Godzilla Continuity part 6: Remember Everything, part 1

Where have I seen this before?

If that image doesn't look familiar to you, either you are the wrong audience for this article, or you at the very least need to go back and read part 4.

I am of course skipping from #22 to #28 because Final Wars is a sequel to Godzila vs. Destroyah, and the only millenium film that occurs within the Heisei timeline. Because this is ABOUT the timeline, I'm skipping the other millenium films for now.

"But wait a minute..." you think to yourself as your left eyebrow rises in intrigue, "since when is GFW a sequel to Destroyah?"

"Since the beginning, my dear lad," I answer, twirling the ring which had only moments ago brought about the downfall of Con. Bearsign's limitless army between fore and index fingers, "'twas always the plan, and so the plan maintains."

You bolt upright in your chair, your brow becoming more furrowed with each resounding tick from the old grandfather clock which filled the massive study with its echos. "This is madness!"

"Madness?" I question with the flat sting a man who's seen too many madm'n but not enough time, "no," I say as I begin to correct you, "THIS IS JUNIOR!!!"

So, I'm not going to "argue" or anything, because you can't argue with facts, but I am going to tell you what happened in case you haven't heard or, as would be the ideal case, figured it out on your own.

The first draft of GFW was hammered out by Wataru Mimura (GvsMGII, 'nuff said) and Shogo Tomiyama and was almost identical to the finished film. The differences? Well, I'm not certain, but Gorosaurus, Oodako, and Ookondru may have still been there (Oodako must have stayed into pre-production, not long into it, but there is concept art of him and Zilla, which means this is after Kitamura signed on) and there wasn't any Zilla yet.

But the BIG difference between the script and the film is that the setting of the movie is actually explained. It is made directly known to the audience that Junior was frozen in antarctica in the late '90's, and woken back up in 2032. This is the information we are getting from Tomiyama himself, not the film. It is unknown what or even whether the other monsters were given any exposition other than what is in the film.

When Kitamura rewrote it, the only things he changed were some of the monsters and removing any unwanted orientation. He made it open-ended... sort of. So then, if this is all a first draft and didn't make it to the final movie, then how does that make the Godzilla in this movie Junior?

Well... have you seen the movie? More importantly, did you see the two pictures at the top of the article? Yes, no one ever says the line "It's Junior," but somewhere along the line somebody just forgot to tell the editor that they were leaving this (and all other) plot element out.

So, it's still in there. There may not be any dialogue references to the heisei films, but the fact is that the opening scene (and ESPECIALLY the scene directly following the credits) makes it very obvious that the Godzilla in Final Wars is in fact Junior. There really isn't any way around it.

So, in regards to timeline, nothing else survives of the original backstory. So, while it is still made clear that this film follows GvsD, the dialogue leaves out direct referances, so nobody ever really tells us how Rodan returned from the grave.

And we can't ignore this, because the Junior thing is un-ignorable, even with the strictest interpretation, but there is simply no other timeline that allows for adult Junior to exist other than the heisei timeline. Even if we could say "well, only these couple of films count," it isn't said by the characters so all we have is a direct affiliation with a previous set of events in a movie where the finished cut lacks the specifics to tell us what the hell is going on. So, to take the Heisei timeline exactly as it is given, all we have is this:

12000bce-1996: Events of G54, and G84 through GvsD

Sometime after that: Junior is frozen in Antarctica by the Atragon

Between then and now: Lots of monsters appear, Mothra returns to Earth (more about the mothra trilogy in the next part), Rodan magically comes back to life somehow

Like, around 40 years after that other thing: Events of Godzilla: Final Wars

So, as you can see, this is pretty shitty. But what can we do? Well, being that I've already finished the official timeline, its time to figure out what in the hell was happening before the movie stopped telling us.

THE MONSTERS:

Now, this is pretty damn easy because, although they aren't given an explanation other than "and because of all the radiation...," the monsters brought back for Final Wars were being petitioned by fans to return to the series ever SINCE the original heisei films.

Nowadays, there is new, more disturbing, variety of "g-fans" who actually seem to hate everything about the series, and may have a hard time understanding what I'm talking about. These are the ones who must have just not seen Zilla's original movie, and seem to think he has some sort of... not-hate. I'm not sure what you'd call it. They also overlap with the faction who hates all the nostalgia and classic Toho references present in GFW. This is the side I'm most at odds with, as I was part of the "put Angilas in a heisei movie!" crowd. I was also part of the "put Angilas in a millenium movie!" crowd, which had more success.

So, back in the 90's, when the g-fan community was in it's infancy, and all you had to do to have the coolest site on the internet is get alot of animated gifs and digimon codes (see, all you have to do to get Skull Teddymon is press A 100 times, then B 200 times...), and the heisei series was a HUGE deal, and everyone had a crush on Megumi Odaka. G-fan the magazine the only source of news, Barry's Temple was the only place to find cool monster pictures, and Conster was still not sickening to read. Those were simpler times.

Naturally, there was also a shit-ton (a metric shit-ton, even) of fan-fiction, and they all seemed to be about the same things: bringing older monsters back into the heisei continuity, adapting Godzilla vs. Bagan, and getting Godzilla to fight himself, crossover characters, or as many monsters at once as possible. It is this first point we are concerned with.

From here, I'm going to go over the monsters that aren't Godzilla and cover how they fit into the GFW background:

ANGUIRUS: Never changed. I've never read of Angilas being anything other than a mutant Angilosaur. Sometimes they would change it up and say "mutant ankylosaurid (which is impossible if you know anything about Thyreophorans)" or "mutant stegosaurid (much more plausible, but why the hell can't you just say it's basal? Godzilla is as basal as you can possibly be while still being a theropod [read my rant about Tawa for more on that])," but the idea is always the same. Godzilla Gurps lists the monster as being a radiovorous dinosaur like Godzilla, as does Matt Frank's Godzilla Neo thing, and... every other source ever.

What's more, the scene where Godzilla kills Rodan, Anguirus, and King Shisa is cut from GFW, giving the impression that he spared their lives. Why do this if he had no prior relationship with them? Rodan we already know, and Anguirus we are conditioned to expect to be Godzilla's ally.

What GFW is basically saying is "it's Angilas." There shouldn't really be any mystery to his origins. The M base was artificially introduced to most of the monsters, so that rules out a wacky space origin. Angilas is the easiest one, a mutant Angilosaur, same as Godzilla, that never appeared until after Junior matured. The two met at some point before Junior was frozen, and that's all that can be said with certainty.

RODAN: Another easy one. Remember the end of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II where Rodan sacrifices his energy to Godzilla (II) in order to save his and Godzilla (III)'s lives? Well, a big question concerning g-fans around 1995 was "what's going to happen with Rodan once Godzilla meltsdown?" We all figured Rodan would reconstitute himself from the energy left over, otherwise the adult Junior would just meltdown too. This may sound crazy, but within the rules established in the Godzilla films it makes perfect sense.

Now this is a weird one because it requires a larger leap of information than Angilas's origin. Not only that, but we know that Rodan was planned from the beginning, when the heisei refferences were more overt and the story was fleshed out, meaning we have to assume they had a real reason for Rodan's reappearance written ahead of time, but that was lost in the rewrites. And not only is there nothing left of this in the finished film, there is no information about the previous drafts to help us understand this. Also, the decision to make Godzilla 100m again is because of the fact that he is the adult Junior, but the Rodan in this film is much bigger than the one from GvsMGII. So not only is the standard fan fic answer a big leap, but the knowledge gap in the film is equally enormous.

