Godzilla 1998 Open Matte Hot! Page

For film enthusiasts and archivists, the "Open Matte" version of

(1998) is a unique curiosity that reveals more of the frame than was seen in theaters. While most official home video releases preserve the theatrical widescreen look, certain broadcast and digital versions provide a taller perspective that changes the visual impact of the film's "giant monster" scale. Technical Background: Super 35 Directed by Roland Emmerich was filmed using the cinematographic process. Theatrical Ratio:

2.39:1 (a wide "scope" format with black bars on top and bottom). Open Matte Ratio:

~1.78:1 (fills a standard 16:9 widescreen TV) or ~1.33:1 (for old 4:3 televisions). The Process:

In Super 35, the camera captures a larger, nearly square area of the 35mm film negative. For theaters, the top and bottom are "masked" (hidden) to create the cinematic widescreen shape. An "open matte" version simply removes these masks, showing the vertical information that was originally cut out. Visual Impact: Height vs. Composition

The open matte version offers a trade-off between the director's intended framing and the sheer amount of visual data on screen. 🦖 Increased Scale

is a movie about a massive creature, the open matte version is popular among fans because it emphasizes verticality Tall Skyscrapers:

You can see more of the New York City skyline in the same frame as the monster. Monster Size:

In many shots, the extra room at the top and bottom makes Godzilla feel more imposing compared to the humans on the ground. 🎬 Compositional Trade-offs

Director Roland Emmerich and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub composed the film specifically for the 2.39:1 ratio. Dead Space:

Open matte versions often have "dead air" at the top and bottom that looks empty or unbalanced. Technical Gaffes:

Sometimes, removing the matte reveals production equipment like or the edges of sets that were never meant to be seen. Availability and Modern Versions

If you are looking for the best way to watch the film today, you generally have to choose between theatrical intent and the "expanded" view. Godzilla (1998)

Tech specs * 2h 19m(139 min) * Sound mix. DTS. Dolby Digital. * Aspect ratio. 2.39 : 1.

The Vertical Kaiju: Unlocking the Godzilla (1998) Open Matte Experience

For years, Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla (1998) has been synonymous with its "Scope" 2.39:1 theatrical presentation. However, a dedicated corner of the kaiju fandom has long sought out a different way to view the TriStar monster: the Open Matte version.

By "opening the matte," viewers see more of the image at the top and bottom of the frame—pixels that were originally hidden behind the black bars of a widescreen display. For a monster as tall as Godzilla, this change in perspective can transform the entire viewing experience. What is "Open Matte"?

Unlike "Pan and Scan"—which crops the sides of a widescreen image to fit a square TV—Open Matte reveals image data captured by the camera but intentionally masked for theaters. Godzilla was filmed using Super 35 (specifically common-top), a process that captures a much taller image than what is eventually shown on a 2.39:1 cinema screen. Why Fandom Prefers the Expanded View

Enhanced Scale: In the theatrical version, Godzilla is often "beheaded" or cut off at the feet in close-ups. The Open Matte version allows the "skyscraper-sized lizard" to take up the full verticality of the screen, making the creature feel more imposing against the New York skyline.

Atmospheric Immersion: The 1998 film is famous for its constant rain and dark, moody lighting. Seeing more of the flooded streets and rainy skies adds to the claustrophobic, urban-warfare atmosphere of the film.

Production Oddities: While providing more visual information, Open Matte versions can occasionally reveal "sins of production," such as boom mics or the edges of sets that were never meant to be seen by the public. Where to Find It

Finding an official "Open Matte" release is rare, as most modern home media—including the 4K Ultra HD Remaster available on Amazon—sticks to the director's intended theatrical aspect ratio. Godzilla movie review & film summary - Roger Ebert

The "Open Matte" Legacy of Godzilla (1998) The 1998 American reboot of

, directed by Roland Emmerich, remains one of the most debated entries in the franchise's history. Beyond the discussions regarding its creature design and departure from Toho's original vision, a niche but dedicated community of cinephiles and home media collectors has kept the film alive through the lens of its "Open Matte" presentation. What is "Open Matte"?

