"Unseen," Unproduced, and Pre-Production Godzilla and Tohoverse Master List

This post exists just to get this information out there. It took me about two months to finish off that in-depth article about just the first 5 years of "unseen" (in quotes because some of this stuff does get published in various forms), and while I certainly want to make more of the same, getting into detail about things like A Space Godzilla and Godzilla 2, there really is just SO much stuff that for no discernible reason is completely unattested to in English, and I kinda just want to get this out there.

So of course you've got your Rodan's Roost (or whatever the current iteration is called) and Toho Kingdom and various wikis with their lists, all of which are incomplete, and they themselves are rife with made up legends and half-truths and just straight up lies. Three "lost projects" in particular seem to be complete inventions by western authors. So, just on a practical level, this article will serve as an actual complete (as far I know, and I will update this if anything is missing) reference point, as opposed to the main, in-depth articles which will focus only on specific decades.

I was getting to this kind of a point in the introduction to the 60's article I was writing, but it's probably better said right here. Regarding whether or not I am a trustworthy source, as on this blog I've continually drawn attention to the failings of the fantastically inept Toho Kingdom, I of course am not making any of this up. Beyond that, though, I'm just a secondary or even further source, all the stuff I know comes from what others have written and researched. This listing, and the articles on the specific decades, are just aggregates. I can't vouch for everyone, but what I can do is, when I think something sounds fishy, mention that it should be taken with a grain of salt. The flip side of that, of course, is that at the end of the day none of this actually matters. The historical truth, which if there are doubts about I'll point it out, is a totally different animal than they actual stories themselves. Given this, I absolutely do not care about whether a story has been conclusively shown (and, by the way, none of them have, some just seem a little suspicious) to be the invention of later commentators and the rumor mill. At the end of the day, a story is a story, and that's what I'm trying to share: all the stories from this mythological body which have for one reason or another have not appeared in their intended form.

So what counts and what doesn't? Naturally we start at film ideas, scripts, or early drafts, which I'm only going to draw the line at deleted scenes. I figure once something was actually filmed it stops being removed from what's already out there. Additionally, there are ideas or pitches for video games or comics that never saw a commercial release, including a novel which apparently was actually written. The last thing I want to specify about what counts as "unseen" for the purposes of this list, are published stories which were at one point intended to be the basis of something else, but were instead released independently of that finished product OR that product in particular never got made.

Anwyas, here's the list:

Unseen Tohoverse: 1954-1959 FEATURING BRIDE OF GODZILLA SYNOPSIS!!!

DISCLAIMER: This introduction was written before my post about Harbinger Down. I, clearly, no longer have much of an intention on writing anything about the screenplay I'm working on because, well, I'd rather just write the actual screenplay. Things that are capable of keeping my mind occupied aren't that good at it anymore, and my attention to things wanes and waxes with unbelievable fickleness now, so I started this post a while ago, with the intention of finishing it later when I "got around to it." So by the time this goes up, just keep in mind this will have been an archived draft for a while.

One thing I wanted to try to do was write a screenplay for Godzilla X Biollante. The outline is mostly done, really, there are just a few fuzzy points. There's literally no one better qualified for the task than me, I figured, and put simply, no one else is ever going to do this. At least not until modern civilization crumbles, and if anything's left of humanity then they'll inherit Godzilla free of any special corporate or big brother interests, and are free to tell whatever stories they want without some sort of dream-squashing regulatory comity filtering out which ideas matter and which ones should be suppressed. But, you know, that's the world you people have chosen to live in. You wanted it, you LIKE having your thoughts policed, so here you go, now you can have it. You're welcome.