So does it fit? Sure, but let's be carefull here. I totally accept that the new Rodan is reconstituted from GII's meltdown, but this isn't indicated in the film. Nothing is said about it in the finished film, and I'm trying to explain the backstory of GFW as is here, without adding something that isn't the final cut, nor even in the early drafts. It's stupid and a cop-out, I know, but clearly the easiest answer is to just say "it's another Rodan." Had we gotten Tomiyama's and Wataru's original script, I'm certain it would have been the phoenix-style origin I've been waiting on for 15 years, but whatever.

MANDA: This monster gives us the first "does it count" trouble of the lot. Manda, as you know, is the Muvian dragon guardian from the film Atragon who later appeared in Destroy All Monsters where he joined Godzilla II, Mothra IV, and Rodan II in destroying Tokyo. It has been said there were two Mandas in the showa series, the one lacking horns being female, but as Manda was only frozen, and not killed, in Atragon, there isn't a need to say this.

During the kaiju renaissance in which the heisei Godzilla films were produced, there was a cartoon called Super Atragon that was created by Toho. It makes no direct reference to the original film, going so far as to call the Muvians "subterraneans," but there isn't any indication that it DIDN'T happen. No appearance by Manda or any other monster occurs in the cartoon, and even the submarine is different, called the "Ra," and clearly a different vessel altogether. Now the heisei series isn't "all-inclusive" like the Showa series was, and officially, Super Atragon has no connection to the heisei Godzilla (nor does Sayonara, Jupiter or Orochi, the Eight Headed Dragon). So it appears that Manda may exist unchanged, but may not.

To make matters worse, the only other origin I've seen for manda is "mutant snake." Without any explanation for Manda's appearance in GFW, could he simply be a mutant snake? Couldn't be. But, then again, Tomiyama and Wataru would needed to acknowledge one of the Atragon films as part of the timeline in order for Manda to stay true to the original. Not only is there no evidence of this being the case, but neither has yet to say this since 2004. No one asked them, sure, but you'd think it would come up, since all anyone ever asks Tomiyama about is heisei continuity. That, and "when is [monster name here] coming back?"

Is there a simple origin for Manda that doesn't add or contradict while simultaneously not being so stupid as to make it the opposite of an origin? Sure. We can say it is a sea serpent. Whats more, we can actually bring the phoned in replacement story about the reason monsters appear into play by making the phrase "environmental changes" apply to the oceans, where doubtless some monsters responsible for Ogopogo sighting have been driven into populated areas. It's simple, doesn't contradict, doesn't add, and is downright cool.

KING SEESAR: uhhhg. In GFW, King Seesar appears in Okinawa, but this time as a bad guy. This means that he was in Okinawa before then, meaning he must be the same as the old King Seesar, meaning he's a good guy, meaning once more that the M base was introduced into his system by the Xiliens sometime after his creation.

The problem here is that he, along with Angilas and Rodan, is spared by Junior, implying they have some sort of prior relationship. But this would mean we have to add something that wouldn't be intuitive to the timeline, namely, Junior and KS teaming up against some other threat. Now we have to add in another monster and, after having looked at this for a while, no one can be used who wouldn't make the timeline into more fan fiction than observation. To make matters worse, the UNGCC already knows who KS is, and isn't surprised at all by the legend being true, so KS MUST have manifested before humans before, and he must have defended Okinawa from some monster during that time... or else he wouldn't have showed up. So, while his origin is the same, his history is impossible to reconcile.

Also, Junior doesn't seem particularly nice to anyone, and from what we can tell about his personality before being frozen, he was just as much of a threat as the second Godzilla. Wouldn't it make more sense if Caesar attacked HIM? Yes, it would.

It is also the only way to add him while making sense. Junior may have simply spared King Ceasar by virtue of him being in the same pile as Rodan and Anguirus, and until somebody comes up with a better explanation, this is what I'm going with.

ZILLA: It has been made very clear that the Zilla in GFW is NOT the Zilla from either the 1998 film or the cartoon series. Actually, he was given an origin. The Xiliens tried to make a monster like Godzilla, and failed. I'm not being more specific because I'm not going to look for the source of this now and I don't want to say something that's flat out wrong, but I do remember it is supposed to be an Xilien creation. I can't say if they made it from an Amblyrhynchus like the original Zilla or used G-cells, but that's the story.

And because I've seen some confusion about this: Zilla in GFW is 90 meters... tall? The original was only 60 meters. Godzilla (junior) in GFW is 100 meters tall, just like the second Godzilla. This is all readily verifiable if you want to check yourself. I don't know what size Zilla Jr. is and I couldn't fucking care less.

KAMACURAS: We're going to have to look back to the "war and such much" crap for Kamacuras. If you remember, his original origin had them being already too-big-to-breath mantises enlarged by a failed weather control test. I've never really seen Kamacuras in fan fiction (even less than Kumonga), as he seems to be rather unpopular. In fact, I can't remember a single heisei conversion proposed by a fan. And really, all you can do is make him a mutant mantis, and change the reason why he mutated (secret military project, accident, wreckless expirementation, etc.). We probably can't expect much more here.

One important thing Son of Godzilla tells us about Kamacuras is that they had a breeding population before the weather control expirements. Kumonga, who was already huge, managed to survive by eating these things, so they must have been on the island in huge numbers. Also, they can fly. So sticking to what we know about the showa Kamacuras, and accepting that the primary difference between the showa and heisei timelines is the teleportation of the second Godzilla in 1944, then it must be inevitable that at least one Kamacuras becomes mutated what with all the wars and radiation.

We can even go so far as to say there may have been more Kamacuras before GFW, and their death may have been some of the first successful missions of the MDF.

This is important: the only monsters which must have met Junior or another Godzilla at some time in the past are Mothra and any one of Anguirus, Rodan, or King Seesar (which I just went over). Manda, Zilla, Ebirah, Kamacuras, Kumonga, Gigan, Keizer Ghidorah, Hedorah, and even Minilla show no signs that neccessitate their meeting any Godzilla before GFW. Hence, all monsters spawned by "war and environmental changes" can safely occur as early as 1999 and as late as 2033.

KUMONGA: Kumonga was originally a giant spider. I'm just not seeing anyone refer to it as a radioactive mutant. I think this is really cool, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's a nice change of pace from "everyone is a mutant." Because Kumonga originally had such a "non-origin," I don't feel any real need to question his existence. If the initial incident seperating the showa and heisei timelines is teleporting Godzilla II to the bering sea, why the hell SHOULDN'T Kumonga exist? In fact, I'm not even entirely convinced that Kumonga ever attacked humans. He seemed perfectly happy on Sogell island, and when the pressure was on he showed himself to be an Earth Defender, and not a mutant.

I think Kumonga was found by the Xiliens first. This means we don't have to say anything about him that isn't said in the final cut: he is a monster brought under control of the aliens. Done.

EBIRAH: Giant shrimp. In the showa series, it is clearly the result of the nuclear waste the Red Bamboo deposit on the island. That's right, another mutant. Is the new Ebirah the same thing? Well, there isn't much to go on, but I think we can make him a little more mysterious. In the final cut of GFW, there is no indication anyone has seen Ebirah before (much like Kumonga, Zilla, and Minilla), and he is so easily dispatched by the mutants that it seems as though he wouldn't have made it past them before.

So right away we can say the Xiliens may have invented Ebirah. Taking a cue from "sea serpent" Manda and the unrelated Clover as well as real life, we can also say that the "evironmental changes" have stirred up things in the ocean that we would have prefered not knowing existed.

As far as heisei rewrites go, I've never really seen Ebirah in any context other than a creation of the Red Bamboo. In the new era stories, in fact, GvsSM is actually taken as part of the timeline along with the rest of the heisei series. Thats fine, because we can add him in without any major edits or changes. He is, like Kumonga, a really big shrimp.

