Shinji Higuchi on the attempted revival of Godzilla

"The thought of this resurrection has my chest pounding. Almost three decades have passed since I snuck into this film industry, and had no idea what would transpire before me, because I was so idealistic. The difference between my first, carefree world of amateur filmmaking, compared to the reality of the ups and downs of the industry, I feel as though I’ve been a hero running for 30 years. But, at last, the time has come! 
I’ve come to see those reckless heroes of my high school and college days hit mid-life. It all seems like a dream, but now I must come back to reality. There’s no more room for idle talk. “What you really want to do, what you really need to do, what you should never do, what you may not be able to do,” are the thoughts that’ve fought in my head, and held me back.
It’s a veritable championship over one’s own mind. What now, then? Playtime is over. Nevertheless, with my best friend standing beside me, we will triumph over the pressure that would otherwise make me run far away. I was born in this country which gave life to this great divinity [Godzilla], which destined me to work in visual effects, up until this very moment. I give unending thanks to Fate for this opportunity; so next year, I’ll give you the greatest worst nightmare."

It's been a long time coming, and more than a little overdue, but Higuchi is finally tackling the king. And the stakes couldn't be any higher. This is, you understand, an enormous amount of pressure. No one person should ever have to deal with this kind of responsibility, and yet, it has happened before, and it has been exceeded before.

Now, technically Higuchi isn't doing this alone, he's got his best friend by his side, but that's of little consolation. This Hideaki Anno individual has no history in the medium, and gained all his reputation from the notorious Evangelion series which is, in a word, awful, which spread like a wildfire throughout the world of impressionable youths in what might be called "neo-hipsterism" if "hipsterism" ever actually meant anything to begin with. Anno released a similar statement, in which he detailed how he started falling to pieces after working on the same thing for so long, becoming disillusioned, tired, and self-loathing. It also mentions how he took solace in the fact the power rangers are STILL around, as they will presumably always be, which is something I can easily relate to, although their distribution (and adaptation, of course) in my country is a bit of a rocky, curious thing.

More than anything, though, Anno is clearly doing this to break a rut, and do something truly important, while Higuchi is doing this because... well, because it's just up to him. That's just how things worked out.

Acceptance of such a huge task has to come with the acknowledgement of what failure would mean. While it seems as though Higuchi (and Anno) aren't exactly in a mindset for losing, there's still a bigger picture here. They aren't just battling themselves, this is the entire hollywood-google complex we're talking about here. Of COURSE the next Godzilla will be great, but that's not the issue, the real problem is that ultimately... nothing we as people do matters anymore.

Even if there's another Biollante or Hedorah, let's face it, there's probably no coming back from this. The things that are important to human beings, passion, love, happiness, fulfillment, expression, communication, etc., none of this matters to hollywood. All they care about is money, all they have is money, and the more "people" they control, the less the actions of men will make any difference at all. If the original Godzilla came out tomorrow, nothing would change.

This is the point I made back in May, and coming up on a year later, through a roller coaster of denial, hatred, depression, apathy, hatred again, more hatred, all-consuming destructive hatred, and back again, I'm realizing that no matter how I've tried to spin it, no matter how I've tried to justify my continued existence, I really nailed it back then.

...it doesn't seem like a year. Time slips away from me faster and faster all the time, and I can't even tell when one day ends and the next week begins anymore. I sure as hell don't know what day it is either, and I haven't for a long time. Probably years, I don't know.

It will make me happy again to see Higuchi succeed, but the damage is done. Probably not too little, but definitely too late. I would love to be proven wrong, though. Toho's dangerous gambit was naive at the least, suicidal at worst.

The best we can hope for is for a few earnest artists with genuine love and respect for something bigger than them can keep the legend alive for just a little longer. Godzilla is supposed to bury me, not the other way around.        

Godzilla Co-Directors Announced: Higuchi and.. some fucking guy?

So there's finally some news about the next Godzilla movie. After about 12 years. Cool timing Toho, by the way he's kinda already been murdered by hollywood, but I guess take your time?