Anwyas, I realized after reading the second issue of Godzilla: Cataclysm that it might not even be strictly necessary. Cataclysm, a post-apocalyptic tale, is basically a gigantic metaphor for what is happening in the real world. Godzilla, and everything else, is gone. Hollywood destroyed the world they lived in, and now most of the world just sort of shambles around in a drug-filled stupor (it's called Opal, and that's a NIN reference) and the very idea of Godzilla has in itself become a legend. The real Godzilla hasn't been seen for 10 years (20 in the comic), and in it's place there are superstitions, people flocking to blind faiths revolving around what their interpretations of memories are. In the second issue, amidst the inhabitants of a small human settlement in the ruins of Tokyo squabbling about whether to reinstate "the lottery," Godzilla, Biollante, and Mothra all duke it out in the post-apocalyptic landscape. Biollante is seemingly killed, (at least that one budding stalk is) and one of the humans notes that, while Biollante was some sort of monstrosity, it was possibly the only chance they had at making the world green again, and it looked like Godzilla was actively searching for her to stop exactly that from happening. Good thing, then, that the same person saves a single rose, which, the implication is obvious, is going to be the Biollante that brings the world back.

So yeah, I... I don't feel like I need to write it. Not only is the story itself basically doing the job, but the comic itself, like, in the context of the real world, is a lifeline to the real Godzilla, and if that single rose can survive, maybe he can to. But, I still have things I need to share, if it's not something I wrote myself, there is at least still information I can catalog, some stuff that has never been seen before in English. Stuff that absolutely boggles me that it does not exist ANYWHERE else on the internet in English... other than skynet's translator.

What untold stories, unchronicled information could I possibly have about the biggest monster in history that apparently exists nowhere else in the English language? It pertains to the cutting room floor, story ideas and script drafts and treatments and contest entries that never made it and such. What new information I have isn't particularly numerous, though, so instead what I'm going to do is put down here everything that I know about the subject, near as I can remember it, so that, no matter where you're coming into this article from, you'll be well aware of at least something new here, and you'll get the whole story all at once instead of having to pick bits and pieces off various sources of varying reputability. Hopefully there are still people out there for whom this information is still important.

Alec Gillis is Fighting Back

 

Remember that horrible abomination that tried to pass itself off as a prequel to The Thing? Remember how the director kept dropping positive PR assuring everyone he was a true fan and all this, and how he was going to match sets 1:1, how it was going to fit in the continuity perfectly and show us how the Norwegian camp ended up like it did, and, especially, that Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. were in charge of the special effects and we could expect a fitting tribute to Rob Bottin's work on the original, which was, of course, absolutely perfect? And remember how they went on record saying that practical effects WOULD be the movie?

And then remember what they actually did? You know, lie?

...and then remember when they killed Godzilla?

In a world where opinions are bought by the highest bidder, sheeple are the new people, and nothing with integrity matters anymore, it seems, to me, that the world is just... ending. Now, if you've been following along, you're probably aware that I'm being quite literal about this. I have no intentions of continuing to live for an extended period of time, no will to live, no ambition, and no passion. Everything that I care about has been destroyed, and I'm basically a walking corpse, a hollow remnant of something that used to be alive.

This isn't, of course, JUST about Godzilla. See, what happened was that my original plan wasn't simply to spend the rest of my life wasting away like an ugly cancerous mass. I know, it's hard to believe, but yes, at one point in my life I had very real plans to have a life of my own. Now Godzilla is certainly the catalyst for this, but back at this time I never could have imagined that Godzilla could have died in such a horrific manner, so I didn't touch him, and I imagined for myself a career where I'd have to do my own thing. That meant I had my own ideas, my own treatments, my own screenplays, even. I wanted to make my own monster movies, separate from Godzilla, but ultimately something he was responsible for. Much like Godzilla himself would not exist if it weren't for King Kong.

And so I was in a weird position for a while, between 2010 and this May, with my financial means gone, there simply was no longer a future for me, because you need money - lots and lots of money - to accomplish anything at all, yet I was still "alive" in a sense. Even though I couldn't write the way I used to, I was spent and angry and tired, I still had something I cared about. Something that I could see that would ignite some sort of spark in me and, for a while, I would feel normal again. The week before Godzilla died was, um... traumatic. I see Biollante now and I just break down. There's no joy there anymore, just a reminder of how the world died. Now, the block isn't simply that I have no means to accomplish what I wanted to, but that nothing matters and no one cares. The mega-corps have won, and we are literally living in an Orwellian dystopia, and no one fucking cares. Even now, there is so much I could say if I really dragged myself back from the dead, but no one's listening to me.