Oh, but I forgot to mention this: 50 meters is an acceptable size for a really big animal in the real world, so a 45 meter tall arthropod is acceptable in the Godzilla universe. Once we're on the heisei scale, however, things get much less plausible. I can deal with a naturally occuring 50 meter long shrimp, but 100 meters is pushing it. GFW already has a built in excuse to bring the older monsters up to size. Remember, none of the Earth monsters had M base to begin with, and they were modified by the aliens prior to the attack on Earth. Hence, M base made natural, non-mutant monsters even larger than before. So, where once Ebirah would have been a mere Marianas Trench anomaly, now it is a full blown monster.

HEDORAH: This one seems like a no brainer to me. Everytime I see the movie, I just automatically assume that Hedorah in GFW is a genetically engineered bacteria used to clean up oil spills. I watch the news and think "that's not even science fiction anymore, that's just what they need to make." And this is always what the heisei Hedorah was. Individual parts were sometimes called "hedrons." Gurps Godzilla has this same idea. Shit, everyone did. It was the one time I can think of where the whole fandom used the same damn unique origin for all of their fan fics. It has been beat into my head so hard that I can't really shake the image.

But, let's save this for #29 and let the movie speak for itself: there is no sign that anyone knows who Hedorah is. Moreover, Hedorah was originally a space monster, and shows up only during the full-blown Xilien attack, and not while they are pretending to be good guys. He shares this trait with only Gigan and Keizer Ghidorah.

The evidence is overwhelming that Hedorah is essentially the same, and was brought to Earth as a space monster and is only a space monster. I don't honestly believe the original origin for GFW was any different.

GIGAN: Gigan is one of the only monsters that is actually given an origin. I don't need to cover this, but for the timeline's sake, I should note that he first appeared in 12,000 bce during an invasion thwarted by Mothra. This is the same year Mothra fought off Battra, and we know the elder Mothra died during this fight, so Gigan must have appeared prior to Battra.

MOTHRA: So Mothra returns from her journey to destroy the comet. All of the protests against Toho's official stance on the connection between the heisei Mothra series and the heisei Godzilla series were for naught. This isn't Eternal Mothra, it's just normal Mothra. I do have some thought on this, but thats for another article. If anything else needs to be said about Mothra, it's that she couldn't have been around to defend Japan from Junior in the late 90's, or else they wouldn't have needed King Caesar and the Atragon. So, I'm guessing she actually came back in 1999.

KEIZER GHIDORAH: a.k.a. Bombshell Ghidorah. Ha ha. That's a joke, and if you get it, you get my personal congratulations, because I thought that story was wicked cool. The part about the "Manda is a mutant anaconda thing" was, as I mentioned earlier, quite stupid.

So there are implications created by Keizer Ghidorah that stretch into both lost projects, the showa timeline, and the nebulous "Godzilla-Mothra Leo" connection, which I will continue to save for later. From the outset, the decision to change King Ghidorah's origin seemed like an odd idea. KG brought the crowds, for sure, but there was a little resentment about changing an origin that is so fundamental to the character. Unfortunately, this wasn't even the last time Toho would do this.

Back in 1992, somebody had the bright idea to do a direct sequel to GvsKG that explains what us G-fans had just taken for granted: that the designer pet dorats were engineered from the cells of the original, alien King Ghidorah. In the second screenplay named "The Return of King Ghidorah," the futurian future pet hybrid's namesake arrives on Earth and shows Godzilla who the real king is. It was scrapped because girls like Mothra. Stupid girls.

This is one of the hardest problems people have with Toho vehemently denying any relation to Mothra Leo and Heisei Godzilla, as the real King Ghidorah appears in Mothra's fourth non-Godzilla film and KG's second, Mothra 3.

Here, with a new name to set him apart from the other Ghidorah, we meet the real "King" Ghidorah, the original space monster for which the futurian beast was named. Not only do we finally get to see the real deal, but befitting the heisei version of the king of terror, this Ghidorah is MUCH more deadly than the showa one. Here's an example: you remember how the showa Ghidorah fell to Earth in a meteor?

Keizer Ghidorah plummeted to Earth inside of the fucking collapsed star Gorath. Plus, Godzilla blew it up from Earth's surface. EVERYTHING is bigger in the Heisei timeline.

MINILLA: Minya is never getting any easier to understand. His size changing ability that he only had in the dream world is now part of his moveset in the physical world. He doesn't get frozen like Junior, but just sort of shows up in the middle of the movie. He looks the same. Godzilla recognizes Minya's wishes as if he were Godzilla's son... and, uh, Junior could only have been mature for 3 years before being frozen, and I seriously doubt there was a fourth Godzilla that appeared during that time that we aren't hearing about for some reason.

And the worst part? We've seen Junior as a hatchling, so we know baby Godzillasauruses don't look like that. So I'm sticking with the same thing I said about the showa Minya: it must be the spawn of two fully grown Godzillas, not Godzillasauruses.

Those are wierd plurals, and this in nonsense. Well, there's only one way this could've happened, which means there MUST be a fourth Godzilla.

Insane? Yes. And that's just one of the reasons I hate Minya. It should not surprise anyone that I'm ignoring the fourth Godzilla from now on, even though there must have been one.

Minya was created through artificial insemination, and then everyone forgot where they put the egg. Also, Minya doesn't seem to be born radioactive, as that kid and his grandpa never got cancer that whole time. I'd hate to think Minya can somehow survive off background radiation AND power his ray, but that seems to be the case.

Next time: Probably finish the Alien thing. I might also write something about the MK ninjas, or, depending on when I do the next one, something about the Ariel Pink show.

Godzilla-wise, we are going to have a serious look at the Atragon, all possible heisei futures, the actual branching pattern of the Godzilla multiverse (so far), and write up the actual timeline.

ALIEN life cycle part 1: Egg-Chesburster (but not queen)

So I saw Predators on the day it came out, and it was better than every previous solo Predator, so that was neat, but... well, let me describe it this way: Do you remember in the late 90's when Toho was pushing those solo Mothra movies? And when you were watching them, it felt like it was trying too hard and all you could think of through the entire movie was "Why in the hell don't they just call Godzilla? He would wipe the floor with Death Ghidorah!"

Well, that's what this movie was like. It was way cool, to be sure, but the idea that Predators can somehow carry a movie on their own is officially misquided now.

But I don't want to bitch about waiting another year or two for the next Alien movie, I'm going to have a biology lesson about the Xenomorphs! So, let's cut straight to it:

First things first: what counts? Well, everything, obviously, but this is really confusing for Alien fans (who are the worst fan-base of all time, by the way, at least G-fans still support the franchise financially even if they keep bitching about Toho giving them exactly what they have been asking for since 1995). So I'm going to make this very clear:

A CANNON IS A WEAPON!!!

Are we good? Good. Now having said that, I also want to let everyone know that other than the movies, the Alien franchise is also one of the most poorly managed of all monster series. There is a huge well of stories from the comics, games, and movies, but the comics and games are hard to track down, rarely reissued, and don't make a whole lot of sense. The idea that some things "don't count" is ridiculous, but given how much worse some of the comics are, it's easy to understand the desire to just ignore them.

That's both hard and easy for me to do. Easy, because I haven't read half of them and don't know how to go about tracking them down or even finding out the order in which they were published, and hard, because they explain the origins of the aliens and the space jockeys, and have many times more monsters than the films... including the Jock Alien.

There is also the thing about Newt and Hicks. In the first series of Alien comics, they followed Ripley, Newt, and Hicks after the events of Aliens and had them going to the Alien homeworld, fighting Space Jockeys, and even a "MOTHER" alien, which is the source of all aliens, and some other wierd looking "super-praetorians" or something.

It's awesome, but in Alien 3 Newt, Hicks, and even Ripley die. So the comics represent an alternate timeline, right? No. Dark Horse reissued the comics and changed the characters names. Thats when I realized that the comics are in some other timeline entirely, they just don't want anyone to know.