Most modern films are shot with a "widescreen" aspect ratio in mind (typically 2.39:1 or 1.85:1). In an open matte version, the "mattes" (the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen) are removed, revealing parts of the filmed frame that were originally cropped out for the theatrical release. For Godzilla (1998), which was filmed in Super 35, an open matte presentation provides a 16:9 (1.78:1) view that fills modern television screens without losing image from the sides. Why Fans Seek the 1998 Open Matte Version

For a film centered on a 200-foot-tall monster in the vertical canyons of New York City, the open matte version offers several visual advantages:

Enhanced Scale: The extra vertical space allows viewers to see more of the monster's height and the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan simultaneously.

Immersive Action: Many fans feel that the "full screen" look (without black bars) makes the destruction of the city feel more immediate and overwhelming.

Hidden Details: While theatrical crops are the "director's intent," open matte versions sometimes reveal more of the practical sets and miniature work done by the special effects crew. Availability and Controversy

The Godzilla (1998) open matte version has primarily been available through older HDTV broadcasts and specific full-screen DVD releases. However, it is not the "official" way the film was intended to be seen. Godzilla 1998 Open Matte

Technical Flaws: Because these areas weren't meant to be seen, open matte versions can occasionally reveal production equipment, like boom mics or light stands, at the very edges of the frame.

Composition: Director Roland Emmerich and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub composed the film specifically for a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio to create a cinematic, "epic" feel.

Despite being a "box office bomb" by industry standards, the film’s unique technical history continues to fascinate those looking for the "biggest" possible way to view this version of the King of the Monsters.

Specific technical details about the Super 35 filming process.

Reviews and comparisons between the theatrical and open matte versions.

The history of its creature design, which was famously inspired by Ray Harryhausen. Godzilla (1998) - IMDb

Title: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Unleashed: A Review of Godzilla (1998) in Open Matte

Format: Open Matte (Full Frame/1.33:1 Aspect Ratio) Source Material: Godzilla (1998), Directed by Roland Emmerich

For a specific niche of film enthusiasts, the phrase "Open Matte" holds a certain magic. It promises more picture, more scope, and a glimpse behind the cinematic curtain. Nowhere is this more fascinating—and arguably more transformative—than with Roland Emmerich’s 1998 reimagining of Godzilla.

While the film itself remains one of the most polarizing blockbusters in cinema history, viewing it in Open Matte (presented in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio commonly used for VHS and early TV broadcasts) offers a completely different visual experience. It turns a flawed monster movie into a strange, expansive artifact of late-90s spectacle.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is the Open Matte version in HD? A: Only via the old Bravo HD broadcasts. Most fan rips are 720p or 1080p, but look softer than the Blu-ray because the bitrate is lower.

Q: Does the Criterion Collection include this? A: No. Criterion owns the rights to the Japanese Godzilla films (Showa era). The 1998 film is owned by Warner Bros./Sony.

Q: Why don't they release Open Matte on 4K Blu-ray? A: Directors hate it. Most directors (and cinematographers) view Open Matte as a "TV compromise" that ruins their careful widescreen composition. However, for collectors, it is the opposite—it is the raw truth of the film stock.

Q: Does this make the movie better? A: If you hate the movie, no. If you enjoy the cheesy 90s disaster aesthetic and want to see Matthew Broderick looking sweaty in full-frame glory, yes.

What Does the Open Matte Version Show?

For fans of film and visual effects, the Open Matte version is fascinating because it exposes the "hidden" edges of the frame. Key differences include:

Why Is This Version So Sought After?

If Open Matte reveals boom mics and empty space, why do collectors care so much?

1. Lost Visual Information There are scenes in the Open Matte version that contain genuine content cut off in every other release. For instance, during the final chase sequence, the widescreen cuts off the top of the Chrysler Building. The Open Matte restores the iconic spire. For film historians, this is a time capsule of late-90s VFX layout.

2. The "IMAX" Sensation Many viewers argue that the Open Matte version feels more immersive on modern 16:9 monitors. If you zoom a 2.39 image to fill a 16:9 screen, you lose the sides. But the Open Matte fits a 16:9 screen natively without cropping the horizontal information. It turns the movie into a pseudo-IMAX experience.

3. The Nostalgia Factor For those who grew up in the late 90s, the Open Matte Godzilla is the one they watched on VHS and early DVD. They didn't know they were missing the sides; they thought the movie was always "taller." When they see the widescreen version today, it feels claustrophobic and trimmed.

How to Watch Godzilla 1998 Open Matte in 2025

WARNING: You cannot buy this legally on a retail Blu-ray or 4K disc. The official Sony and Eagle Rock releases are all the matted 2.39:1 version.