So that's me, that's my problem. Let's shift focus for a moment and talk about Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. These two, if you've found yourself on this article somehow and yet don't know who they are, first of all I'm ashamed of you, second of all, this will sum it up: Xenomorphs. These two worked on 5 of the 7 films, 4 or which they worked on after setting up their own company. These people are for the Alien movies what Eiji Tsuburaya is for Godzilla, they make these things in the most profound sense of the word. We're not just talking about suitmaking and animatronics, Tom IS the Alien. Yes, really, he's the guy in the suit. The Dog Alien? Yeah, that's Tom. And not do we have the suit-builders and actors actually being the same people, but after the disconnect with the second film, Tom and Alec brought H.R. Giger back into it. And even after executive meddling caused a riff between Giger and Fox, Tom and Alec kept fighting the good fight, and the fourth film was far and away the single-most Giger-esque movie ever made. These guys are incredible artists, on par with Shinichi Wakasa or Eiichi Asada on the otherside of the world. And I am not screwing around here, take a look at some of their work and tell me you don't think they're on the same level as the beasts from the east.

As I mentioned at the top, these folks STARTED with the United States' second greatest monster, and had finally worked their way up to a huge milestone, this is essentially a group of dream-makers having their dream come true. And it was stolen from them.

But Alec isn't like me, he's not dead. He has the means, the fanbase, the reputation, and the resources to fight back, and he's not taking this lying down. Last year he started up a Kickstarter for an expy-sequel to The Thing called Harbinger Down. He realized after posting videos of ADI's (the company he and Tom started) effects work on the Thing prequel that he wasn't the only one that felt jipped. The Thing prequel was a very, frankly shocking instance where people simply didn't drink the kool-aid. People were pissed. I was pissed. Alec was pissed, and he's done fucking around.

It's unfortunate that I heard about this so late in the game, with it to be released sometime this year. With my situation, I could have easily given up everything I have to make this sort of thing possible. The good news is that they didn't need my help and things are going along pretty smooth. Suffice to say everyone needs to check out Harbinger Down now, but more than a just being a plug, I'm going to go full circle here and bring the focus back onto myself, and explain what all that set up was about.

I guess realizing that I was willing to pawn off every single thing I could to put towards supporting this movie I'm not even making made something sort of *click* in me. If Godzilla is dead, then there's nothing stopping me from just up and writing Godzilla X Biollante then, is there? That thing that hollywood owns is NOT Godzilla, and there is no way in hell I give a damn about what the fucking mega-corps tell me. Besides that, I still have my own ideas that I need to write down as well. And that's exactly what I'm going to do.

What am I going to write about? What unique monster do I have? What is all this about? Well, and this will probably surprise you if you've been looking at this blog, but I'm ACTUALLY going to write more about this. I'm working out an outline in my head, I've got a lot of ideas, and I finally found something constructive to do with all this rage that's been essentially taking over every aspect of my psyche.

So I'll make a new post soon. Maybe tomorrow, even. But I'll leave you with a few quotes:

"There are two kinds of movies, monster movies and everything else." - Keita Amemiya

"Monsters are important. They've been with humankind since we became human. We're going to do everything we can to keep them with us, and most importantly, to keep them real." - Alec Gillis

"Monsters are born too tall, too strong, too heavy, that is their tragedy." - Ishiro Honda

“I respected him so deeply. My world was Eiji Tsubaraya. He was that important. When he died, I didn’t know how to live.” - Minoru Nakano

"Mankind is a beast of prey... that is the entire history of the human race." - Boyd Rice

Ariel Pink's Back (last fagbook post)

Disclaimer: This is the last thing I'm posting on fagbook before I delete my account. I'm leaving it up for a bit to see if I get any response to it (I won't) because I want to know if anyone wants me to leave them anything. Its presented here... for posterity? Without any alterations, keep that in mind if I refer to "here" I'm talking about fagbook.



Look who's back.