So die-hard Alien haters (whoops, I mean "fans") will be glad to know that I'm only focusing on the films. They may be unhappy to learn, however, that I'm not going to be willfully ignorant about certain scenes, and I'm not going to pretend that the Alien 3 dvd didn't come with two cuts of the film, or that I closed my eyes during the scene where Ripley finds Brett and Dallas at the end of the extended cut of Alien. It's all in there, stop living in fantasy land and just watch the damn movie.

So let's take this one stage at a time:

Stage 1: EGG

The egg is a logical starting point because it is how we are first introduced into the Xenomorphs, and is the required beginning of the life-cycle for 90% of individuals we've seen. The egg has been considered a living organism in it's own right, which makes alot of sense to me, because non-living shells don't normally decide when the creature inside is going to hatch. The Xenomorph egg makes the decision for the Facehugger, which lives inside the egg, and pounces on anything immediately after the egg senses a host nearby. In this respect they are more like seeds than eggs, and can survive for at least 94 years, and I'm guessing much longer.

The egg stage produces two types of facehuggers: the normal one and the super facehugger. It can be laid by any Queen Alien, and the first stage of the Maternal Queen. Eggs can also be made directly from hosts by an adult, non-praetorian alien in the absence of any other member of their species.

Stage 2: FACEHUGGER

The facehugger is not simply a larval stage, that would be too easy. Instead, it deposits an embryo inside the host's mouth, and then dies. This is a pretty straight forward stage, and it can be bypassed entirely. From here on out, no two aliens will be the same, from the embryo laid by the facehugger to a full grown queen, aliens become extremely cosmopolitan.

The normal facehugger can only be (so far) produced by an egg and can only (again, so far) deposit embryos into a host.

SUPER FACEHUGGER

The super facehugger is produced by an egg the same way as a normal facehugger. How or why certain eggs contain super facehuggers instead of normal ones is unknown, but one explanation (the only one we're given) is a compound called "royal jelly," which is produced by the Queen and can be used to "knight" aliens or eggs, prompting them to turn into praetorians or bear super facehuggers in order to produce a splinter colony.

Not only is royal jelly not scene in the film timeline, but it's also not stated to produce super facehuggers, only praetorians. It seems to me like the Queen Alien from Aliens laid a super facehugger on purpose, she was on a star ship, convieniently laid enough eggs for the crew and a dog in hopes of placing a colony wherever it lands, and intended that new group to  have a new Queen to lead it.

So, my working hypothesis is that an egg containing a super facehugger can ONLY be created by a Queen, and can not be created by a desperate adult, nor can a queen embryo be deposited by a praetorian. Given this knowledge, the chemical process that allows it is no longer important.

Super Facehuggers are produced by special pre-determined eggs laid by a Queen (and I'm guessing not the Maternal Queen either. It seems more likely that her "super facehugger laying" stage was actually replaced by the placental stage), and they deposit a Queen Embryo, which, also it is still developing and could turn into any number of things, is predetermined to go directly into a Queen stage once it matures.

Stage 3: EMBRYO

Embryos are the actual Alien. Unlike the eggs and facehuggers, which merely give the appearance of a larval stage, the embryo will not deposit or lay anything in order to reach adulthood.

This is also where each Alien's unique physiology begins to develop. Embryos have not been seen on screen often, and when they are they look like tiny chestbursters. This is because an embryo develops according to the host, and everytime we've seen an embryo, it was in a human host. I imagine if we were to see the Dog Alien's ultrasound, the gap between it's embryo and chestburster stage would have been much more apparent.

There are three base types of embryos: normal, queen, and cloned. The queen embryo develops the same way as the normal one, but is pre-destined to shed into a queen after it is born, skipping the adult stage entirely. The cloned embryo recovered from Ripley 8 is on the surface a queen embryo, but has human dna hardcoded into it that further spells out an extra stage of development that possibly replaced the "lay super facehugger egg" stage.

Alien embryos can be deposited by facehuggers or praetorians in multiples. Queen embryos can only be deposited in a host by a super facehugger. Embryos develop in a sort of artificial womb that gives them characteristics of the host, and emerge as a chestburster unique to that type of host. Many different chestbursters can be created this way. Queen embryos are the same, but all gained characteristics of the host will be applied to a Queen, no matter how the chestburster emerges, it will still be a queen alien when it sheds.

Stage 4: CHESTBURSTER

The chestburster bursts out of your chest. This is a baby alien that will shed it's skin to become a full adult. Pictured above is a chestburster arising from a human host, the most commonly seen kind. It will become your average, boring adult alien.

Bambi-burster. This chestburster is the result of a dog or ox host. In the design stage, Giger gave the creature a much more feline appearance, which is still apparent to some degree in the film. Given this plus a qoute from Ridley Scott about what a cat alien would look like, it can reasonably be assumed that all quadrapedal mammals would produce a similar looking chestburster. I say dog OR ox, because a different animal is used in each cut of the film, and you don't get to just ignore one of them.

The bambi-burster is also remarkable for being far more developed than any other chestburster. The tail is ludcrously short, while all four legs are quite long for an alien it's size. This is evidence that host-based development start early in the embryo stage.

 

Predalien chestburster. Emerges from a Predator host. Same story. One mildly interesting thing is that Predaliens are apparently viewed as sacreligious by Predators. They feel this way, yet are totally fine with using whatever the indigenous population is as hosts.

Predators are assholes. Nothing they do makes any damn sense. They keep portraying them as "honor based social hunters," but take every oppurtunity to undermine this characterization in every film EXCEPT Alien vs. Predator. And some wonder why Paul W. S. Anderson is king of the universe.

At any rate, you can clearly see that the above chestburster does not have the extra arms or headfrill of a queen, meaning it was born from a regular, non-queen embryo and non-super facehugger (which you can also see in the film). This is important for later, because I'm going to cover the newest addition to the Alien life cycle (in the film timeline) in the next part, and it's called a Praetorian.

So I stop here because I'm getting tired of this. Expect the next thing to be about Godzilla again, and then maybe I'll finish off this Xenomorph thing after I get my GFW wild mass guessing out of the way.

Godzilla Continuity part 5: Forget everything, part 1

If you aren't like me, and don't have this image burned into your skull like you were attacked by a psychic photography whistling a catchy tune, then please feel free to use this image as refence material. It's very, very, important.

So I just typed in "godzilla continuity" on Google and part 3 of these things i'm writing popped up. So, to anyone who cares to search for those things, it is now visible to the public. That made me think about maybe finishing it.

To start, I wanna talk about the late showa stuff. I mean the Marvel and Hanna-Barbera Godzilla series. Both of these work on a similar principal as the Toho movies of the late 1950's and 1960's. The difference is that they could only afford to use Godzilla, but the idea is still that you're just supposed to know who he is and where he's been and who he's fought up to this point. Unlike the Dark Horse series, which has an explicit and tight timeline, the Marvel and HB Godzillas work with the assumption that after Godzilla did all that other stuff, now he's doing this stuff.

Now, for Hanna-Barbera's cartoon this isn't a problem. We could assume Scooby-Doo was a part of the timeline, but this isn't necessary. But Marvel not only took the Toho approach to it's own properties, it actively used its stable of superheros as something for Godzilla to chew on.

But that's cool too. Other than his ridiculous appearance and his stupid habit of eating tress (have you ever seen a Falcon eat grass? Yeah, me neither), this Godzilla is portrayed as the same mood-swinging bad ass from the rest of the showa series, so not only do all the characters assume the reader is familiar with his history (its only mention involves something about him fighting alot of monsters from the late 1950's until now), it is consistent in Godzilla's characterization. It's even consistent between universes: Thor, while trying to push a building against Godzilla so he wont knock it down, compares the monster's strength to the Midgard Serpent... which is pretty accurate. He also wipes with floor with every superhero he meets.