Here are your current options:

  1. Fan Restoration Projects: Search for "Godzilla 1998 Open Matte Hybrid" on private tracker forums or film restoration subreddits. A user named "TheAlienArchive" created a 1080p version that splices the HD broadcast video for live-action scenes (which are open matte) with the Blu-ray video for VFX-heavy shots (which are 2.39:1), upscaling the whole thing to 4K using AI. It is currently considered the definitive edition.
  2. Laserdisc: The Japanese Laserdisc release (PILF-2676) featured a "Special Edition" with the open matte framing for the first 20 minutes of the film. It is expensive and obsolete, but a relic.
  3. YouTube: Several comparison videos exist, but full movie uploads are quickly struck down by Sony’s copyright bots.

Godzilla 1998 — Open Matte

They called it the Breach at New York: a heat-scorched river through the island, a trail of overturned cars and torn subway cars, the memorized route of a creature no map could show. Reporters circled like gulls. Cameras craned toward a skyline scarred by a single, enormous footprint. Night after night the feeds filled with the same footage — the monster dragging through the East River, flickers of bioluminescent maw, rain on empty streets. But the director’s cut that no one aired held a different story.

It began when Lina Vega, a low-paid assistant editor at a small archival house, found a mislabelled tape in a crate of raw footage from the fall of '98. The tape bore a tiny stencil: OPEN MATTE. She had seen that phrase before—an old cinematographer’s trick, a fuller frame preserved for future crops and restorations. Nobody expected a city’s nightmares to come framed that way.

At first the images were mundane: exterior plates of Battery Park, extra length on rooftop shots, more sky over the Chrysler beyond the usual crop. But every so often the open matte revealed what the broadcast feed had cropped away—a second, subtler thing moving through the frame. Not another monster, but a different scale of consequence. Where the broadcast closed tight on rampage and panic, the open matte held people: faces at windows, heads bowed in stairwells, a hand on a subway column. These were the background lives the news had never bothered to look at. Lina rewound, frame by frame. A boy pressed his face to a puddled window as the creature’s shadow passed. A woman in a green coat shielded the small of her back with a grocery bag and walked with a purpose cameras chose not to linger on.

The more Lina watched, the more the tape seemed to make a pattern — an implicit editing choice that the original producers had made to show the spectacle and hide the ordinary. The open matte did not make the monster less fearsome; it made the city fuller. When Godzilla thundered past the Staten Island ferry in the cropped broadcast, the open matte revealed an elderly man sitting under a wilted umbrella on the dock, humming to himself as if the world could be contained in the rhythm of a song.

Curiosity turned to compulsion. Lina began matching frames from the tape with news clips and police dispatch logs she pulled from saved archives. She learned names, street corners, the hours certain people had been last accounted for. A pattern emerged: the backgrounds were not incidental. They were protective gestures, small acts of courage or stubborn routine that persisted beneath the spectacle. A mother tugging her child away from the curb; a bike courier carrying a brown envelope like an offering, racing away from the collision of metal and tooth.

One night an old producer, Marcus Hale, returned Lina’s call. He had been on set in '98. His voice came through brittle with age and old cigarettes. He did not deny the open matte. “We hid things,” he said, a confession like a prayer. “Not because they weren’t true. Because truth is an eyesore. It gets in the way of the line we sell.” He told Lina about the pressure: executives wanting a monster, studs of destruction that would sell syndicated reruns. Quiet heroics muddied the narrative they’d bought. The open matte, he said, was left only for technical reasons—spare footage kept in case they wanted to recrop for different aspect ratios. But the keepers had kept more than frames. They had kept memory.

Lina took her copies to a screening room she rented for an hour, alone save for the hum of the projector. She watched whole sequences the broadcast had trimmed: a deliveryman sheltering a dog beneath his jacket in a flooded alley; a maintenance worker putting himself between a falling girders and two kids sprawled on a fire escape; a priest standing in an empty church, chanting, while outside glass exploded like thunder. The open matte felt like an act of mercy: the city insisting that chaos be viewed with its people intact.

