My major gripe though, is the music. To put it the most polite way I can, composer Takayuki Hattori's score was dreadful. I had heard some sound bites when the movie was first released and I was disappointed. It doesn't sound like a Godzilla score and the orchestrations are pathetic as well. I read where Tri-star dumped some of the score and replaced it with music composed by J. Peter Robinson. Well his music was as weak as the original score. Hattori also composed music for 1994's Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla. GNP's Best Of contains the important cues from that film so I didn't bother to purchase that score. Unlike G2000 the music is promising, although he borrows from John Barry's score to You Only Live Twice. But it suffers from the same problems mentioned above. The scores sound like they are performed by 80 year old players on their last breath. There is no power in the music. It seams only Akira Ifukube knows what it takes to score a monster movie. He captures the essence in his orchestrations and performance of the orchestra. You know you are listening to music meant for a giant monster.

Actually only one score seems to come close in a Godzilla movie not scored by Ifukube and that is Gojira 1984 (Godzilla 1985 to us in America). That move was scored by Reijiro Koroku. He was able to capture the mood correctley in my opinion. The score is performed with some gusto. The music represents Godzilla as a large creature bent on destruction. now I'm not a fan of the late 60's and early 70's Godzilla scores that were not scored by Ifukube. Masaru Sato and a few others handled those. I don't care for the light, jazzy, disco style they incorporated. Although I do have Sato's serious score for Godzilla Returns (1955).

Godzilla vs Biollante (1989) also features a score that was not composed by Ifukube. It was composed by Kiochi Sugiyama and he must have the same problem with his orchestrations as well. While a majority of the music isn't bad it lacks the power of Ifukubes work. Sadly Ifukube is in his 80's and no longer scoring Godzilla films. Toho is releasing a new Godzilla movie this coming December and this time the scoring duties have been assigned to a female composer, Michiru Oshima, who has handled quite a bit of Japanese Anime. I only hope she can capture what Ifukube brought to Kaiju movies.