Millennium Era:

After Godzilla’s death, Toho decided let another kaiju take the spotlight and created The Rebirth of Mothra Series.(total of 3 movies) As you can tell from the title, the main protagonist was everybody’s favorite hippie monster Mothra. At the same time Toho also started making Gamera movies too. Both of these movies we’re targeted to children since the main cast were kids. Even though Godzilla was retired from the big screen he wasn’t using that time doing nothing. In 1997, Toho made the Godzilla spin off series called Godzilla Island. It was a combination of live action with the human characters while the monsters were action figures. The episodes were really short and ran about 2 minutes each and the series was 256 episodes long. So with two kaiju movie series and a spin off television series, Toho was doing a fine job.

Until it was the year of 1998, when the American Godzilla movie was released. The people of Japan and Toho were outraged seeing what America did to Godzilla. This was a heavy blow to Toho and Godzilla’s reputation. Toho now had to redeem their favorite lizard and their honor.(cause honor is a kind of a big thing in Japan apparently.) So in 1999, they released Godzilla 2000. While the plot isn’t that fresh, aliens come to take over the Earth, BUT this time instead of aliens controlling space monsters or creating robots, the aliens becomes the monster known as Orga. This kaiju was created out of the cells of Godzilla that gives him regeneration abilities(this might explain why its so hard to kill him and how he's lived for so many years.)

Takehiro Murata, who played Kenji Andoh in Godzilla vs. Mothra, now was playing the lead character as Professor Yuji Shinoda. The man who did his English dub voice was Francois Chau, who is known as the character Dr. Pierre Chang from the ABC series Lost. He also played the Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. Actors Shelley Sweeney and Koichi Ueda also returned for this movie, but they had minor roles. The actor who played the human antagonist was Mitsuo Katagiri. The person who played the English dub of Katagiri was Ron Yuan. He has been in many TV series, martial art movies, and video games. One of the movies he was in was Fast & Furious as David Park. Suit actor Tsutomu Kitagawa who was King Ghidorah in Rebirth of Mothra III, would now take up the mantle of being Godzilla in this series(except for one movie.)

This movie was able to get fans to forget about the American Zilla movie and was able to redeem Godzilla’s name. They even had Orga ‘s head to resemble Zilla, maybe for us fans to imagine Godzilla beating up his American double(which he did later.)

What's also interesting that Godzilla defeated Orga the same way he defeated Biollante. The classic if your opponents mouth is huge, stick your head in it. While that sounds like a stupid plan, it actually works.

While the Japanese version was a success, the American version was actually better for once. The American version was 8 minutes shorter in comparison to the 107-minute Japanese version. Most of these were minor edits done to improve the pacing, and the sound design of the movie was completely re-worked. The dubbing has a somewhat humorous, tongue-in-cheek tone to it, apparently in homage to Godzilla dubs of the 60s and 70s. Some fans have criticized the English dubbed version of Godzilla 2000 for camping up what they perceive as a "serious" movie. However, Toho and Takao Okawara approved all the changes to the film in advance, and various amusing sequences throughout the story establish a light-hearted tone and make it evident that it wasn't meant to be taken seriously.

Only complaint I had with the movie was the CGI and the green screen. This would be the first time Toho would use CGI and it showed how they weren’t ready yet. And the green screen background was totally obvious that it was an eyesore to watch. Besides that this was a great movie, It was the first time a Godzilla movie was shown in American theaters since 1985 and it would be the last time. Only now after 14 years will Godzilla return to the American big screen.

American Version

I think this was the first Godzilla DVD I ever bought.

This Film came out on my 10th Birthday.So for me! But in all honesty it was an average film. This was my standard Godzilla character structure I wanted. Godzilla not evil, yet he's not too good that he won't killed the one who try to kill him. Even though I'll always love the 60's through 70's version of him being an anthropomorphic superhero. I also grew up on the 80's and 90's version of him being an antihero this was a kind of middle ground for him which is the way I like to see.

3267131 The Irony of this great film is when I was younger I used to hate it and for one really stupid Reason. "Godzilla atomic breath wasn't blue." Yeah that's a reason to hate a movie. (Which is Ironic since I had no problem with Godzilla vs Destroyah doing the same thing.) Thankfully I got older and wised up and then didn't care. Now i love this film. It's epic awesome and one of few if not only times the English version is Superior to the Japanese version.

I still remember taking my grandmother and brother to see this at the theater back in the day, and I confess at the time the only Godzilla films I'd seen were the Showa films and Godzilla 98, and well I thought it was the sequel to Godzilla 98 not a Toho reboot

3268170 I used to think all the Godzilla films were in the same continuity when I was younger.

I used to wonder why Godzilla one day looked nice and saved the day and then in another movie Godzilla was mean and destroying things. Silly me.

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I thought the same thing too, whenever I saw a something that contradicted a previous movie in a series I was like WTF? Why aren't you guys paying attention?

3268613 Thank goodness I grew up and learned of the greatness that is the reboot