The first time I heard "Helen" on KTRU (remember that, remember when Houston had an actual radio station? Before the mega-corps bought it out?), I honestly thought it was from some sort of under the radar band from, specifically 1969 (I'm usually pretty good with dating things like that). I thought that was pretty cool, I had only recently discovered Bruce Haack, so the notion that I didn't know the whole picture and that stuff as far out as Jefferson Airplane and the Doors and Pink Floyd was "mainstream" and that was even more gold lying just beneath the surface... it shivers up my spine. Whole worlds of music completely hidden, stuff unlike anything I'd ever heard before.

Well, skipping ahead, yes that world exists, but according to archival projects like Psychedelic Arhcaeology, it is hopelessly mundane. Good stuff, but nothing to write home about.
But I WAS right, Ariel Pink was unlike anything I'd ever heard before. At first I couldn't even process it, I didn't understand it at all, just the surface problem alone, for a quick review:

1. This is new?
2. What IS Ariel?
3. Is this... a revival? Like, do I count it as a being space rock because that's what it is or... or... what is this?

But of course it isn't space rock, or anything else, it's fundamentally different from everything else, there's something going on there that isn't just what it sounds like. And it's easy to say "oh, well you mean because it's lo-fi, lo-fi stuff is a genre now." Um, no, no it isn't. It's not the quality of the recordings either, as evidenced when he went hi-fi for Before Today and absolutely nothing changed.

Normally it's very hard to put a finger on exactly what Ariel Pink is, but I've been listening to it for a long time and I think I'm just crazy enough to figure it out: he's figured out how to induce memory. Engineered nostalgia, false memories, pining for the good ol' days that never actually happened. These are all things I'm very familiar with, and it's essentially unique to Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti (whole name typed out because fagbook suggested it be), that's not to slight Geneva Jacuzzi or Nite Jewel or even WaVVes, who are all very good at getting inside that ballpark and I love them all to death, but there's something... else... here. And I don't know how he does it but every time I hear a new Ariel Pink song it's like I've known it for my entire life.

I don't know if everyone feels it, but I do.

When I first found out about "hauntology" it really seemed like I had left off of my child life and was moving towards being an adult. I was a goth kid, but I would be a "hauntology" adult. I was in school, then briefly had a job, then finally I started taking film classes and it looked for all the world like I knew where I was going and what I wanted to do. I mean, I'm not going to lie, all the alcohol and hauntology had a pretty detrimental effect for a while, there was the whole thing about Denisera (you can ask Tom or w/e about that if you want), and I was actually living that sort of "perpetual regret" lifestyle where I could never really get into what was happening now because everything was always "the good ol' days," but even so I was still moving forward, and once I got into film school that attitude mostly died.

But in a very short period of time R-real became almost as important to me as Godzilla, because of that synthetic "you're entire life" quality which I sometimes wonder about how real or imagined it actually is. It's clearly not just music anymore, it's some other whole THING now, less about the stuff itself and more about where I was and what I was thinking, and why it would ever matter so much. This song here got released... what, today? I've already heard it before, I can't explain it, but it's one of the best songs I've ever heard, up there with Artifact and Helen for me. The album comes out a week after my birthday, but there don't seem to be any tour dates yet. So... there's that.

So here's the deal: I already know no one's going to read this, but I'm going to leave it up for... idunno, a day or something, because it's the last thing I'm going to post here, I'll copypaste it on my old blog I guess, but I'm giving up. Giving up on fagbook for sure, and most other things as well. I was just looking at how exactly you're supposed to get your name changed legally, it costs upwards of $350 and it's subject to all the same government incompetency and hoops as everything else, I heard one story where an attorney almost died because a set of x-rays where filed under her maiden name. The state of Texas is more than willing to let me die before I get any sort of respect, and if that's what they want I'm more than happy to oblige.

Godzilla Continuity: Parachronic Homogeny part 1: GODZILLA

We start at the most obvious place: the king himself. While the Tohoverse outside of Godzilla is just as expansive and awesome as the purely Godzilla part, there's no denying that all threads lead back to Godzilla in this world. He is, very much, the center of the Tohoverse, even when he's not directly present in a given story. This is, of course, based on the fact that he's solely responsible for the whole thing ever having happened in the first place, and he's also garnered the most consistent attention over the 60 year history of Toho's science fiction and fantasy (and some horror) films.