It makes me really wish they would have done a crossover with Conan and some Great Old Ones. I'd like to see Godzilla rip that smug asshole (and that's by GOO standards, by the way) Shuma-Gorath a new... asshole.

The cartoon treats Godzilla like a bad ass, and he is to the "I have to lose and then win against every obsurd ultra monster they roll out each week, but in the end I manage to wrap everything up so there really shouldn't be any suspense at all, and there isn't" degree, but he much more like he was in Zone Fighter and Megalon than the rest of the films or Marvel's Godzilla series.

Where does it fit in? The years they were made, with one episode of each taking place in the distant past. (Psst! Hey, listen to this: Godzilla fights a cross between a Brontosaurus and an Amphicoelias in the Time Dragon episode! It's a carnivore like the old school Bronto, but it longer than Godzilla! Isn't that forking awesome!)

The only thing is they don't directly influence the timeline of the films, so really the films are part of the Marvel/Hanna-Barbera timeline, but not the other way around. Make sense? Good, moving on.

HEISEI SERIES: Forget everything you know, because we're starting over. From the showa series, we are only taking the first film. Because this happens quite alot from now on, I'm going to refer to it as the "Shodai Series," which consists of two total films and they occur in every conituity... well, as a group they do, but the events are the keystone with which the Godzilla Multiverse pivots. More on this later.

Whoops it's three, not two.

So in 1984 we find another Godzilla and his mutant Shokilas buddies, and it isn't made clear in the film if this Godzilla is the second one or not. In the U.S. cut Steve Martin says "excuuuuuse me! We never found his body! It is the same Godzilla, and all I need is this thermas!" while he was wearing one of those hilarious arrow-through-the-head hats. Turns out he was wrong. Dead wrong.

G84 also has an awesome moment where this one lone professor gets with the damn times and makes the logical connection that, since Godzilla is a theropod, and all living theropods have magnetoception, Godzilla must have magnetoception. He is right, and that puts the origin at the very base of the group, meaning in the Godzilla universe, it is even possible for Herrerasaurus to sense magnetic fields. I don't think this is how it plays out in the real world, but I also don't know for sure.

Godzilla vs. Biollante is the greatest film of all time. Period. At the end, Godzilla slinks away into the ocean, heading into the colder waters up north to slow down his infection. Biollante returns to the sky as a giant forking Rose. It's fantastic. Stop what you're doing and go watch it right now.

GvsKG confuses people who watch the dubbed version, as well as people who can't figure out that you can't remember something if it never existed. I don't feel like addressing the confusion this has caused, because all the confusion is based on ingorance to begin with, so once you pay attention to what's happening in the movie, you shouldn't have a problem.

The influence on the timeline is that we find out once and for all the origin of the Godzilla in 1984, as well as the the exact event that makes the Showa and Heisei timelines different in the first place. We also get a handful of possible futures, so there's a whole parachronic knot that gets elaborated on. Far from being confusing, GvsKG actually sets everything straight once and for all.

In 1944, the second Godzilla on Lagos that would have been mutated and fighting Anguirus in Osaka by 1955 is teleported by time travelers into the Bering Sea. Because of this, there is a 24 year gap between the creation of the first two Godzilla's. This is where the worlds divide. In the late 1970's (I'm putting 1978 on it for obvious reasons) a nuclear sub sinks in the Bering Sea, creating the fully grown Godzilla II, who, like he did in the Showa timeline, doesn't stumble into the Japanese mainland until much later. However, there is still at least one other monster created in the Castle Bravo test: King Ghidorah. Naming conventions are for another entry.

In 1992 we have the events of three movies unfold. In GvsKG, the Futurians announce something they already did (wrap your head around that), send KG into action (a mutant designer pet, he never acted until he was told to), who is killed by Godzilla after being blown up to 100m (get this: they thought he was still a Godzillasaurus... even though they remembered him. Isn't that just wacky?). Mecha-King Ghidorah arrives from the future (Emi says that you can't have the same person twice at the same time... but KG's body is still down in the water, you know) and drops Godzilla in the ocean. MKG bites it hard. Later, a meteorite wakes up Godzilla and Battra (aka the second Mothra, save that for later), and Mothra has to deal with both of them. Battra and Mothra team up to drop Godzilla in the ocean again, and Battra bites it hard. Mothra goes into space to destroy another, more dangerous planet headed for Earth that Battra was going to destroy. She makes it back by 1996. All the while, the U.N.G.C.C. has been building both a replacement for the Super X-2 called Garuda and a new mecha called Mechagodzilla from the remains of MKG. Rodan is found on Adonoa Island, a result of nuclear waste rather than testing, alongside an egg laid by the now nest-parasite Godzillasaurus (given the situation, it was probably the only choice. Godzilla's cousin died soon after the egg was laid, so having Rodan defend it was the only way to ensure the survival of the species). The egg hatches, and both Godzilla AND Rodan come after Baby Godzilla, both being near death by using Baby as a lure to bring them into MG's sights. Rodan gives his "monster energy" to Godzilla, and he spiral beams the shit out of MG. Godzilla 2 and 3 return to the sea.

Mothra, on her way out of Earth's orbit, drags the remains of Biollante with her like collecting pollen. She pollenates a black hole, and two years later Space Godzilla emerges. SG comes to Earth and meets Godzilla and Junior, wins, flies to Fukuoka, kills Moguera repeatedly, and bites it hard after Godzilla spiral beams the shit out of him.

Another two years later, Birth Island, Godzilla and Junior's temporary hom EXPLODES! It's completely gone. Junior and Godzilla are wandering in two different directions with Miki trying to reunite them while everyone is scared to death over what it means that Godzilla is glowing so red. Turns out he's going to meltdown and take the whole planet with him. The only thing that can stop him, the Oxygen Destroyer, conveniently reappears as a mutant arthropod who is apparently so deeply branching it's last known ancestor in the fossil record comes from the Vendian. So, a giant oxygen destroying Parvancorina monster. Or something.

But it doesn't work. Destroyah dies anyways (cause you can't BEAT Godzilla!), although it seems to have killed Junior, and despite every effort to cool the monster's hot heart with a warm island song...

I mean melt his icy heart with a tropical song...
Er, freeze his over-heated radioactive heat with super-freezing mazer tanks and the Super X-3, he melts down. Better than exploding, but still kiss your asses goodbye.

But wait a minute... why are we all still alive? Oh shit, the radiation is actually dissapearing?! What the fork is going on?

It's Junior. Junior has officially become the third Godzilla, something that Minya never accomplished, because Minya sucks and Junior roxz!

Next time, we will find out what Junior does as a full grown adult Godzilla... it involves the real Ghidorah, so stay tuned.

Godzilla Contintuiy part 4: The timeline part

whoa... I've already called the new Godzilla as a Hedorah movie but... what I wouldn't give give to see Godzilla blast on of these like he did to Gorath. LOOK AT THE SIZE OF IT!!!

I just realized that I kinda accidentally put Space Amoeba in the timeline even though I was trying to skip over the ones that didn't directly affect the Godzilla series.

So big whoop. Guess I'll include them anywhichways. They still count, after all.

We didn't miss much, so I'll blaze through them:

MYSTERIANS: Same year as it was made.

BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE: 1965, the year that the Showa series invented manned space travel.

GORATH: 1982. I just want to mention that I think it's cool Maguma was originally considered for DAM, since it would have been the only Showa monster from the (then) future to reappear in an even further future. That just sounds really cool to me. I also kinda have a soft spot for Maguma if for no other reason than he is so obnoxiously normal. He's literally a giant walrus. It may also be the same reason I like Oodako and Ookondru so much. Those are monsters your regular tooth-and-claw kaiju fan won't even acknowledge. THATS how hard core those guys are. Plus, Oodako killed Frankenstein. Shut up.