The pattern felt deliberate to Lina. Not editorial malice — at least not exclusively — but a cultural preference, a collective choice to turn large tragedies into digestible spectacles and scrub the daily, messy bravery from the frame. She began to think of an open matte in moral terms: the difference between a story that sears and a story that contains. For film enthusiasts and archivists, the "Open Matte"

Her search led to a name: Naomi Okoye. Naomi had been a camera assistant on the original production, and in the aftermath she vanished from credits and crew lists. Lina found Naomi in an online forum for archivists and restorers, a single post written in a terse, comet-tail English. Naomi replied with a single sentence: “We left it open so someone could see both.”

When they finally met in a coffee shop that smelled of bitter beans and late deadlines, Naomi’s hands were stained with film grain, her eyes rimmed red as if she’d been watching too long. She told Lina a different story from Marcus’s. “They told us to shoot the spectacle,” Naomi said. “But we shot the edges too. You don’t film a city without filming what holds it up. The open matte was for the future. For someone who would want to remember the ordinary people when the ordinary became history.”

Naomi’s voice trembled when she talked about the night the creature first swam into the bay. “There was a family in a fourth-floor walk-up,” she said. “We were filming a lot of the waterfront, and when the monster came, you could see in the open frame the wife dragging a mattress down to the hall for her children. No one broadcast that. But it was there. My hand went to that frame like a promise.”

They decided to do something small and stubborn. They would remaster a sequence of the open matte and show it at a community screening in a church basement in Red Hook, where the footage had originally been shot. They printed flyers by hand, pasted them to telephone poles, told only a handful of people. Lina did the editing herself: she peeled away the frenzied sound design that had turned rubble into percussive drama and gave the sequence silence and room. The wider frame allowed time. It allowed faces to be faces again.

On the night of the screening a hundred people crowded into the basement. Old people who had lived through the Breach sat beside kids in hoodies who had only seen clips online. When the projector lit the screen, the room was a slow breath. The open matte filled the wall, and with it, the stitched-together memories of the neighborhood came alive. There was a long, shared intake of air when the family in the walk-up carried the mattress down the stairs. People laughed in recognition. By the time the sequence ended the room hummed with things unsaid—grief, pride, the ridiculousness of trying to package catastrophe into neat pages.

Word spread. The footage moved from church basements into independent theaters, then into a small exhibition at a non-profit museum. Columns of press began to ask: why had the most human frames been omitted? The old clips were the same; people had simply seen them differently. Critics began to call the open matte screening "an uncut humanism," though Naomi and Lina would scoff at the flattery. They had simply widened the frame and let the city be as it had been: messy, brave, quietly stubborn.

Not everyone applauded. Foxes in suits and the merchants of spectacle lobbied to bury the reels. They argued the open matte muddied the narrative and threatened to confuse audiences who just wanted a monster to roar at. Lawsuits were hinted at; old producers worried about liability and brand. A PR firm tried to spin the screenings as unauthorized edits, brandishing timestamps and contracts like talismans. But the public had already seen what the open matte made possible: the chance to remember the people under the noise.

On a rain-slick afternoon Lina and Naomi sat on the hood of Lina’s car, watching a looped projection of the open matte on the side of a boarded-up storefront. The image shifted between a tanker truck rolling by and a woman in a red coat returning to an abandoned stoop. A child pointed from across the street and ran to touch the light with a small, inquisitive hand. The car roof shivered with footsteps passing, ordinary as rain.

Naomi turned to Lina. “You think we changed anything?” she asked.

Lina considered the word. The open matte had not rewound history or returned those lost to their homes. But it had altered the way the city saw itself. In the months that followed, grassroots groups used the footage to locate people who’d been written out of official tallies. Families found fragments of loved ones in the margins of footage and passed them like reliquaries at funeral tables. Letters poured into the archival house from people who had recognized themselves in a background shot — a bent shoulder, a hand on a rail — and wanted to tell the small stories that made up their lives.

When the legal threats grew louder, Lina digitized every tape she could get her hands on and sent copies to community centers and independent archives across the city. She did not release the files publicly; she knew the greedy machinery that would turn them back into spectacle. Instead she built a network of custodians: teachers, librarians, and neighborhood historians who would use the footage for local screenings and to stitch together oral histories. The open matte became less a filmic artifact and more a civic repository.

One evening, years later, a small plaque appeared in a Brooklyn park near the site of the Breach. It was simple: a line of text and a quote from a woman who had carried a mattress down a staircase to sleep in the hallway with her children. The plaque did not mention monsters or ratings; it simply read, in brass letters that warmed with touch: "We kept the ordinary in the margins."

