It would be nice to see another try at treating Godzilla in a serious vein, as an allegory with something to say like the original film, rather than just as a disaster movie or a kaiju-as-superhero movie. But I doubt any American filmmaker could really capture the philosophical essence and power of the original film, since nobody's ever dropped atomic bombs on us. (Although maybe we can understand a little better after 9/11.) And is an allegory about nuclear war really relevant today?
Then again, a lot of Godzilla and Mothra movies have had an ecological theme, though often quite heavy-handedly as in Godzilla vs. Hedorah (aka Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster) and Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth. What with scientists saying we're within a few years of irreversible global warming, while corporations and politicians build higher and higher walls of denial, maybe that would be a timely message.
Although I'll be satisfied if they just use the authentic roar. That's as classic a sound effect as the Martian disintegrator beams or the Enterprise accelerating or the TARDIS materializing (the last of which was created in a similar way to the Godzilla roar, by scraping the strings of a musical instrument). I've just begun working my way through the available Heisei and Millennium-era Godzilla films, the first one being Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, and in that one they altered the roar so that it started out right but then faded into a more conventional animal roar. I didn't like that. It's just not Godzilla's roar without that upward flourish at the end.
As for the Emmerich movie, I actually don't have a problem with it. If you just ignore any connection to Godzilla and treat it as an entirely separate monster movie in its own right, it's not bad. And it's actually a pretty cool creature design, though I think it worked better in the animated series.
