. But this really couldn't decide how much comic relief it wanted. And it just, it just didn't, and like, Broderick just cannot carry that kind of traumatic role on screen. I've heard, you know, my understanding, he's an excellent stage actor.

So I don't know. This is no disrespect to Matthew Broderk skills as an actor. But just like as a Hollywood lead, he's just not doing it. Just not doing this film. It's weird they gave him the plot at the part. I mean, like, you know, that's who you got. I mean, like Will Smith in Independence Day and then you got Matthew Broder. It just sounds so odd.

Right, right. Right. Yeah, Matthew Broder. All right. So, yeah, I don't know. It was terrible. It was really one of the worst movies we've watched. watched. It was like, it does not make a whole hell of honest sense. As Ebert says, you kind of have

to turn your brain off. Yeah, like, I guess they show the government, this is a big theme. It's like of all these movies in the nine, disaster movies in the 90s, hapless government, hapless military, they need like smart, but kind of everyday people, uh, in unofficial capacities to do it, everything. Soldiers are kind of thugs and stupid. Politicians are craven. This movie is also big 90s theme of showing scientists in a very positive light,

which every single 90s movie is like a scientist. A scientist comes to save the day. The scientists are rational and smart and doing its best. And the military is parochial and British. Right, exactly. And that's so different from what we saw in the 1950s, remember when we would did this.

Right. Like the scientists were very sinister in those. Right. It's like what are these people up to? Yeah. What are they doing? Uh, what are these eggheads doing? So, and it's, it was a good question. But the, the, yeah, the, the, the 90s is extremely pro science. And I think that that is a little bit of its, um, anti-institutional. you know, individuals will come up with things. Self-starters, entrepreneurs, you know, it was, you know, not to whip, you know, not to beat this horse too much, but like the neoliberalism of the period comes through in that regard. And but yeah, the decision to make like America, why does Godzilla need to come to America? Why do they need to do that?

Why does he have to be in New York? Like it's just, I guess to make it a. approachable to American audiences, but. And there was, he's also not that big in this movie. He's really not that large. There, they're also, he's much more animalistic than, than he typically is. But I'll say, I mean, the thing that was in vogue and just disaster movies at the time, big movies, but just seeing American landmarks get destroyed. Yeah.

Vibously Independence Day has the destruction of the White House. And I believe the Empire State Building. But that was just like a thing people wanted to see in movies. And so it makes sense that they would have it be in New York. I wanted to say, I mean, there isn't that much to say about this film, but there is, I think, a lot to say about Godzilla in the modern era, especially the past couple years, which has seemed kind of almost like a revitalization of Godzilla. So back in 2023, one of the surprise hits of the year was Godzilla minus one, which is a period piece. It goes back to kind of the origins. It takes place directly after the Second World War and it defeated Japan.

And Godzilla in this film could have represents, it represents the awful legacy of the war and the kind of, I wouldn't say self-destructive, but like everything destructive about the war, Japanese society in particular, imperial Japanese society is like embodied by Godzilla in that film. and Godzilla is defeated in that film by misfits, basically. You know, a failed comic, the lead is a failed kamikaze pilot, failed kamikaze pilot, you know, children, disabled people, like women, the people who were cast aside in Japanese society and who didn't seem to have a place are the ones who come together to defeat Godzilla in this film. And Godzilla in the film is like a true menace.

Like it really does, is a menace. figure and it's an interesting film because here again Godzilla is not the atomic bomb Godzilla is not the United States Godzilla is something internal to Japanese society that that the Japanese have to fight for them fight for themselves I think that there are like as is the case with a lot of I think mainstream Japanese art these days there's some real sort of like nationalistic over over over uh uh over uh over over over uh over over over over over over over over over over over over tones to it, but like, it's an interesting take. And then I believe 10 years ago, you had Shin Godzilla, which is a modern take on Godzilla. And this is very much a reaction to the nuclear reactor

disaster at Fukushima. And so in this film, Godzilla is not, is very much not the kind of almost humanoid lizard, but something far more alien and scary. And the film is all about the inadequacy of like governments and bureaucracies to deal with things that are truly existential. I love Shin Godzilla. It's like Godzilla plus the West Wing. And I highly recommend it. I watched part of it.

I didn't like the new, new one. I tried to watch Godzilla minus one, and I didn't get into it. I really enjoyed it. I think I went into it totally blind. I kind of just got a new Godzilla. Let me go see it. And I came away very impressed.

