The movie premiere was fun. They had the Godzilla float from the Hollywood Christmas Parade out front of Mann's Chinese, breathing "fire" (steam or dry ice, really) and bellowing Godzilla's familiar roar, while his theme music blared. They gave us cheap cardboard hats and a tiny rubber toy showing Godzilla atop a globe. (No, I didn't put on the hat.) Before the film they had a raffle to give away video games, action figures and DVD box sets. It turned into an embarrassment when at least half of the numbers they called out failed to produce any winners; sometimes they had to draw four numbers before someone finally had a winning ticket. They then introduced the director, producer and cast. The director and star spoke briefly to the audience. TV cameras were there, presumably to cover the event for Japanese TV, and I imagine footage will appear on the Toho DVD.

As for the film . . . well, it's pretty terrible in many ways, but it is lively and ultimately entertaining. GODZILLA FINAL WARS devotes a lot of its running time to slavishly copying scenes from American blockbusters--there is a lot of stuff flat-out stolen from THE MATRIX, plus various scenes and ideas lifted from X-MEN, INDEPENDENCE DAY, even RETURN OF THE JEDI. It also has a rock score by Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The music is loud, obnoxious and unrelenting. The absurdly overloaded plot includes: rampaging monsters; invading aliens; superhuman mutants; a crusading TV reporter (and her little dog, too); the flying submarine Atragon; a child and his grandfather befriending Godzilla's son Minya - and the American Godzilla from the 1998 film.

However, a lot of the monster action is fun, and there are some good laughs, some intentional, some not. It's nice to see a bunch of monsters from the 60's and 70's films brought back--it's like a monster high school reunion. The audience enjoyed seeing Japanese Godzilla wipe out the American Godzilla, and the alien leader's frustrated remark "I knew that tuna-eating monster was good for nothing!" All in all, everyone seemed to have a good time. - Gary Teetzel