MATANGO: Same year. Can't remember if it was stated when the first ship's expirements were or when they crashed. I'm assuming it was around WWII, but I'll just forget it since it has no bearing on anything else. For the record, though, the Matango (they weren't called that) from "Voice in the Night" weren't mutated by any nuclear tests or whatever. The origin isn't stated, so I assume they were natural. They are also fairly common in WHH's stuff. I can't find it, but then again, I haven't looked very hard. Matango, by the way, is one of those monster I don't like ironically, like Maguma or Ookondru. They are genuinely bad ass. Like the Godzilla of the fungus world.

Oh man... what if there was like, a Matango Godzilla? Say the body of the first one doesn't disintegrate like in GXMG, and Matango starts to devour it, and working together with Organizer G-1 build a giant fungus Godzilla?! That would be super sick. Godzilla X Fungus Godzilla, it be the sequel to Ghost Godzilla!

DOGORA: Same year. One aside for you: is it just me, or does Dogora's space cell form look a lot like the Space Amoeba from Space Amoeba? It looks more like that than Yog-Sothoth, that's for sure.

LATITUDE ZERO: Same year, and also the Alpha (Atragon without a drill) was first set out on the ocean (it's never finished because Joseph Cotton keeps adding to it) in 1805. Also, Cotten in 204 years old and Caesar Romero is 203. The oldest Joker ever.

WAR IN SPACE: 1988, and guess what? Venus again. The, um... Yomi-ans... are using it as a military base like the Mor-Taxians did with Mars and the Natal did with the Moon. It has atmosphere now, which was appearently another thing destroyed by King Ghidorah in 3,000bce, because it sure as hell wasn't there in 1973. Atmosphere, like magic appear.

And a note about the Vampire movies, mutant films, and Nostradamus: I don't think these count. Remember when the studio system imploded in the late 1960's and early 1970's? Well the "studio mentality" must have died along with it, because there was never any attempt to bring the Giant Slugs into a Godzilla movie. And hey, with everything that was being thrown around about 1999 in that movie, you'd figure you could have a sequel to DAM where this happens. If you REALLY want to include them (which I'm not doing, I'm just pointing it out), then:

Vampires happen year of as far as I know. Not a one of them is actually about Dracula, they're about Vampires.

Mutant films probably DO count, since they were made before the collapse. In fact, according to a handful of idea being tossed around Toho about how to introduce an average, human sized Frankenstein, The Human Vapor absolutely does count. I don't know about any special times, though, so I assume it "same as year released" for H-Man (Is he man... or ASTRO-MAN!!!), Human Vapor, and Telegian. ESPY may not count, but again, I don't think it takes place in any year other than 1974.

PON, near as I can tell (these movies are hard as hell to get a hold of, by the way), takes place in 1974, with the characters extrapolting from the events and their connection to Nostradamus's poorly worded, terrible, and untranslateable nonsense poems about nothing come up with a nightmare prediction of 1999 which doesn't happen if we count it, because Honda did the 1999 movie (DAM) before Masuda and Banno, and Honda is painfully and naively (probably not a word) optimistic, especially when compared to those two.

Giant Slugs, that pretty much sums up my desire to see that movie.

Oh, and the 1959 Orochi movie probably counts, but I have no guess as to when that's supposed to happen, so I'm not even going to bother.

So finally I present an actual timeline:

3mya - The Seatopian continent sinks.
12,000bce - The Muvian continent sinks, this one with an already well developed human civilization.
3,000bce - Garoga Invasion of Venus. They use their newest and most powerful monster King Ghidorah, who completely wipes out the Venusian civilization, and I guess the Venusian atmosphere somehow. A small population of Venusians survives and seek refuge on Earth, where they and their human-hybrid (or something) ancestors build the nation of Selgina.
1805 - The Alpha is launched for the first time. McKenzie is born.
1806 - McKenzie's arch-nemesis Malik born.
Between 1718 and 1945 - Some sort of Frankenstein fiasco.
1944 - The Lagos Godzillasaurus (soon to be the second Godzilla) fends off an attack from the American navy, accidentally saving a Japanese garrison stationed there in the process. The specialized Coelophysid is gravely wounded.
1945 - Frankenstein's heart, now in the custody of Dr. Reisendorf, is siezed by Nazis and shipped to their Axis allies in Hiroshima, just in time for the fat man. The heart is lost. Elsewhere, a revolting Japanese naval unit begins construction on a fourth super sub named Atragon which they intend to use to continue fighting the war that just ended. Matango created here? Who knows.
1954 - Godzilla
1955 - Godzilla Raids Again
1956 - Rodan
1957 - The Mysterians
1958 - Varan
1960 - Frankenstein Conquers the World
1961 - Mothra
1962 - Godzilla vs. King Kong
1963 - Atragon, Matango
1964 - Godzilla vs. Mothra, Dogora, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
1965 - Battle in Outer Space, Godzilla vs. Monster Zero
1966 - War of the Gargantuas, Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster
1967 - King Kong Escapes, Son of Godzilla
1969 - Latitude Zero, All Monsters Attack
1970 - Space Amoeba
1971 - Godzilla vs. Hedorah
1972 - Godzilla vs. Gigan
197X - Godzilla vs. Megalon
1973 - Zone Fighter
1974 - Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla
1975 - Terror of Mechagodzilla
1982 - Gorath
1988 - War in Space
1999 - Destroy All Monsters

So there you have it. I was toying with including one of the possible futures in GvsKG, but I don't think there's a way to fit it... but I'll get into that whole 6-D mess next time.

The Heisei thing will probably as long as the showa, not becuase there is as much material to cover, but because it has an unbelievably stringy, multiversal timeline that is ever more ridiculous after the Millennium series. The first part will cover the 9 films strictly within the timeline, with special attention to the GvsKG parallels and some Wild Mass Guessing about what the GFW kaiju are/were supposed to be.

Godzilla Continuity part 3: 1967-1975

Godzilla beating the tar out of Wargilgar and Spyler. A good guide to the Zone Fighter series can be found here. Some of the names may be a little wonky, but then again, the Zone Fighter monsters don't really have official english names, so there you go.

When we last left off, Godzilla was thwarting a terrorist plot and Frankenstein had regenerated into two new, seperate monsters that up and killed each other. Everything up until now has had an explanation, but what the Godzilla timeline is about to do leaves alot to the imagination. For confused Americans, this is going to be really important to remember: Because these films were effectively stand-alone, and only fit into a timeline by the want to push Godzilla and co. as a franchise, some things WILL NOT be explained. There are going to be things that only the audience can answer, but this will not actually contradict the timeline, it just leaves some holes.

KING KONG ESCAPES: Here's the problem this movie can create: King Kong reappears, but rather than being a sequel to Godzilla vs. King Kong, it is a film adaptation of several of the episodes of a Rankin-Bass cartoon from the time. Mechanikong comes from this cartoon.

The backstory of the cartoon, from what I understand, includes the first King Kong film, but uses a second King Kong living on a different island to fill the name role. This Kong is a friend to all children, and constantly battles that international judas, Dr. Who! There are neat cartoon monster fights all the time. A cool little monster cartoon.

So the movie runs with this premise, but replaces the human protagonists of Englehorn and some kid with Akira Takarada and some American douche-bag. The events of the cartoon never happened, but the film recreates some of them.

So why bother if it's a different King Kong? Because this is the first time Gorosaurus appears. Gorosaurus later appears on the institutionalized Monster Island that exists in 1999, and everyone knows who he is, so going by the general rules of Toho monster movies of the time, the events of KKE must have happened in the Godzilla timeline.

