ith a sharp burst of green--the online equivalent of its gigantic namesake's ear-busting scream--Godzilla.com drags its visitors into a disaster zone where they can interact with a truly monstrous flick.
A click on the welcome screen brings visitors to the site proper in all its atomic green glory. Loading in under a minute on a 28.8 kps modem, the site slams visitors with a tremendous amount of information about the new Godzilla film due out Memorial Day weekend. Under the News and Press section, visitors can find links to more than a dozen news stories about the movie, rather than the typical press releases they might expect.
The Cast and Crew section gives thumbnail overviews of those involved with the creation of the movie, and the site boasts the latest trailers for those patient enough to download them. Treading into more interactive terrain, the site offers a virtual world called Godzilla: The Destruction, where brave souls can wander the ruins of Manhattan and chat with others who survived Godzilla's attack.
Back in the real world, visitors can attend scheduled chats with those who made the film, including star Matthew Broderick and director/writer/executive producer Roland Emmerich. There are also live fan chats and discussion boards for visitors who just can't stop talking about the movie. Fans more interested in challenges than chats can try their skill at blowing up monsters and other assorted enemies in the site's Java-based arcade game.
For those who prefer to see a man in a giant rubber lizard suit, there is a link to the Godzilla Database, Godzilla.com's sister site. The database is dedicated to the old Godzilla movies in all their campy glory. Fans can use this sub-site to get information about all of the big lizard's films, as well as lists of his enemies, the heroes behind the films, and product lines.
The good, the bad and the radioactive
Godzilla.com is a cutting-edge site that tries just about every Web trick imaginable, with intermittent success. On the low-tech side, the stories found in the News and Press section were a welcome surprise, although more surprising (and disappointing) was the fact that not one of the stories was from 1998.
On the high-tech side, Godzilla: The Destruction is worth a quick exploratory download for visitors with a high-speed Web connection. Those with a 28.8 kbps or slower modem might want to skip the virtual experience--the full-feature browser game is 6.92MB, and even the bare-bones version is 1.6MB. The virtual city requires the download of the Virtual Worlds browser, and while the ruins of Manhattan are interesting, they will probably only hold the attention of diehard VRML fans.
The site's game, which is a Java applet, loads infinitely quicker in comparison to the virtual world, but is limited to solid, two-dimensional, early-1980s graphics. It's cute, but not cute enough to play more than once or twice.
What will draw repeat visitors is the site's interactive nature. The constant chats and message boards, combined with free goodies like screen savers, are enough to keep any Godzilla junkie sated. More impressively, the site gives fans a chance to talk with the movie's creators in a way usually reserved for journalists covering the industry. Anyone can sit in on chats with Godzilla's various stars and production people. It's a feature that future movie sites should look to emulate.
It's clear the Godzilla.com designers share the intensity of the Toho Terror himself. The result is a frenzied, slightly out-of-focus site that will amuse one-time visitors while keeping Godzilla fans coming back for weekly doses.
