[a] The film stars Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria, Kevin Dunn, Michael Lerner, and Harry Shearer.

Meanwhile, NRC scientist Dr. Niko "Nick" Tatopoulos is researching the effects of radiation on wildlife in the Chernobyl exclusion zone when he is interrupted by an official from the U.S. State Department who has come to pick him up for a special assignment.

Revealing himself as an agent of the French secret service, Philippe explains that he and his colleagues have been closely watching the events to cover up their country's role in the nuclear testing that created Godzilla.

Nick and Philippe's team, followed by Audrey and her cameraman Victor "Animal" Palotti, find the nest inside Madison Square Garden, with over 200 eggs.

Nick, Animal, Audrey and Philippe take refuge in the Garden's broadcast booth and successfully send out a live news-report to alert the military.

Godzilla collapses to the ground where the taxi is smashed under its jaw and slowly dies from its mortal wounds, and the remaining citizens and authorities celebrate.

Philippe, taking a tape Animal was recording and promising to return it after removing certain contents, thanks Nick for his help and parts ways.

"[17] Taking advice from his wife, Woods instead went over the executives' heads and proposed the idea to Peter Guber, the then-chairman of the board and CEO of Sony Pictures.

I hope that a competition will spring up between Toho and TriStar,"[21] Koichi Kawakita (special effects director of the Heisei Godzilla films) stated, "I have great expectations.

Robert Fried expressed support for Elliott and Rossio, praising them as "talented sci-fi buffs" and stating, "We've put a lot of time, thought and finance into the screenplay."

"[17] The duo wanted to avoid a comic-like approach and instead take the material seriously with a "legitimate science fiction story" that would evoke feelings of "mystified or scared or awe-inspired" for audiences.

[38] Godzilla, originally conceived as a robust, erect-standing, plantigrade reptilian sea monster, was reimagined by Tatopoulos as a lean, digitigrade bipedal iguana-like creature that stood with its back and tail parallel to the ground.

Prior to principal photography, Emmerich filmed a teaser trailer, budgeted at $600,000, that featured Godzilla's foot crushing the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex at a museum.

Special features for the DVD include: photo galleries, visual effects and special FX supervisor commentaries, the music video for "Heroes" by The Wallflowers, Behind the Scenes of Godzilla with Charles Caiman, theatrical trailers, a featurette, director/producer and cast biographies, a photo gallery, music video, and Godzilla Takes New York (before and after shots).

The VHS earned $8.04 million from rentals during its first week in the United States, at the time making it the biggest video opening since Titanic.

Its critical consensus states, "Without compelling characters or heart, Godzilla stomps on everything that made the original (or any monster movie worth its salt) a classic.

[citation needed] James Berardinelli from ReelViews, called the film "one of the most idiotic blockbuster movies of all time, it's like spitting into the wind.

"[83] Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote that the film "is so clumsily structured it feels as if it's two different movies stuck together with an absurd stomping finale glued onto the end.

"[84] Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post queried, "The question is this: Are the awe-inspiring creature effects and roaring battle scenes impressive enough to make you forget the stupid story, inaccurate science and basic implausibility?"

There's Maria Pitillo (House Rules) as Nick's soporific love interest, Audrey; The Simpsons' Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer as a wise-cracking news cameraman and superficial reporter; Vicki Lewis of NewsRadio as a lusty scientist.

For a while, the filmmakers honor the sentimental paradox that seeped into the later Godzilla films: that this primitive destroyer, like King Kong, doesn't actually mean any harm."

He opined that the film contained "some clever and exciting sequences", but ultimately came to the conclusion that, "It says much about today's blockbuster filmmakers that they could spend so much money on Godzilla and still fail to do justice to something that was fairy-tale destructo schlock to begin with.

"[17][89] In later years, Devlin stated that he "screwed up" his Godzilla, mainly blaming the script that he co-wrote with Emmerich as the source of the film's failure.

Apart from suggesting he may have been miscast, he admitted to failing to understand the film's poor reputation, given that it made "a lot of money" and was the result of a large group of people's hard work.

"[13] In 2018, Azaria expressed his disappointment with working on Godzilla, citing its failure to boost his career profile as intended, and noting that he fell sick several times while shooting in rainy exteriors for five months.

He went on to declare that Godzilla became the "poster child" for everything wrong with Hollywood in terms of budget and marketing, adding that the advertisements looked better than the film itself.

[96] Kaneko pondered on the treatment the character was given by the studio, stating, "It is interesting [that] the US version of Godzilla runs about trying to escape missiles... Americans seem unable to accept a creature that cannot be put down by their arms.

He felt that on its own merits, the 1998 film is "fun" and "quite well executed" and was technologically a huge achievement but understood why some are adamant to consider it not part of the Godzilla pantheon.

In the series, Dr. Tatopoulos accidentally discovers the egg that survived the aerial bombardment before it hatches, in a minor change from the ending in the 1998 film.

Subsequently, Dr. Tatopoulos and his associates form a research team, investigating strange occurrences and defending mankind from dangerous mutations with the new Godzilla, which grew to full size in a few days, serving as humanity's protector from the new threats.