This can seem like a pretty big problem if you let it, but it turns out it doesn't actually matter. Even in the first cartoon there was a first King Kong who destroyed New York, so Nurse Susan or whatever her title was had no excuse to be ignorant to begin with. That King Kong seems to be smaller isn't of consequence either, since Gorosaurus too was a different size in 1999. A case can be made that Gorosaurus mutated as a result of exposure to Godzilla and the other mutants of Monster Island, but this isn't really neccessary. Wargilgar, by the way, is supposed to be taller than King Ghidorah at 108 meters. I gotta tell ya', I'm not seeing it.

By reseting the timeline, Toho essentially put elements of the King Kong cartoon into the existing Toho universe. There is simply nothing stated within the film that contradicts the only other films it is directly connected to: GvsKK and DAM.

So the final word here is that if it wasn't supposed to be in the Godzilla continuity, they wouldn't have reused Gorosaurus as the same monster only a year later. This is one of those situations where it only doesn't make sense if you imply too much.

SON OF GODZILLA: Minya is another thing people have a hard time dealing with. He's called Godzilla's son... but where's the mother? Could Godzilla have been female all along, and Minya  be a product of parthenogenesis? Could Minya just a distant relative of Godzilla, like Junior is? The hard truth is that whether you like it or not, Minya is officially Godzilla's son. Furthermore, Minya is not a 12 meter long Coelophysid, it's a fully mutated Godzilla who at an incredibly young age already developed the ability to use Godzilla's ray.

This is often seen as a huge problem in the continuity because in order for Godzilla, who is definately a male, to have a child there needs to be another, female, fully mutated Godzilla. So where did this female Godzilla come from? Was it the first Godzilla? Maybe so, but the issue is never touched upon in the films, so there is no real answer. This is a situation where fan theories are simply the only explanation there is. As I mentioned in the intro to this article, however, this lack of information doesn't really affect the timeline. Remember, there was a whole year where the second Godzilla was undetected by humans, and anything could have happened during that time. And after Godzilla becomes a good guy, he is not monitored... at all, really.

How in the hell Kumonga got that big naturally and can still breathe, however, is a complete mystery.

DESTROY ALL MONSTERS: Fast forward to 1999, Monster Island, which while established in this film, becomes an island where Godzilla and friends have chosen to live naturally, thereby making the decision to use the place as a location to relocate all the world's surviving monsters to is an obvious one.

There is a moon base on the... moon to which the SY-3 ferries workers to and from. This is the epitome of the good future that Ishiro Honda wanted to portray so often. Not only do all the people of the world cooperate with each other on a daily basis, but Earth's monsters have even calmed down, and will actively work with humans to deal with any threats that only the monsters can deal with. Ogasawara Island, formerly a place where only Godzilla, Anguirus, and Rodan would hang out when they weren't saving the world, has become a government sactioned facility where all surviving monsters are both studied and cared for.

And King Ghidorah dies. This will mean that every remaining Showa film will have KG run away at the conclusion of a fight.

ALL MONSTERS ATTACK: This film may or may not take place in the same reality as the rest of the series. Some choose to exclude this one because of that, but that seems like a cop-out. Godzilla exists outside Ichiro's imagination, this much is explicit. And based on the assumption that all Showa kaiju films exist in a sort of "background continuity" where they do not have to interact until overlapping characters deem it necessary, this film is definitely within the timeline.

And what's the problem with including it anyways? Nothing relating to the monsters actually happens. AMA is a non-monster movie with inserted stock footage acting as a character development trick to get Ichiro's courage up. The only connection this could have to the "real world" of the rest of the series is if you assume that all the monsters in the dream world were actually the real monster's dream selves acting out subconscious memories of battles with Godzilla. Gabara is the only original character, and he is clearly a manifestation of something in Ichiro's head that, due to it's size, Minya and Godzilla are forced to deal with.

But there's no evidence that it's anyone's dream but Ichiro's. Doesn't matter anyways.

After this, the timeline events get much less complicated and much more inclusive of information. In 1970 an unmanned spaceship gets possessed by Yog-Sothoth or Dogora's more malevolent brother (Yog-Sothoth is the only name it's ever given, but it sure doesn't look very bubbly to me) and is turned back to Earth where it crash lands at Selgio Island. Gezora, two Ganimes, and Kamoebas appear, and all are killed in a volcanic eruption on the island. Hedorah comes to Earth and Godzilla kills it... and yet another one? Gigan and King Ghidorah come to Earth as part of another evil alien invasion scheme. Godzilla and Anguirus, now living on Monster Island, send them packing.

Godzilla vs. Megalon gets a little interesting. In the dub, the film is said to take place in 1971. This is impossible, because it is clearly Gigan's second appearance, and unlike King Kong, Gigan has a rock solid continuity in the Showa series. What had happened was the original film states the date as "197X," which, while awesome, can't really be any other year besides 1973 as it takes place after Godzilla vs. Gigan in 1972 and the entirety of the Zone Fighter series, which takes place in 1973. You could say that GvsMeg takes place in a nebulous time period between 1972 and 1973, and is either one or both dates, but there's no need and that doesn't make a whole lot of sense anywhichways. There is also mention of the sinking of Seatopia occuring 3 MILLION years ago. They reference back to Mu, the other lost continent, and state this in a manner which implies this was simply a product of continental drift. Except it sunk. There weren't any modern humans 3 million years ago, so this means that they are a different genus, or they colonized an already sunken continent.

Whatever, that movie is wierd.

Zone Fighter occurs entirely within 1973, between the events of GvsMeg and GvsMG, according to Toho. Guess what, everyone, they get to say that. You don't argue with Toho, this is a Word of God situation. The only people who have ZF doesn't count are those "false-fan" types who say they like the Godzilla series, but have nothing good to say about any of actual films. Here is a brief summary of the reccuring characters from that directly interact with Godzilla:

ZF arrives on Earth seeking refuge after his home world Peace land (where I have heard that before?) was destroyed. And I mean the whole fucking planet was blown to smithereens. It's gone bay-bee. He fights a series of "Terror-Beasts," monsters created by the Garoga aliens who destroyed his home, who are now filtering into Earth. Red Spark and Jikiro appear together, and Red Spark is completely destroyed. Jikiro loses, but will return multiple times to bother Zone. More stupid ultra-monster looking things are sent and die by Zone's hands. Wargilgar shows up eventually, followed by Spyler who is disguised as Zone Angel's old flame from Peaceland, and Zone Junior has the brilliant idea to just call Godzilla. So he magically shows up and tears the spine off Spyler, then nukes Wargilgar to death. Spyler actually lives past this episode, but only in a bit part.

Now faced with resistance from the Zones AND Godzilla, the Garoga decide it's time to bring out the big guns. You remember the world destroying monster with the mysterious past whispered by the ruins of aeon-dead planets as King Ghidorah? Well, turns out he is a Terror-Beast created by the Garoga.

So THATS where he came from!

Not only that, but do you know when he was created? During the Garoga's war with Venus. Wait a minute, this is linking up so well, is Toho really doing this in 1973? Yes, friends, that is exactly what they did. KG, i'm happy to say, has a tighter history than Godzilla himself. Zone desperately tries to get rid of KG for two episodes, a process proved more difficult by the addition of the Dark Prism, an object possibly related to KG's meteor form that leeches energy off of living things and sends them into KG. So Zone, who is not, by the way, Godzilla, becomes less powerful as Ghidorah starts to use his gravitational powers to lift cars and learns to combine his three beams into one super powerful blast. Stuff happens (alot), but Zone eventually lures KG back to the ruined Venus where it all began, and away from Earth, and sends him packing in time for the credits.

