Discover how “one of the golden assets of our time” has been managed so poorly…
Size does matter!
This sentence became the opening slogan of the movie “Godzilla” directed by Roland Emmerich in 1998. The plot of Godzilla is briefly as follows: After the atomic bomb tests carried out in the South Pacific, an unknown creature is detected passing westward through the Panama Canal. This creature that emerged due to radiation is a giant lizard. The creature lands in Manhattan and begins wreaking havoc in the big city. The American army tries with all its might to save the people of New York from this monster.
According to the film’s writer, Dean Devlin, the slogan emerged during a meeting with Sony, the film’s producer. Sony’s marketing director asked a very simple question: “If I’ve already seen Jurassic Park (i.e. a big lizard movie), why do I need to see Godzilla too?” The marketing director of the film answered this question simply by saying, “Because size does matter!”
Movie critics
The Hollywood version is the only version where Godzilla is officially a lizard. In all previous films, Godzilla is a huge, destructive, prehistoric sea monster awakened and strengthened by nuclear radiation. The reason for this radical difference is that the director of the film, Roland Emmerich, did not like the original Godzilla and took on the project only after receiving a promise that he could do whatever he wanted. The resulting character, according to Godzilla fans, is not a Hollywood adaptation of a cult character, but just another giant monster movie.
Analysis of a scandal
Twenty-two different Godzilla movies were made until 1998, all by Japanese directors. The common feature of these films is that they all reflect the spirit of the first film. As a matter of fact, when the Japanese signed an agreement with Hollywood, they required them to comply with the spirit of the original Godzilla. Accordingly, Godzilla is a metaphor symbolizing nuclear weapons for the Japanese, who remember the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, in all these prequel films, the monster appears from miles away in the form of a large mushroom cloud, similar to an atomic bomb, and causes great destruction. Even the post-destruction scenes in the movies are designed to evoke the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the wake of the atomic bombs. As monsters symbolize the symbolic forces of nature in Japanese culture, Godzilla also symbolizes a world gone wrong and nature’s revenge on humanity. These mythological and historical meanings attributed to Godzilla were largely eliminated in the 1998 version. For this reason, the production company was accused by critics of completely misunderstanding and disrespecting the original Godzilla. It has even been accused of oversimplifying the original’s emphasis on nuclear danger by turning it into an overly large and unpredictable monster. These criticisms even went as far as the audience and the original filmmakers quitting halfway through the film’s opening in Japan.
Anatomy of a failure
Due to confidentiality concerns, the director did not show the film to the producer until almost after its launch. Sony, the production company, saw the film only three weeks before its release and was very disappointed. In order to mitigate a possible failure, the film was relied upon to “explode”, at least initially, and therefore resorted to costly promotional activities. These are tie-in activities that have been frequently encountered in Hollywood recently. This method is cross-brand communication activities where the parties agree to share costs for certain promotional campaigns. For this purpose, film studios cooperate with sectors such as fast-food chains, packaged foods, and clothing retailers. Godzilla is one of countless examples that allocate much more money to the marketing budget than the cost of shooting the film. While Sony spent 125 million dollars for the film, its promotional activities reached 200 million dollars. 60 million of this figure was spent by Sony and the rest by tie-in partners. However, this method did not work in the Godzilla movie, and the associated marketing products came to a halt immediately after the movie was released. Even the Trendmasters company, which produced the toys for the previous Godzilla movies, was driven into bankruptcy.
According to one Sony executive, Godzilla was one of the worst cases of management he has observed in his career. According to him, “One of the golden assets of our time has been managed as poorly and incompetently as anyone can manage an asset.” Since the film’s extraordinarily poor performance was mainly attributed to the lack of fidelity to the original spirit, Sony, while shooting Spiderman in 2002, made sure to work with a director who was a fan of the movie they adapted.
Sources
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