So much to my confusion and anger, Takashi Yamazaki is NOT the director. Yamazaki has been making a name for himself in a series of films with heavy and/or all-digital effects, and I suppose that may have made him look like an iffy pick, but keep in mind this guy is making bank, has developed a bit of a reputation for ensemble dramas and pop culture adaptations, AND has already directed Godzilla in a cameo once. It isn't really a stretch that pairing this guy with, say, Shinji Higuchi, is the best chance Toho has to "not lose to hollywood."

Well, that's not what they did. They got Higuchi, which is a pretty solid, no brainer choice. I was thinking some new blood would show up, but of course they couldn't bring back Asada for a number of reasons even though he's behind the best effects the series has ever had. If it feels a little underwhelming, it's because Higuchi's real moment was the late 90's and early 00's with the end of the Gamera trilogy, and not teaming with Kaneko for GMK (although he did apparently do some work on it) kinda... you know, he missed his chance and at this point it's sort of like he just kinda disappeared after that. Still, it's a great choice and probably the most sensible Toho could have made.

But let's get to that other guy. The name is Hideaki Anno, and... uh... oh boy. So apparently this is the guy responsible for that horrible, horrible piece of stupid bullshit called Evangelion about a whiny teenager in a fat suit featuring all of 3 seconds of actual robot vs. monster battles. Woo hoo. He's done some other things too, but it seems as though even today he continues to pump out more and more Evangelion and other assorted weeaboo generating nonsense, and as a result fell into a sort of depression in early 2013.

And that's where the story of Godzilla 29 actually starts, it turns out. Even before G.I.N.O. 2 Toho was already scrambling to put together damage control. Personally, I'm a little shocked. Now I understand that Toho is a company and they run a business and the point is to make money, but this is THEIR responsibility now. Like it or not Godzilla is in their laps and it doesn't matter what the bottom line is, Godzilla has to survive. They've done a pretty good job with it for the past 50 and change years, with a few slip-ups, but you can't just fucking cash out like a slot machine. Until Godzilla goes to the public domain and falls out of their stewardship, the continued existence of modern culture is in the hands of a few identical Japanese businessmen.

So they made a sort of deal with the devil. They took a calculated risk of planting a bomb on their own front porch, loaded with cash for shrapnel. Unlike in 1998, where the higher ups were largely a bunch of confused old xenophobes who were convinced that Godzilla "wouldn't work" in the U.S. (despite the fact that he had been doing just that all this time), these Salarymen-Ninjas seemed to think they could actually outsmart the system by smiling and nodding, letting hollywood sell its product, get the cash in return, and use it and the hype generated by the skynet-big brother thoughtocracy to turn the actual Godzilla into a commodity, and therefore win the culture war and establish our shared post-modern mythology as, once again, the one that matters. Both in a financial context and outside of it.

Of course, this plan backfired. I don't... I don't really believe Toho quite understand what hollywood actually is. This is now the second time they've dug a grave for Godzilla, and it was dug with the same god damned shovel. The difference is this time they thought they had it under their control, and so they began working behind the scenes in 2013 to bring Godzilla back before the knife even fell. This is some seriously fucking corrupt bullshit. Apparently, Anno was approached to write and direct in January, refused, and then changed his mind in March after he found out his ol' pal Higuchi was on the project. So... I guess Anno is friends with Higuchi? Alright, sure.

So there's not much else to say at the moment, other than Godzilla apparently has a very small fifth toe (don't you dare ask me what digit it is), and is going to be crazy enormous, taller than ADAM_5146's 108 meters, which is a fucking stupid and random number, by the way. I'm guessing either 120 or 150, but secretly I'm hoping for 150 because I want him to be to scale with Megaloman, and Toho has never really made a monster this tall that doesn't cheat by having long necks or something, and of course Megaloman never really looked 150 meters tall, at least not consistently. About that fifth toe... is Godzilla still a Coelophysid?

ALIENSESESES

Oh, uh, also I've read a few bits of actual news about the new Alien movies, this time coming from the director's own words rather than just a bunch of stupid bullshit someone made up. As far as PARADISE is concerned some guy who is apparently making a... Predator movie? Like, without any Aliens in it? Said he saw the script or something and it followed the crew investigating the disappearance of the Prometheus, and NOT David and Shaw, and also parts would take place on Earth or something, and then, like, there's a sequel hook into the actual movie that takes place on the Space Jockey homeworld.