In the end the open matte did exactly what Naomi had hoped. It widened the frame of memory. It refused the romance of destruction that had sold so many reruns. The monster remained—terrifying in any cutting—but it could no longer be the whole story. People remembered that night not only for the roar but for the small, stubborn things that stitched the community together. They remembered the quiet ways people steadied one another, the meals shared under fire escapes, the songs hummed to keep not-screaming at bay.

Lina, years later, would set down an edited version of the open matte in an archive labeled simply: FOR THE FUTURE. It was not perfect; it carried the grain of hurried cameras and the soft hiss of old tape. But when young people found it and traced the shadow of a familiar hand across a frame, they learned to look both at what is meant to catch the eye and at what the eye has been trained to ignore.

The city had been a stage of awe, but the open matte turned the stage into a cityscape again — wider, stranger, full of hands holding on.

The Unseen Godzilla: Uncovering the 'Open Matte' Version of the 1998 Film

The 1998 film 'Godzilla', directed by Roland Emmerich, was a major Hollywood blockbuster that brought the iconic monster to a new generation of audiences. However, not many fans are aware of an alternate version of the film known as the 'Open Matte' cut. This version offers a unique glimpse into the filmmaking process and provides an alternate viewing experience for enthusiasts.

What is Open Matte?

In filmmaking, the 'open matte' technique involves shooting scenes with a wider aspect ratio than the intended final product. This allows for greater flexibility during post-production, as filmmakers can crop or pan the footage to achieve the desired framing. In the case of 'Godzilla' (1998), the open matte version reveals previously unseen footage, offering an alternate perspective on the film.

The Discovery of the Open Matte Version

The open matte version of 'Godzilla' (1998) was initially released on home video in some European countries. However, it wasn't until the film's Blu-ray release that the open matte version gained significant attention. Fans discovered that the Blu-ray included an alternate 'Open Matte' version of the film, which featured a wider aspect ratio and additional footage not seen in the original theatrical cut.

Key Differences and Observations

The open matte version of 'Godzilla' (1998) presents several notable differences:

Some notable scenes that differ in the open matte version include:

Impact on the Film's Narrative and Themes

The open matte version provides a fresh perspective on the film's narrative and themes. With more emphasis on destruction and chaos, the open matte version amplifies the sense of urgency and panic. This shift in tone can be seen as a commentary on the destructive power of nature and humanity's vulnerability.

The additional footage also sheds new light on character development. For example, the extended screentime for certain characters allows for more nuanced portrayals and interactions. This, in turn, adds depth to the film's exploration of themes such as family, responsibility, and the consequences of playing with nature.

Technical Details

Preservation and Availability

The open matte version of 'Godzilla' (1998) serves as an important artifact for film preservation and analysis. Its availability on Blu-ray and digital platforms ensures that fans can experience this alternate cut and gain a deeper understanding of the filmmaking process.

Conclusion

The 'Open Matte' version of 'Godzilla' (1998) offers a fascinating glimpse into the filmmaking process and provides an alternate viewing experience for fans. With its wider aspect ratio, additional footage, and alternative composition, this version presents a fresh perspective on the film's narrative and themes. As a valuable addition to the 'Godzilla' franchise, the open matte version is a must-see for enthusiasts and film enthusiasts alike.

What Is "Open Matte"? Understanding the Aspect Ratio

Before we attack the monster, we must understand the anatomy of film projection. When a movie is shot on 35mm film, the camera negative usually captures an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 or 1.37:1 (the "Academy ratio"). When a director wants a widescreen movie (usually 2.39:1 or 1.85:1), they place a matte (a physical or digital mask) over the top and bottom of the frame.

An Open Matte version occurs when that masking is removed. You are not "zooming in" or "panning and scanning." You are literally opening the frame to reveal the image the camera saw—more sky, more ground, more visual information on the top and bottom of the screen.

For Godzilla (1998), the intended theatrical ratio was 2.39:1 (anamorphic widescreen). However, the Open Matte version reveals the full 1.33:1 or 1.78:1 frame, offering a radically different viewing experience.

The Good: Scale and Atmosphere

The most immediate benefit of the Open Matte transfer is the sheer vertical scale. Godzilla is a creature of immense height, and the extra headroom emphasizes his size against the New York skyline.