DISCLAIMER: If you don't know what a "parachronic homogeny" is, or want to know how it is that I'm still alive after "Godzilla 2014," as it's called, I guess, be sure to read my intro to this new sub-series here.

Godzilla Continuity: Parachronic Homogeny part 0: Introduction

So, first of all, yes I'm still here. After the movie I went out drinking with my mom and decisions simply didn't get made. And my mommy telling me it's going to be alright still does manage to work even when you're my age. Logically, I know this isn't true, but I guess you just get it so hardwired in your head as a child that it's hard to shake even when you're an adult who's well aware of how horrible the world is.

The movie? Well, it's not good. It's really, really shitty. I can safely say without any sort of hesitation that it is far worse that both All Monsters Attack and Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla. As, of course, a Godzilla movie. I mentioned this when I was going through the cartoon during the countdown, but it doesn't matter how weird and awful or wrong something is, it can't destroy Godzilla if it was never meant to BE Godzilla in the first place. The Hannah-Barbera cartoon can get away with eye lazors because it's a fun show and no one gives a shit if it's exactly like the movies or not. In this same way, "Godzilla 2014" or whatever the fuck I'm supposed to call it (I'm still partial to GINO 2 myself) isn't horrible. If this isn't the end and Toho finally fucking brings Tezuka, Oshima, and Asada back for Godzilla X Biollante like I've been waiting for since 2004, then we can all look back at this strange, Hollywood thing as just a sidebar in Godzilla history. And as a sidebar, I don't hate it. I don't like it, it isn't very good and it's really confusing and pretty stupid and obnoxious, but I could easily watch it again and enjoy it for what it is: a stupid Hollywood movie that has a bastardized version of Godzilla in it which is at the very least an attempt at making it seem like Godzilla.

The problem, of course, is that Hollywood doesn't want to be a sidebar, they play to win, and they always win. So the natural assumption is that this really is the end and there will never be another Godzilla movie. I've had to spell this out so many times now, about why it ultimately doesn't even matter what the movie itself is like, so let's get it out of the way for the last time: "Godzilla 2014" will not ruin Godzilla if it remains as a cute little sidebar to the real Godzilla series, it's a dumb but not horrible movie, like ALIENS, but the problem is that if this becomes what Godzilla is, then yes it has absolutely ruined Godzilla forever. Or at least until it stops becoming marketable.

For those interested, my full review of the film can be found on my new parody blog here. I'm playing an exaggerated character, yes, but my real feelings aren't much better. That blog is going to be a focus from here on out since the whole reason I'm still here in the first place is because I'm going to try and use blogging to get some kind of income, since I apparently and completely un-employable, so this is really kind of my last chance to try and get some sort of a life together for myself. I'm not optimistic about it, especially since everyone uses adblock (including me), but I might as well try, I guess.

SO ANWYAS, WHAT'S A PARAPLEGIC HOMOSEX? Read on to find out:

Godzilla Countdown: Day 7

Tomorrow is the big day, or... today when this gets posted, I guess.

Having fun going through the millennium series again, this was a really exciting time for me. I'm sure I'll get to it all in a bit, though. Gonna try and do Always 2 but who knows if that's gonna work. Don't expect it, but we'll see.

EDIT: This is going up a day late, but I ran out of time to finish this yesterday before I had to leave for the thing. Movie was a little less than "just okay," but I'll get to that later.

Godzilla Countdown: Day 6

Second to last day and I'm just tired. Pity that I had to get to this point during the 90's movies, but there you go. I'm gonna just power through these last two days and try to make succinct entries, more than I had, but I don't know.

I spoke to someone who saw gino 2 yesterday, some sort of thing because he works at a theatre I guess. Says it ignores the first movie altogether, some other stuff. Its not looking real good. I don't think this is going to end well.