I shouldn't have to explain all the reasons why this is bullshit, but what I SHOULD say is that Predator is confirmed for Mortal Kombat X, which he (do Predators have sexes?) is perfect for, as are Tremor and Tanya. No word on Reiko as the final boss or Khrome yet, although we've already got a darker, blue-ish silver ninja so maybe Khrome can show up in MK11 or something. Honestly, if you haven't heard of this guy yet, he's based on a factory defect UMK3 Smoke sculpture that left him a bright, mercury-esque silver color, which was nicknamed "Khrome" and sent to Ed Boon. Since then fans have evolved it into a T-1000 style fighter, who is variously referred to as a white or silver ninja. Takeda is already silver, but not THAT silver, and while this would be a problem in the 2D days, with all those fancy graphics and how divergent the ninjas have become, I wouldn't even bat an eye at it. If D&D went metallic, why can't MK? Take your bets on what the gold and bronze ninjas will end up being. And of course Khrome's origin as a mistake that turned into a rumor with a fan generated mythos is... kinda like 75% of how MK characters come to life in the first place. Well, at least it's how the good ones are made. Takeda is awesome and all, but seriously I hope Khrome doesn't get brushed off as some dumb nonsense like "Red Robin" or "Aqua," this dude definitely has potential, and a subtle metallic variation from Takeda can go a long way in establishing that color is no longer the sole defining characteristic of the ninja characters, which MK has been desperately trying to do for like 10 years now, to varied success.

...oh right, Aliens. So it turns out this other, currently unnamed Alien movie (technically PARADISE is still "Prometheus 2," but come on) has been rewritten! From what, I don't know. Could have been the story the fan-art is from, but I doubt it since it's been established for awhile now that the Blokamp's Alien movie will NOT initiate a new timeline, which has of course been reconfirmed.

But while initially that just seemed like kind of a missed opportunity to me, it's now becoming apparent that Blokamp has just shot himself in the fucking foot. Hey, anyone remember that video game ALIENS: Colonial Marines? No, you mean you drank a gallon a bleach just to forget that fucking stupid piece of shit ever existed? Well then you'll be happy to know that Neil Blokamp is making exactly that in movie form! Hey what are you doing in the laundry room?

Yeah, no, I'm not kidding. Blokamp wants to make a movie that includes Sigourney Weaver, takes place after ALIENS (although the script has been rewritten to match some of the continuity of PARADISE, it is apparently not a direct sequel to it), and forms a "triplet" or direct sequel to THAT film yet he continues to say (likely under pressure from the studio, as Fox has been attempting to try and homogenize all the franchise's media to conform to the same timeline as the films as of late, meaning that the current comics are actually a legit sequel to PROMETHEUS in their own right) that it will NOT diverge from the timeline containing the third and fourth films.

That's right, Neil Blokamp wants to make a sequel to ALIENS, and only ALIENS, and all the while continue to proclaim that his story won't cause any problems and he totally knows what he's doing, even though he was an outspoken hatred of, get this, EVERY. SINGLE. ALIEN MOVIE. Except the second one.

Yes friends, it's ALIENS: Colonial Marines the movie, and it's directed by my favroite kind of person, an "Alien fan." Oh joy! I can already smell the entire franchise burning in a heap right now! There's still hope that "Prometheus 2" will be cool, mostly based on the fact that we're supposed to get the Space Jockey homeworld and a really creepy new breed of alien in this one, but then again, that guy who for some reason is making another Predator movie (without any aliens) says none of that's happening either...

Well, whatever. I will say that I found the outrage over ACM to be pretty fucking hilarious, because it apparently surprised people, and at the very least I know that bad alien movies of an AvP:R caliber can still be entertaining monster movies, and ACM the movie has the potential to be just that to me; a shit fest with awesome monster effects that you have to watch with your finger on the fast forward button, and as long as it stays at that level it won't be the complete abomination that PROMETHEUS was. Ultimately, though, I'm not really concerned about what happens to aliens. I don't think it's in any danger in the long term, and Giger has already made his impact, so there's nothing to bother worrying about.