In the theatrical widescreen cut, the Chrysler Building scene is claustrophobic and wide. In Open Matte, you see the full verticality of the building and the sheer drop below the characters. It adds a vertigo-inducing quality that the widescreen version lacks. The rain-slicked streets of New York feel taller, the skyscrapers more imposing, and the destruction more chaotic.

Furthermore, the late-90s practical sets and miniatures gain a new lease on life. Often, matte paintings or CGI limitations were hidden in the cropped-out areas. Seeing the "full" frame sometimes reveals imperfections, but it also highlights the immense amount of detail put into the sets that usually ends up on the cutting room floor.

Conclusion: Is the Open Matte Version the Definitive Version?

The answer depends on your priorities.

If you are a purist who believes in a director’s intended framing, stick with the 2.39:1 Blu-ray. Roland Emmerich framed the movie to hide the seams of the effects and to keep the action horizontal.

However, if you are a film detective, a completionist, or someone who loves the artifact of home media history, the Godzilla 1998 Open Matte is essential viewing. It is a time capsule of 35mm filmmaking. It reminds us that what we see in the theater is not the whole picture—literally.

You experience the film differently. You see the puppeteers slightly off screen, the standing room above the actor's heads, and the terrifying scale of the monster scraping the sky.

Whether you love it or hate it, the 1998 American Godzilla endures. And for those in the know, the Open Matte is the only way to watch it.

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Have you seen the Open Matte version? Do you prefer the theatrical crop or the expanded frame? Let us know in the comments below.

Roland Emmerich's Godzilla (1998) is a legendary cinematic disaster but an incredibly fun popcorn monster movie. However, viewing it in the highly sought-after Open Matte format fundamentally alters the visual scale and the overall experience of the film. 🎥 The Aspect Ratio Breakdown

The film was originally shot on Super 35 film and framed for a theatrical widescreen aspect ratio of 2.39:1. The "Open Matte" version removes the black bars at the top and bottom of the frame, filling up a full 16:9 (1.78:1) or 4:3 screen.

Theatrical Widescreen (2.39:1): Focused, wide panoramas that Emmerich intended for cinema, cropping out non-essential vertical information.

Open Matte (1.78:1 / 1.33:1): Unlocks the full vertical frame of the film negative. Because "Zilla" is a massive vertical creature, you can actually see more of his towering anatomy and the true scale of the towering New York skyscrapers. ⭐ The Visual Experience: Scale vs. VFX The Good: Monstrous Verticality

The biggest critique of Emmerich's film was that his reimagined monster felt too small and acted too much like a giant iguana or a Jurassic Park raptor rip-off.

The open matte presentation ironically fixes some of this visual claustrophobia.

Scenes of the monster stepping over cars or ducking between buildings gain a breathtaking amount of vertical headspace.

You see feet and heads in the same frame that are normally cropped out in the theatrical cut. The Bad: Dated CGI & Composition

Compositional Dead Space: Emmerich and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub did not compose the shots for full-screen. Many open matte shots have vast, empty skies or blank pavement that ruin the intended cinematic tension.

Exposed VFX Shortcuts: The CGI in 1998 was groundbreaking, but scanning the raw vertical edges of the frame reveals where digital elements, shadows, and practical rain machines simply end or weren't fully rendered to fill the expanded space. 🎭 The Movie Itself: A Proper Critical Review

Setting the technical format aside, how does the actual movie hold up?

The open matte version of the 1998 film is a significant curiosity for fans and cinephiles, primarily because it alters the intended visual scope of the movie to better emphasize the central monster's scale. While the theatrical release used a 2.39:1 anamorphic aspect ratio—a wide "cinemascope" look standard for epics—the open matte version (typically appearing in 1.78:1 or 16:9 for television) reveals parts of the frame originally hidden by black bars. The Technical Reality of "Opening the Matte"

More Picture, Less Artistry: Most of Godzilla (1998) was shot using Super 35 film. In this process, the camera captures a larger, more "square" image, which is then "matted" or cropped at the top and bottom to create the widescreen theatrical look. What Does the Open Matte Version Show

The 1.78:1 Advantage: For many fans, the open matte version is preferable for a kaiju movie because the vertical "extra" space makes Godzilla feel taller. Filmmakers like Steven Spielberg famously used a taller 1.85:1 ratio for Jurassic Park for this exact reason: it fills more of the vertical frame with the creature. Visual Impact and Drawbacks

While the open matte version "unmasks" more of the set, it isn't always the "better" version of the film: