Edkkakumon wrote:
From sources I've read, US producers liked Gojira, but thought it too much like an art film. To expand the audience factor they added Burr and a couple of scenes. They created a film that American audiences ate up.
Gojira is superior, but most of us started our love of Godzilla with King of the Monsters.
I think the American distributors felt that the first half of GOJIRA lacked a strong central character; the script mostly focused on the disasters at sea and other incidents before major players became established. The closest the film had to a "hero" in those early scenes was the newspaper reporter who wasn't well-developed and Raymond Burr's character was most likely based on him. Burr's presence gave the audience a strong identification figure which actually strengthened the narrative a bit. We're all quick to assume that the original foreign versions of any movie we import is automatically superior which is not always the case. I actually prefer the American version of RODAN, for instance, despite the replaced score and grating dubbing.