Aliens have never had to deal with a X.I.N.O. yet... let alone a X.I.N.O. 2. Nothing Neil Blokamp does will "ruin" Aliens, at worst he'll just make a really stupid movie. Honestly "Prometheus 2" has a bigger chance of being disappointing, I think, since it actually promised us something worthwhile, so it has something to take away if they screw it up, while Alien 9 only promises ACM the movie.

FACTUALLY ACCURATE News on ALIEN 8 (Paradise) & 9 (Untitled)

I haven't touched on it much here but of course being that I love monsters, and ALIEN changed the landscape of monster movies in a fundamental way, plus the monster itself is just so damn cool, I've been a big fan of the series for a while, even since before I was of an appropriate age to even watch the fucking things, if that makes any sense.

And when I say "fan of the series," don't be alarmed, because I mean the literal interpretation of that phrase, which is to say I'm not an "Alien fan" but rather someone who actually enjoys the fucking movies. Yes, that's right, take a deep breath, because you will not see any oxymorons here, not from me. My admiration for the series is genuine, and to me "series" means more than one thing, meaning ALL seven of the films, plus an enormous percentage of the various other tangents all have their own merits to me, although in particular my favroite movie is the third one, with one of the big reasons being that Ripley, Hicks, and that stupid fucking annoying child die, fixing the terrible, terrible mistake of the previous film of trying to give a god damned Alien movie a happy ending, which is outright blasphemy.

So, to reiterate, I'm not an "Alien fan" who only likes the horrible James Cameron movie which was written at a 5th grade reading level and features all of the stupid, cheap bullshit in Titanic and Avatar, I like the Aliens themselves, and the world and the mythology they're a part of. I'm invested in the development of the series, as a whole, because this is what the actual definition of a fandom is, and that's I am, the actual definition of an Alien fan, not an "Alien fan." We clear?

Moving on!

I Have a Better Idea...

UPDATE: I suppose I should amend this post to point out that I've The Godzilla Cycle has... I guess launched. It's just a tiny bit of information, but I cover the details better on the site itself which is here. Obviously this isn't all I've done in the... oh I guess it's been four months, but the posted articles are the only ones finished or near enough to finished that I could justify releasing them. I WAS going to hold off until I got in an article for all the topics relevant to the 50's, but, uh... the scope and detail of my articles kind of ballooned to a kiiind of unmanageable size, or at least unmanageable with regard to the fact that I'm trying to work on a number of other things as well. Anwyas, on to the original post:

So recently I made some resolve to make this whole "unseen" project thingy, because none of this info is out there and most of the stuff that is is either a rumor, lie, or both. It came about of course because of a kind of retreat into denial after Godzilla died, but with the recent news of Godzilla fighting back against his most deadly enemy yet - Hollywood - it kinda moved from "a thing I'm doing because what else is there" to a full-on preservation attempt. I figure, if Godzilla loses and this death is permanent after all, someone, somewhere, should be keeping a record in the first world's most widely spoken language.

And there's no one more qualified than me, really. Nor is there anyone who comes even remotely close who's actually trying.

So that means I have three main concerns that the last two posts I made (and the presumed future ones) are addressing:

1. Preservation - To keep ALL parts of the Godzilla myth cycle alive for as long as I am capable. The whole point is that, as our cultural keystone, Godzilla is supposed to outlive all of us and represent us to whoever inherits the future, be they wandering aliens or teenage cavemen or reptile people from the Hollow Earth. I can only keep the legends alive for so long and with a limited amount of reach, but if I can get it out there, there's a chance future generations will keep the flame going. Homer's epics were written in the mid-700's bce, if Godzilla can't survive for a mere 60 years, then we, as a civilization, have failed utterly.