Godzilla Countdown: Day 5

Five days in and I've successfully transitioned from giving up on everything to distracting myself with something else. As it usually goes, I'll make spreadsheets or read stuff on Something Awful or watch a let's play or something else that, for normal people, would an entertaining break from responsibility. When you don't have anything else, it isn't really "entertaining," it's more like finding something to stare at that's more interesting than a wall. This is the sort of thing kids who don't know any better dream of, just watching cartoons all day, a perceived paradise. The thing that those kids, including myself at that age, didn't understand is that doing something on your time off is inherently different from doing the same thing constantly forever. It doesn't matter what it is, it really doesn't, you can't just stare at the same thing without a break and stay sane for very long. For people with lives, even monotonous cubicle jobs are broken up with even the most menial of indulgences. A few friends and a day off every once in a while can keep people from going postal due to the soul-crushing tedium of a desk job.

I can't just sit here. I can't live like this. I need... something. To do something, to write something, to go somewhere, to meet new people and have new experiences. You CAN'T just sit around all day like this, it's not natural. Watching funny internet videos should be a fun experience, but now my eyes just glaze over at it. The lack of any sort of... life in me has made things that should be fun feel like a desk job. Except non of this requires any effort on my part. Simply being alive has become a never ending chore me. I still have the means to do so, but taking the minimum effort to remember to eat is a thing I actively have to do, and it isn't something I relish. At least if I was starving in a ditch somewhere I could die like I'm supposed to instead of... whatever the fuck this is.

The things I get lost in are recursive, there's nothing new here. Hauntology only really fed what was already there, I've always been "haunted by the ghosts of the past" as it were. I think it really goes back to high school, when I realized that the whole "finding myself" thing was a complete waste of what could have been the best years of my life, but I squandered it trying to be someone else like some kind of god damned moron. Alcohol didn't help either, there was a period from 2007~2008 when I pined for "the good old days," which sometimes would be as long ago as *gasp* a week! I called this "perpetual regret," the idea that you always remember the past with rose-colored glasses and regret that you didn't appreciate your experiences enough, and that attitude created a perpetual feedback loop where because you were always thinking of the past, you could never appreciate what you did have.

So here I am reliving every Godzilla movie in a row plus the cartoon and some other things, distracting myself from the fact that I'm never going to get any less ugly or any more employable by desperately clinging to the one thing I'm still passionate enough about that Hollywood destroying it matters. Today I'm going to watch Godzilla vs. Biollante, my favroite thing in the world, probably for the last time.

Godzilla Countdown: Day 4

I'm settling into this post the day after thing. And that's great, because after feeling not just a tad under pressure by my own ambitions to finish this sort of... I guess you'd call it a journal of sorts, but after getting through what I intended the past two days, today the schedule is pretty lax.

Well, sort of. I only plan on just doing the two Showa Mechagodzilla films today, but in addition as first season of the cartoon. Also, I have a really shitty copy, but a copy nonetheless, of Luigi Cozzi's 1977 colorized version of the original film, which I will be watching today for the first time. I'm already at the climax of GvsMG, so before midnight I'll be starting the cartoon, which I happen to enjoy quite a bit.

Tomorrow I'll do the other half of the cartoon, and move on to the 80's, ending, of course, with Godzilla vs. Biollante, mankind's greatest achievement. That's going to be a pretty big deal. But for today I've been sort of easing out a bit. After all, when we're done with Biollante will have to go through the entire rest of the Heisei and Millennium series in two days.

Godzilla Countdown: Day 3

I left so much of the last post undone before I went to sleep that I'm only getting started on this at 17. I just finished watching Destroy All Monsters a second ago, so I'm planning on trying to keep at a pace of writing the impressions from one movie while I'm watching the other. This should also help me curb my obsessive compulsive screenshot taking, as I generated over 800 from yesterday, so I gotta calm down in that regard. These movies are just too gorgeous, it's not my fault. :c

Feeling a little pressure, and not, uh, well. I can't really describe it. But I'm not real happy about the way this is going. My sister's family called today, since it's mother's day apparently. I have nothing at all to say to them, and my nephew just... what, he's winning at dominos? And then what? I tell him "that's cool" but he just goes quiet. I start asking my mom about if she's going to be off on the 16th and I forget I'm even on the phone until I hear my sister in the background talking about something or another. I'm so far past caring.

I was working on the post for yesterday so much that I ended up only paying attention to DAM just enough as necessary. My eyes are kind of starting to glaze over at this point, because as I type this I'm watching All Monsters Attack or "Godzilla's Revenge" as we used to call it back in the day, and holy shit this movie is annoying. Well let's move on.

