1998's Godzilla is a complicated beast. It was the first American-made entry in the legendary franchise and featured a killer marketing campaign that hinged on a "less is more" approach. with the film boasting arguably one of the best teaser trailers of all time. Did the movie live up to the hype? While this is of course up to the individual viewer to say, the general consensus is that the film was a major disappointment, both critically and commercially. Even so, the film's director felt compelled to defend it — or, at the very least, the controversial redesign of the King of the Monsters.

In a Reddit AMA in 2012, Roland Emmerich decided to ask some questions about Godzilla. Despite what one thinks of the film, this was a pretty open-ended Q&A, the kind of honesty you rarely get from a major Hollywood director. For example, when someone asked him why he would make a Godzilla movie when he didn't even like the monster, Emmerich answered plainly by saying, "The money was good." Emmerich was coming off the monster hit that was Independence Day. and he must have earned a good payday for this one.

The 1998 remake of the beloved monster is remembered for completely changing the appearance of the title character. Everything we knew about Godzilla was abandoned in favor of something radically different, for better or for worse. Someone else at the AMAs questioned why Emmerich decided to change almost everything about Godzilla for the movie. His response was enlightening, if perhaps upsetting to longtime fans:

“I felt that redesigning Godzilla was important to the film. My vision required a different monster than the overpowered, clunky, indestructible rubber suit that Toho had been using for decades.

1998 "Godzilla" has a lot of problems, as co-writer Dean Devlin admitted. Those issues go far beyond the character design, but it could easily be seen as a problem with the film's director deeming the most iconic monster to ever grace the silver screen as "unsavory" and in need of a makeover.

Consider the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Successful franchise takeovers over the years have largely embraced classic design as a baseline, but Emmerich threw that all out the window. Doubling down on his thinking, answering another fan in that Q&A, he took a pretty big shot at the classic Toho Godzilla design dating back to the original 1954 classic:

“My version of Godzilla was real. She was elegant, stylish and looked terrifying.

Against a whopping $150 million budget, Emmerich's film grossed $379 million worldwide. It can't be called a flop, but it certainly didn't live up to expectations, so we never got a sequel. It took 16 years for another American takeover of the franchise to materialize. director Gareth Edwards' Godzilla hit theaters in 2014 and grossed $529 million worldwide. More importantly, it laid the groundwork for what we now know as the MonsterVerse franchise, which is still going strong.

Say what you will about Edwards' film, but he embraced what people love about Godzilla, which has allowed the franchise to thrive for 70 years. Different takes are welcome when a franchise has been around this long - just look 2023 Oscar winner Godzilla Minus One. But in retrospect, it's wild that a guy who didn't even care about Godzilla was ever given the keys to the kingdom.

Godzilla is currently available to rent on VOD, or you can grab a copy on 4K, Blu-ray or DVD via Amazon.