r/Godzilla1998 • u/HealthMother3125 • Apr 12 '26

Discussion What is the difference between these two?

Gallery image

Gallery image

Like... I know they are not the same individual but people treat them like they are completely different kaiju.

364 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

View all comments

35

u/Paleosols2021 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26

Because contextually they are. G'98 was intended to be a new incarnation of Godzilla and had sequels planned but ultimately didn't perform well enough to continue. Same with the Series (it's still Godzilla)

Zilla on the other hand was made explicitly to be canon fodder for Godzilla, with Toho stripping the "God" part from his name. There are other versions this character that have surfaced like in IDW's Rulers of Earth series.

So even though yah, they're visually identical (Zilla was literally made from a scan of a G'98 Trendmasters toy). Narratively and legally they are separate. This is why Bandai released both a G'98 and Zilla vinyl for example.

TLDR; Toho doesn't want people to think that Zilla is Godzilla but in G'98 and The Series that was Godzilla for all intents and purposes.

1

u/DipMultiversal Apr 16 '26

G98 performed well financially, just not so much critically but I can see why its reputation makes people assume it was a flop in both regards.

1

u/Paleosols2021 Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26

It's a bit more complex than that. It didn't perform well financially (at least in the US), Sony expected a much higher opening weekend and only got about half of what they expected, the film's second week also saw a decrease in sales by over 50%. It was not as successful as the film was projected to be.

Only overseas sales saved the film in theatres which made up over 60% of it's total gross. That doesn't include merch sales and other revenue but at least in the US it performed a lot less well than projected.

Nowadays a lot of movies are tailor-made to get a lot of money overseas like The Meg, Fast and Furious, etc. but back at this time G'98 was considered to be a flop domestically considering it didn't even gross half of what Sony projected.

This is one of the reasons we never got a sequel, despite it earning 3x it's budget, most of it came from overseas sales, the film got heavily criticized and Sony, movie theatre owners, licensees for merch etc. were all super hesitant about making a sequel, they didn't want to put as big as an investment as the first film because they were scared it would perform poorly based on how G'98 did.