In the following episodes, swarms of Terror-Beasts are sent who fail to conquer Earth miserably. A bright red Garoga Spider transforms a normal Gorilla into the "Garoga Gorilla," and then becomes Spideros. The Gorilla doesn't make it. Garogas get help from Nebula M Space Hunter, who send Gigan while they get close to crushing Zone Fighter in a car. Godzilla beats the snot of Gigan AGAIN, and then leaves, Gigan gets back up and is killed by Zone Fighter once and for all. More monsters attack Zone, including Garoborg, who we'll see again. Spyler is spotted for a short period of time during Barakidon's attack. Zone builds Godzilla a retractable door for his cave, and they begin sparring before Zandolla appears, who almost sinks the entire city of Tokyo. Godzilla and Zone kill it, but not before Godzilla rips Zandolla's tail off (of course).

Moguranda survives after his failed invasion, unlike some monsters who follow. Godzilla comes to Zone's aid again to fight the monster Jellar, and his clone Katsam-Jellar. So they die. Jikiro returns as "Super Jikiro," who is larger, but still doesn't go down for the last time. Two failed invasion attempts later, the Garogas unleash an army of monsters (while the hell didn't they START that way?), which includes surviving Terror-Beasts Garoborg, Moguranda, Spideros, and of course Jikiro, no longer so super. Zone manages to defeat the new monster Kabutogirah, but requires Godzilla's help for the others.

In the last episode, Zone Fights (heheh, geddit?) Grotogauros. Since the show never continues, the Garogas must just have given up. A different alien race arrives the next year, and bring with them Mechagodzilla, who is defeated by the combined forces of Godzilla and the Okinawan defender King Ceasar, who wanted to become emperor. The aliens repair Mechagodzilla, send it back with a monster called Titanosaurus that is the most unusual looking Sauropod I've ever fucking seen being mind-controlled by Akihiko Hirata, and both get their asses handed to them by Godzilla.

That covers everything. Next time we gather up the dates and put them in chronological order. Hooray! Then we can move on to the Heisei series... which will surprise the hell out of you.

A Warning About Splice

The Godzilla stuff will have to wait, there's something more topical happening:

I just got back from seeing the film Splice, and while I'm aware that this will get registered on Google after it will be useful to the degree it needs to be, I'm still compelled to document this for any future audience that made the same assumptions about the film I did.

They were dangerous assumptions, and I'm still schocked by what happened.

Splice, a 2010 film starring the worst Jack Driscoll of all time and produced by Guillermo Del Torro, was presented to me by a series of ads as simply another monster movie. No name monsters, no name director or effects artist, just a normal old monster movie where science creates a monster man could not handle.

Well, all of that is wrong. It turns out that what the movie is actually about it raising a genetically engineered monster as your own child. Sure, there are casualties (seven, Fred & Ginger, that one guy's brother, some jack ass, a rabbit, a house cat, and the worst Jack Driscoll of all time), but the monster doesn't really go on a rampage. There is a "rampage-esque" climax where Dren makes most of her kills, but this is not actually what the movie is about. The rampage is the opposite of what you want to happen, and when it does, nobody whens.

I'm going to get a little more detailed, but before I do I need to make this clear: you remember when Godzilla died in 1995? You remember Audtition and how it betrayed everything you believed about movies? This one does both of those things for two hours.

What ACTUALLY happens is this scientist couple (oh yeah, all of the exposition is presented as a "two scientist friends" scene, and the crazy kids are in love, so already the empathy levels are dangerously high) who is tasked with curing all diseases. No problem, becuase they just happen to be geneticists who can freely splice the genes of creatures in order to synthesize specific protiens that somehow act as stem cells or something.

If this sounds bogus to you, then you are gonna need to be even more careful with this film, because you just discovered something that takes the protagonists 'till the third act. They are not subtle about this revalation, and it makes the climax even harder to deal with: It was NEVER about the science.

So they are being pressured by sponsors to produce a viable product to put on the shelves and stop playing with Fred and Ginger (who are adorable little CGI monsters). The two scientist friends don't like this because they are on the threshold of combining human dna with their splices, and they say this means the medical possibilites of blah blah blah they want a baby but want to cheat the birthing process.

Also, the girl has issues with her mom.

So they splice human dna into some sort of cocktail for, again this is something that they have put up an emotional wall to keep from realizing, the same sort of gratification Frankenstein gets when he brings people back to life. They tell god to go fuck herself because they want to do this.

The problem is that they succeed where the Frankenstein films fail, that is the monster, her name is Dren, isn't a one-dimensional poorly acted piece of shit, it's a dynamic character that acts exaclty how you would expect a spliced together monster to act... completely unpredictably.

So it becomes clear that these two were just fucking around, because they literally have no idea what new organs Dren is going to form next, and neither does Dren. Whats more, Dren is growing older much faster than humans, and only has so long before she dies. Plus, whatever the hell protien they were looking for? Dren has it. So financial and personal success all in one.

But Dren isn't a human, she's a cocktail, and the whole movie you have no idea what she or her parents are going to have to deal with. This is what the movie is actually about. These two nerdy geneticists trying to raise a monster that they have no idea how to deal with.

So if your idea of a romping good monster movie is two hours of heartbreak, then by all means Splice is the movie for you. If you want your monsters to just be monsters and not worry about how even the simplest mistake that any newby parent could make might be the spark of... who know what, then you may need to avoid this.

As for me, I loved it. This article is so that you can get the story straight, though, and not to pass judgement. If you want my opinion, then this is the most heartbreaking movie i've seen since It's a Wonderful Life, and that it surprised me about this just made it even more effective.

I can't even count the number of times I just wanted to reach out grab the characters and just try and get them to sort everything out. It's just like "Let Dren have the fucking kitty! You don't know how this is going to affect her, you can't afford to be this callous!" It's absolutely insane.

And when she does is foreshadowed by the fate of Ginger, you are routing for no one. At the end of the film, no one has won. The actions taken by the survivor is simply one of not having anything left to do.

I could ramble on about this movie for decades, but the point I want to get across here is that Splice is anything but your typical monster movie. It's an extremely taxing drama about the realtionship between parents and a child when no one has the answers already figured out. Like, when my sister had her son, she and her husband did everything they could to prepare. A child, by the way, is not something to be taken lightly. Take that same child, however, and make it so the kid could kill you and there is no precedent for it's growth pattern, but the love is still the same, and you have Dren.

One more thing since I'm already issuing warnings. Dren grows up very fast, and she is still part human, so things happen that no human being alive today is prepared to know how to react to. This happens twice, and the second time isn't consensual.

So, there's that. I did mention this movie isn't fair, didn't I?

...okay, but I do want to take this chance to monday morning quarterback at least this scene. So, first of all, you should never have taken away the damn cat, but let's just skip that. Here, Dren is a fully mature young woman and sees her own mother as competition. No one is to blame here, there is just no precedent for what is normal here. There was never a Dren before this. So how do you handle this?

It may not be possible to save the cat. Let's acknowledge that. But don't slap Dren, that doesn't help anything. Rather, swallow your surprise and stay calm. Getting excited isn't going to help anyone. A good emotion to show here might have been sadness. Surprise, shock, or anger just present yourself as an antagonist, where as sadness might get a more sympathetic reaction. And if you could just have gotten Dren to calm the fuck down here, you may have been able to figure out that she was, you know, getting older, and try to sort something out with her.

She may not speak english, but she does spell it. Plus, Dren has always responded well to leveling with her. My favorite scene in the movie is where she sprouts wings and starts freaking out, but cools her jets after somebody FINALLY says the "L" word.

And as we find out after her tail tip is removed, she never really became impossible to communicate with, she just became hyped up on hormones. Treading a bit more carefully might have saved everyone some greif.

But again, this is just monday morning quarterbacking.

And, in case you're wondering, I don't think there was any other way to handle this than what Adrien Brody's character did. There simply wasn't another option.