I think I would have more fun if I saw it in the theater than just trying to watch it on TV. Yeah. It's very much the movie made for the theater. Yeah. Because the giantness of the, you know, you need to see the giant monster on the big screen. Yeah. But I take Godzilla as a as a character, Godzilla as a as a symbol still has, can still carry a lot of meaning if you want to take it in that direction.

Now, there have been American Godzilla movies over the past 10 years. and although I mean I'm looking at my DVD shelf right now I have all of them I enjoy them they are much less they're not as political they are much more in the style like an American superhero movie where Godzilla is a forced nature so the first film he's like this kind of force of nature that the human characters to deal with but in subsequent films he is a character the subsequent films are Godzilla king of the monsters Godzilla versus Kong and there's the most recent one Godzilla

X-Kong Right Naturally Godzilla would fight King Kong I mean that's the first thing That springs to mind When you see him is I mean he did fight King Kong

Back in the 1960s Yes and that that makes a lot of sense To me Yeah Because like as a child I was like Did King Kong and Godzilla ever fight And then you know

You just kind of come up with that idea naturally And then it did happen Yeah Yeah I mean Godzilla versus Kong has no political content whatsoever, but King Kong does uppercut Godzilla, and it's pretty fucking cool. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I think when I was younger, I would have been a little bit more enamored of these films.

And now I think if I went with my friends to the theater and we were just, it might be fun. But I would say it's not something I can just turn on the TV and it holds my interest. like it's it's not yeah i could especially when it's like look i mean yeah with subtitles forget about it you know i can watch movies with sometimes but i don't think i can watch godzilla with subtitles there's want to be something that i can kind of half pay its attention to you know yeah um i'm i'm i'm still there's a new godzilla movie coming out uh this year i believe godzilla minus two and i'm all for it i enjoy these things uh i enjoy this franchise uh i'm i'm i'm i'm I'm very much of the, you know, when I was a kid watching Voltron and Robotech and all these things on like a cartoon network.

And so permanently imprinted on my brain are like giant robots and kaiju. And I have, I cannot resist them when presented to me. I'm like looking like I have my Pacific Rim Bluray somewhere. Yeah. This is like me and like I can't if there's a movie about like the battle like airplanes World War II airplanes I'm going to watch it. Yeah. Like anything. Yeah.

Like any battle of Britain movie, any spitfires, any anything like that. I'm going to go check it out. Yeah. All right. Do you got anything else to say about Godzilla? Not really except I would not recommend watching it. If you can help it, what about it, Indian Godzilla? And it's a Bollywood movie and there's song and dance with that.

Has anybody ever thought of that? I would 100% watch that. Yeah. I would want 100% watch a Godzilla movie where Godzilla dances. Yeah. Let's do it. No, this is not good. It's really a failed experiment in trying to make an American Godzilla film.

There's a reason why they kind of did give up, they gave up on it for, for, for, Almost two decades. It's not natural. Trying to make an American one. And interestingly enough, that the new American ones, the actual entry point for those was a King Kong. They made a King Kong movie. Yeah.

For Kong Skull Island. Yeah. Which is actually pretty good. And that became kind of the back door to doing Godzilla again. But not successful. And it's sort of very 90s in all the worst ways. I mean, I would recommend, it's tempting to get very nostalgic about 90s movies and the 90s media environment, but I actually would really recommend watching this movie just to disabuse yourself with the notion that it was all good or that there wasn't a lot of stupid shit as well.

This is such a perfect example of kind of not just 90s mediocrity, but like really abysmal cultural products that were produced. at the time. Yeah, to like in North, I mean, like, that's what everyone was like, there was like a sense and a critique in certain places of like the commercialism of Hollywood and music at that time being excessive. And now we're like, but they made some good things. They made some good things. They made a lot of shit.

And there's a reason why people thought it was annoying. Yeah. Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. All right. That is our show. Thank you, as always for listening.

You can find this podcast, whatever podcast are found. And you can leave us a rating and review if you are checking us out on iTunes or Apple Podcasts, whatever it's called now. We always appreciate it. You can reach us for feedback at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. That is unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. Looking at recent feedback, we have an email from Jesse, Jesse from Houston, Jesse writes, and I believe Jesse is a guy here. It spelled the way of the male spelling, but I don't want to misgender anyone.

And I'm serious about that. Jesse writes, first time, long time here. Really, oh, sorry, title of the email, Bullworth, 1999, the need year of the left. Our last main feed episode was on Bullworth, the Warren Beatty movie with the great Vincent Cunningham as our guest. First time, long time here. really enjoy your content and contributions. Listening to the Bullworth episode, I was interested to hear John described 1999 as the

Nadeer for the left in the U.S. One point that I feel like John makes in his book is sometimes the low point mass science of growth that were just in the burst in the scene, surprising mainstream commentators. One such event occurred in late 99, and that was the WTO protest, the World Trade Organization, protest in Seattle. The anti-globalization movement is a little bit lost to history. my belief is that it is largely due to the shock and trauma of September 11th, just short of two years after Seattle.

I'm a little bit older than you. I was in college in 99, and following the Seattle protests, the anti-globalization movement seemed to grow and have direction and purpose. It was followed by similar protests in Washington, D.C. in April of next year, and was morphing into something both international and meaningful. In the summer of 2001, I worked with a group then called the National Labor Committee who had gotten semi-famous for outing Kathy Lee Gifford for her brand, used to sweatshop labor. Along with the United Steelworkers, they worked to build out United Students against sweatshops, which was an attempt to connect U.S. college students with factory workers in Asia and Latin America. It turned out to be a brief moment.

So much was washed away with 9-11 in the aftermath. The fragile bonds and institutions that were just starting to solidify weren't strong enough to survive the nationwide shock of the attack and the fast turn towards Forever Wars. Certainly, much of what became occupied drew a direct line from some of this organizing, As a road not taken, I think it's a relevant footnote. Sometimes movements are swept away by history. Thank you for your work. Great email, Jesse.

This is really interesting. I mean, look, I was very interesting that stuff at the time. I was sympathizer as much a part of it as I guess you could be at around 12 or 13 years old, 14 years old. And I was, yeah, it's absolutely true. And I don't think that history has really been written yet. I think that those movements also had some international dimensions that were very interesting. So yeah, definitely. This is an excellent point.

I'll just say that it's interesting to me to think that trying to build solidarity between garment workers and American college students was like considered to be fruitful. Because today it is very difficult to get American consumers at all to think very much about the provenance of their clothing and the dominance of fast fashion is. is such that trying to even persuade people that maybe, maybe it's not great to spend $5 in a shirt. The usual response to that is, well, you're just an elitist who doesn't understand that people can't afford anything. And I find that really disappointing because the garment industry is still horribly exploitative. And part of the reason is the kind of ravenous appetite among Western consumers for the cheapest, latest fashion. I sometimes get advertisements for T-Mu on my various social media things. Isn't that Chinese?

It's Chinese. Okay. And it's just sort of... Not us this time. But it's not hard to find videos of people. They get their halls. or shine. They get their halls

and they spend like $100 for like, you know, 20 items of clothing. And it's like that's not, that's not sustainable. That's bad for the environment. That's bad for workers. Anyway, just interesting to me, that was an avenue

for trying to build solidarity. Yeah. No, it was, it's an interesting period. I hope someone writes about it. Thank you for the email, Jesse. And again, you can reach for feedback at unclear and present feedback

at fastmail.com. There's another email I wanted to read real quick, not read, but answer it. Caleb asked if we're ever going to do Arlington Road. And as it so happens, as I look at our master list here, we'll be doing Arlington Road in just a little while. Arlington Road is just down the street on the schedule. We're kind of, you know, we're in the middle of 98 right now,

and we are kind of approaching the end of the 90s, soon enough. But our next episode, coming in roughly two weeks, is going to be 1998 Armageddon, much more political of this, one directed by Michael Bay,

starring Bruce Villis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck, and Liv Tyler, among many other people. Quick plot synopsis, when an asteroid threatens to collide with Earth NASA Hancho, Dan Truman, determines the only way to stop it is to drill into its surface and detonate a nuclear bomb. This leads him to renowned driller, Harry Stamper, who agrees the helm, the dangerous space mission provided he can bring along his own hot shot crew. This movie, I actually recently watched this in a hotel room.

It was like on cable. And this movie is so stupid. It's so, it's so dumb, and I really enjoy it. So looking forward to it, it's Armageddon. And over at the Patreon, we recently have an episode on the 2000 and 2025 Nuremberg films. And we're going to watch in the upcoming Patreon episode, a film about Hannah Arendt and do some more post World War II stuff after that as well. That's just going over to the Patreon. That's patreon.com slash unclear pod.

We also do our weekly politics show. And you can skip that over at the Patreon as well. All right. That's it, folks. We will see you next time for John Gans and Jamal Bowie. And this is unclear in present danger. Have a nice one. Enjoy.

We're recording this on Juneteenth. Enjoy the holiday. Enjoy Juneteen.