Godzilla Countdown: Day 2

Today I'm just going to breeze through as many 60's movies as I can. Hopefully all of them, but that depends on how much commentary I end up giving each. If I don't get to All Monsters Attack today I'm going to consider cutting the cartoon. But we'll see. Actually, I'm going to try today to just watch the films all at once and type up the relevant blog entries later. That should work out fine.

I'm feeling okay today. Doing a lot of watching, thinking about, and writing about Godzilla puts me in a pretty good place. I'm gonna try and calm down and enjoy this day as much as I can. Sure, I don't have a future anymore, but I have a present, and right now that's really all I want.

22 now where I am and I've watched the "Honda era" or "Golden era" films, being from King Kong to Monster Zero. There is still coffee in the pot from this morning, something like 10 hours ago. So I'm definitely going to get through the south seas eras too, but first let's look at those aforementioned golden era Godzilla films.

Godzilla Countdown: Day 1

A week from now, Hollywood is going to kill the king of the monsters. And this time he's not coming back. With gino 2 or "Godzilla" which is literally the laziest possible title (I suppose theoretically they could have just called it "Movie") for a movie ostensibly about or related to Godzilla in some way, being a AAA tentpole blockbuster style flick that caters specifically to the "nerd culture" "true gamer" and whatever the fuck else you want to call them synthetic demographic, which is just marketing speak for "18-24 year old men but under a label we invented to make them easier to control." While it may barely be possible that the movie itself ends up being no more offensive than the Hannah-Barbera cartoon or Peter Jackson's King Kong, this commandeering of what Godzilla is and the creation of an entirely new demographic that has absolutely no interest in anything that has to do with the real Godzilla is going to spell disaster regardless.

The problem is that money speaks, and Hollywood wants a product, not a character. By buying editorial space in sites like io9 or Kotaku or IGN they guarantee that mouth-breathing idiots with disposable incomes that need to be told what to consume will turn whatever they shit out into a franchise. This is business as a dictator, holding a vertical monopoly over both their engineered audience and media, as opposed to the middle man that is supposed to sell art to the audience that wants it. Not a mutually beneficial relationship, but rather a perpetual feedback machine where a few people in power pull the strings to maintain that power continuously with no other goal in mind, and at the expense of the resources they use to do it.

And you know what really kills me is that if they had just made a normal god damned Godzilla movie I wouldn't even care. I'll take off the They Live! glasses and consume if you just did what you were supposed to do and put forth the minimum effort to at least pretend like you care. If you don't think modern audiences want the very core of what makes a Godzilla movie a Godzilla movie well then why the fuck did you buy the license? Buy the license to something you know for a fact modern audiences DO want. Why is that so difficult for the suits to understand?

Things are also coming to a conclusion for me. In the past few days my mood has been swinging around more wildly as the last little bits of life I have left in me are going out. Godzilla has been a huge part of my life since before my earliest memories, the age of two to be precise, and much of who I am can be tracked using Godzilla as a measurement, so much so that having my life flash before my eyes basically looks like Godzilla clip show. I don't mean to sound shallow, there's more going on here and more to me than just that, but I think by the time I get up to Godzilla vs. Biollante what I'm talking about should be pretty clear.

If you haven't picked it up, what I'm talking about, and what this post is going to be the first part of, is a series where I watch every Godzilla movie, the one episode of Zone Fighter I have, the cartoon, hopefully Always 2, and assorted other bits over the course of a week leading up to May 16th. It's going to be as much of a retrospective of what was once the greatest monster that ever lived in the imagination of man as it will be an extremely personal journey for me. If that sounds like a bummer to you, then you don't have to read it. I don't really have an audience with this blog and I've only ever used it in the past for... well, things I just wanted to say at the time. This isn't going to be any different.

One last thing that I'll say before I get on with it is that I'm going to write these in real time. This intro is being written before I've started and each entry will be written after each I've watched the film in question. I don't really have a plan on what I'm going to get through today, but as we move along I'll have more of an intended structure.

So let's get on with it and start the final countdown of a Mal and her Monster: