Kaiju History – Fox Tried To Capitalize On Sony And Roland Emmerich’s ‘Godzilla’ With A Cheap-As-Hell Knockoff
1998 was a pivotal year for Godzilla and his fans even if it didn’t go how they, Toho, or Sony TriStar Pictures hoped. All the chips were behind Roland Emmerich’s vision as the studios gambled – perhaps drunkenly – that he could make something special that stood the test of time. Weirdly, he sort of did: his film became a red line for what not to do whether anyone likes to admit it or not.
Toho had to reverse course and take Gojira back to his roots, and they didn’t hesitate. The very next year, they churned out Godzilla 2000, an international success in its own right. It also lit the fuse for the Millennium Era, considered the pinnacle of the franchise for many among the kaiju faithful, that we’re still talking about and enjoying today. And that’s just one byproduct of Emmerich’s effort.
There were a few. His film received a spinoff in the form of an animated series which is hard to get ahold of but still more celebrated than its inspiration. This cartoon, Godzilla: The Series, aired on the Fox network on Saturday mornings during their trendsetting Kids block, and it debuted the same year as the movie. In it, Godzilla (or rather his son) was the hero again and (thankfully) fought other monsters.
The series was a high point in a period with an otherwise bleak outlook. As such, it represents a counterpoint to what I want to discuss in this Kaiju History edition. You see, an animated adaptation that fits their MO wasn’t the only thing Fox did in ’98 to cash in on the year’s big Memorial Day release.
On the evening of May 19th, the day Emmerich’s Godzilla came out, the network broadcast the original TV movie Gargantua. Produced in-house, it starred a pre-Firefly Adam Baldwin and a tender-aged Emile Hirsch long before he became an alpha dog speed racer who went ‘into the wild.’
As you can guess from the title, the film is a boilerplate giant monster affair. What you might not gather is the title masks a foursome of mutated creatures of increasing size. Yeah, Gargantua is a 441 monster sale. The first is a baby who comes ashore on the fictional Malau Island – or maybe it’s somewhere in the Olu Malau chain of the Solomon Islands.
Either way, the rubbery-looking juvenile is, naturally, a cute little guy that Hirsch’s character grows fond of like his name is Henry Thomas (E.T.). So, of course, he adopts the little critter as a pet. And of course, Baldwin plays the kid’s dad who is researching seismic disturbances that are, of course, connected to the beasts’ habitat which is a deep underwater trench (of course).
You could probably write this script in your sleep. You’d probably also write in scenes of kaiju-stomping destruction. The only question is how comical they would or wouldn’t be. Most Godzilla fanatics would likely try to lean more into action everyone can take seriously or strike a balance between the breathtaking and the absurd. The writer of Gargantua, on the other hand, Ronald Parker, made sure there were plenty of dumb brain farts to pass as setpieces.
RELATED: Kaiju History: ‘Pulgasari’ Has An American Remake No One Remembers – Or Needs
It all starts with the first evidence of the amphibious lizards’ existence when a couple goes kayaking at night. Something under the water pulls the boyfriend backward faster than he can paddle, but not faster than he should be able to ditch and swim to safety. He falls in when his kayak turns over and then drowns off-screen.
Later, when the big momma kaiju attacks, she flips a row boat that foils the first line of defense, a dufus with a rocket launcher, when it hits him in the face. He blows up everything but the monster and it’s ‘thanks for coming!’ The director clearly knows how funny this sequence is because the camera lingers on the flipping boat and the soldier’s certain death.
So there’s a mommy and she surfaces looking for the two lesser kaiju – i.e., her offspring. If that sounds familiar, it’s the basic premise of Gorgo and several other low-rent monster movies. That makes three inspirations for Gargantua between the swinging 60s Limey dinosaur romp, Godzilla, and E.T. Add all the ocean and beach carnage and you have a transparent Jaws ripoff on top of everything.
Unlike Bruce the shark, the effects don’t hold up. On a budget of $8 million, Fox could only afford the most baseline CGI, and it’s jank even by the standards of the time. Gargantua doesn’t compare to what Emmerich’s visual effects team pulled off in its mightier rival, and that’s saying something.
I remember seeing teasers for it when I was a kid, though I don’t remember watching it all the way through. I saw glimpses of the monsters and Baldwin chewing scenery, but I was never enough of a completionist to give Gargantua my full attention – not even when it re-aired on the Sci-Fi Channel over the years.
People who have watched it (on YouTube and through other means) either hate it or fall for its so-bad-it-is-good charms. From what I’ve seen, it’s cheap-looking and married further by choppy editing, jarring close-ups, terrible CGI, shaky cam, and the most stereotypical Australians outside Crocodile Dundee.
The quality is as low as Peter Benchley’s Creature and Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., which both aired the same year and month within weeks of each other. If Sony or Toho were worried, their worries were unfounded. A few kids might have skipped Godzilla to watch Gargantua, but so what?
That it was my generation of G-Fans notwithstanding, I agree with YouTuber Corrupt Nostalgia in his review when he says, “Kids are dumb!”
READ NEXT: Kaiju History: Sony’s Sole Godzilla Film Actually Received a Sequel – From Toho!
More About:Movies