2. Illumination - There are stories that, for some weird reason, have simply gone untold. Not rare, obscure details lost to time, but public, well-known and oft-repeated tales plastered over something as widely seen as wikipedia. There is something wrong with that. Why is it that so much is made of Godzilla vs. the Space Monsters and yet things like Bride of Godzilla and Super Godzilla: God's Angry Messenger are just outright ignored by millions of people? Where is the sense in that? All it takes is a minute of one's time, but instead this stuff, largely, remains buried despite its ease of access. I want to change all that, and not only keep what's already printed in English alive, but to tell the whole story, to the best of my knowledge, aggregated from all over the world. After all, Godzilla belongs to all the people of the world, not just a single nation.

3. Education - Because of language barriers, and the 30 some odd years when enthusiastic people existed but a clear "fandom" or source of information to most of the world did not, there are many, many half-truths, rumors, misunderstandings, and of course outright lies. In contemporary times, there are many websites with a somewhat "respected" status, that are looked up to as being trustworthy, but do nothing but spread their horrid lies and filth all over the collective imaginations of those who simply don't know who to trust. Toho Kingdom is the main source of all the lies, obviously, but they're not alone. And really, Toho Kingdom isn't even the worst there is, but the less I say about the Zilla Deniers the better. Hence, there's needs to be an actual trustworthy source out there, somewhere you can go to get the real story. Naturally, I'm just a fallible human being like everyone else, and I don't and can't know everything. However, unlike some *ahem* other places out there, I don't have to know everything, because I have this incredible super human ability to admit when I don't know something or if I'm unsure or when I don't have all the facts. Presenting information simply as it exists allows the record of the rumors to persist, and leaves the power of logical thinking in the hands of the reader. Where absolutism was once king, I can introduce doubt back into the world. Psuedo-Apollodorus (whoever that guy was) never claimed to say exactly which versions of the myths were true, he simply presented the information as he knew it, to record ALL of it, and leave the rest to the reader. That is what I hope to accomplish.

These points have, more or less, already been made in the introduction to my "master list" article, but I'm reiterating them here because they tie directly into what this post is about. See, I said that in that article that I would update it as new information became available or changed, to make that a current go-to list and the other bits would take longer to come out as I checked everything. So it would go research > update master list > write decade specific article. However, in just a few days after writing the list, I learned so much more that large portions of it became outdated all at once, including information about Bride of Godzilla, meaning I would have to go and update both articles.

Not a big deal, just some simple updates, right? Well, it's more than that. What I'm doing here is not enough, and the formatting, the way the information is presented, I realized, isn't conducive to portraying it in the most meaningful and effective way. In order to correct those problems, and hold true to my three main goals, a brand new approach is needed.

What I need to do is create a dedicated database, something like a "wiki" I guess you could call it, where each page leads into another, where the development of various ideas, stories, creatures, and the like can be traced and cross-referenced with their respective histories. A simple list of drafts by date wasn't really accomplishing the sort of thing I now realize I'm "destined" to create.

So, for starters, I'm staying the fuck away from wikia, and that goes for Wikizilla too. I have nothing personal against the de facto Godzilla wiki, it's just... weird. The rules there are random and make no sense, it's scope changes every other hour, and no one seems to really be talking to each other. It's certainly fine for what it is, but a pile of randomly split and merged pages containing not much more than a gallery of sprites and a few statistics isn't really what I'm trying to do. More importantly, I don't really want to mess with whatever they have going on over there. It makes absolutely no sense to me, but they seem to be doing just fine, so there's no need for me to jump in. Frankly, I have bigger fish to fry.

So what will I do, then? For now, I'll be using blogger, and using tags, main page links, and links within articles to keep things into a sort of organized whole. However, I'm hoping this will be a temporary solution, and that sometime in the future I'll find a more appropriate host, one that isn't a wholly owned subsidiary of Skynet, to store information that might be considered subversive to Google and Hollywood's agenda. They haven't taken down anything I've done here yet, but it probably won't be long until the "sponsored" thoughtocracy becomes a techno-mediated mandatory one. It's already headed there now, with only the weakest token attempts at resistance to a few "Call of Duty" advertising campaigns which are completely ineffective.

So, since there's really not much else for me to do at this point, expect to see the new database grow at a pretty steady pace. I'll of course link it here when it's live.

And yes, that means I won't be updating the article series I started here anymore, that'll exist on the new database from now on. In fact, I will more than likely abandon this thing altogether.

"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