A Pentagon scene depicts Raymond Burr watching Tokyo's destruction via satellite while military brass engage in prolonged soul-searching rather than action. Burr's character utters that Godzilla is "searching" and that understanding its motive is urgent. The U.S. release reworked the 1984 Japanese Return of Godzilla with new scenes and characters, excising substantial original footage. Critics labeled the edit "bastardized," with Roger Ebert giving one star and citing "phony profundity," poor dialogue, and lip-syncing; the film earned Razzie nominations. The Burr insertion echoes a prior practice of adding American actors into U.S. Godzilla edits.
There's a scene in Godzilla 1985 wherein, from the safety of the Pentagon, a brooding Raymond Burr witnesses the destruction of Tokyo at the hands of a giant dinosaur via satellite feed. The shocking assault prompts much soul-searching and brow-furrowing from the military brass around him, to which Burr's character - seasoned American journalist Steve Martin - eventually musters a response.
In any other movie, it might have been a call to arms - especially for a top-billed actor portraying a character defined by his vocation's investigative regard. Instead, as one of the world's major cities crumbles in the face of a global existential threat, the men opt to stay put and ponder... for the entire movie. They might as well have been watching Supermarket Sweep.
It's a common criticism aimed at this bastardized edit of the 1984 Japanese film Return of Godzilla - reworked by Roger Corman's infamous New World Pictures for U.S. consumption, and featuring new scenes and characters to fill out an otherwise selectively trimmed presentation. Roger Ebert famously awarded the movie one star in a 1985 review, underlining the movie's "phony profundity," "consistently bad" dialogue and poor lip-syncing as emblematic shortcomings of "a bad movie with [failed] aspirations of being a good bad movie."
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