After several weeks in theaters, the Bryan Cranston-tastic new Godzilla film has both critics and audiences praising the movie as the biggest beast-tackling slam dunk since Space Jam. And while we're in no position to tell all of those people that they're wrong, there's something about the reception of the new Godzilla that is incredibly puzzling: This movie is more or less exactly the same as the universally reviled Godzilla that was released to a fanfare of boos and ironic ticket sales in 1998.
No, seriously -- when you break it down on digital paper, the two movies are so bizarrely similar, it seems like the producers of the new film decided to make a $200 million homage to one of the most infamously terrible blockbusters of all time.
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It Has Ridiculous Plot Elements
The plot of 1998's Godzilla saw the U.S. military using Godzilla's unstoppable attraction to fish in order to lure him into a trap that they inexplicably set in the middle of a major population center and a small group of individuals discovering and destroying a nest of atomic monster eggs with the potential to wipe out the human race. Those characters are consequently singled out by the atomic monster who laid those eggs (Godzilla), because laying hundreds of golf-cart-size eggs is quite literally a pain in the ass.
The plot of 2014's Godzilla sees the military using the giant monsters' unstoppable attraction to radiation in order to lure them into a trap that inexplicably draws them right through the middle of a major population center and a single individual who finds and destroys a nest of atomic monster eggs with the potential to wipe out the human race. That character is consequently singled out by the atomic monster who laid those eggs, because holy shit, this is literally the exact same plot as the previous movie.
Warner Bros.
Admittedly, "plot" may be a bit strong of a word when describing these movies.