Hey, how are you? I wanted to share 2 ideas with you I had for a solo MonsterVerse Mothra film ( if it ever happens ).
1. Monarch funds an expedition to Infant Island and awakens Battra as a reborn Mothra tries to restore balance. Dr. Ilene Chen, as played by Zhang Ziyi, would be the main character. 2. Alternatively, it would be a prequel either set during the 1970s-1980s or in ancient Asia, emphasizing what Mothra is in our culture.
Well, "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" has come and gone. The majority of fans loved it, general audiences liked it, critics slammed it, and it barely inched past $100 million domestically.
I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed this film, for the most part. But there are still a few things that I would have done differently. This post is my endeavor to write a summary of the movie in the way I would have liked it to have gone down. A touch-up job, if you will.
You might wanna grab a snack. This is gonna take a little while.
The film would begin with an extended San Francisco flashback. We'd see more footage of the battle between Godzilla and the MUTOs, as well as the Russel family trying to dodge through the chaos. Andrew Russel would be show to have died when Godzilla slammed the male MUTO into that one skyscraper, with him getting killed when it fell.
When the film cuts to the present day, it wouldn't cut to Emma's crying face. Instead, as the news broadcast plays, we'd actually see shots of people visiting the monument in the now-overgrown ruins of San Francisco (hinting at the later theory of the Titans having a beneficial effect on the environment in the long-run). Then, after a brief montage of protests and such, we'd actually cut to the Russel family. The rest of the scene would play out much the same way; the failed breakfast scene, Mothra's hatching, the terrorists invasion. The major change here would be that we actually see Mothra breaking out of the facility and into the jungle. She'd also display the ability to camouflage in her larval form, similar to Mothra Leo in "Rebirth of Mothra".
The senate scene would play out in a similar fashion, except that Senator Williams (who would be identified as the Speaker of the House here) would have a much bigger role later, and would imply to MONARCH that if they can't kill or control the Titans, then the military has developed weapons of their own to take care of them–beginning a build-up to the Oxygen Destroyer.
Mark would get recruited same as before. They'd take him to the Castle Bravo base and all of that, but as well as the MUTO head, a deleted scene of a Titan corpse named Margygr would remain in the film.
The character of Rick Stanton would be more than just the film's deadpan snarker. He'd still have his share of one-liners, though, but they'd be reduced in number, he'd be a lot more helpful and serious when he needs to be, and even strike up a friendship with Mark. He'd basically be recreated as a sort of "cool uncle" type character. In addition, outside of Colonel Foster, none of the G-Team members would get any big name-drops or backstories. At least three of them have bios dedicated to them on the MONARCH Sciences website, but in the movie, they all sailed over my head. When Griffin's leg got injured in the final fight, I was like "wait, who was she again? She was a pilot, right? Did she do anything other than fly stuff and get hurt?". So yeah, Foster is the only G-Team person we focus on here.
Once again, things would proceed mostly the same up until the Antarctica scene, except it would be in a sunset as opposed to the middle of the night. There was a deleted scene in which Alan Jonah and his second in command, Asher (the guy who gets shot by Colonel Foster in the gunfight scene) share a toast, and it helps develop Jonah, at least a little bit. Emma would come across as somewhat emotionless in these parts, and not even Madison is totally sure what's going on.
Ghidorah would get woken up, Godzilla would show up, and they'd duke it out. Much more focus would be given to the monsters during their fights, and they'd move with the same sense of scale and weight that they had in the 2014 film. Vivienne Graham would still die, but it would be a lot more obvious and we'd get a better look at it. Mark would get knocked out, and Ghidorah flies away, albeit not quite as "up up and away!" as he was in the movie. Again, a sense of weight and scale for a creature his size.
Now comes my first major new scene: after Ghidorah is awoken, people start reporting both him and Godzilla all a long the Atlantic heading northward. Senator Williams would have a meeting with Admiral Stenz on their protocols for a terminal operation. It is here that we'd see the Oxygen Destroyer for the first time, with Stenz giving a brief rundown of its stats as an anaerobic weapon, maybe some footage of actual tests of it in labs, but advising that it is only a last ditch effort. Williams tells him to launch it at the monsters at the first sign of things slipping out of MONARCH's grasp.
Meanwhile, Mark wakes up, everyone's shocked at the prospect of Emma purposefully releasing Ghidorah, and then she Skypes in. I'd like to point out that this is probably my least favorite part of the movie, mostly because I think I understand what she's going for, but man, the dialogue needs work. It'd be the same thing, but cleaned up and better-sounding. Her reasons would be made a little clearer. In her mind, Andrew wouldn't have died if humanity hadn't damaged the Earth and aroused the Titans. She'd be a lot colder here, and is unconcerned with how many people are killed as long as A) There are at least a few left, and B) as long as the Earth resets to her idea of a perfect ecosystem. Mark's "this won't bring him back" retort would be met with a simple "I know". Also, she'd explain a little more about the beneficial effects of the Titans. In addition to certain Titan's radiation emissions accelerating botanical growth, they'd also be carriers for seeds and nutrients and the like, in the same way that bees carry pollen.
The Rodan scene would go the same way, except that here he'd be able to spray a stream of magma from his mouth, similar to Otachi's acid spit in Pacific Rim.
We'd also get more scenes with the MONARCH staff inside the base realizing their containment systems are offline. Rodan would also immediately fly off of the volcano and into the village, giving us some decent destruction stuff before the Argo lures him away to fight Ghidorah. The pilot who ejects would do so because Rodan bites off his plane's wing; he'd eject and there'd be a brief pause where we think he's safe...then Rodan eats him.
Before the chase and fight scene, we'd cut back to Senator Williams and Admiral Stenz watching a report of everything going down. Williams orders Stenz to fire the Oxygen Destroyer, but agrees to let the army wait until they're a decent enough distance from Isla Del Mara.
The Rodan/Ghidorah fight would last longer, and again, there would be much more focus on the actual fight. The scene with them trying to get the Osprey aboard wouldn't necessarily be cut, but would be moved to a later point in this rewrite.
Ghidorah would defeat Rodan, comes after the Argo, and gets body slammed by Godzilla into the water. As they fight, it's now that Stenz calls them up and tells them their going to get Oxygen Destroyer-ed. We cut back to the fight (I think you've picked up by now that the fights would be much more focused on the monsters), which would go the same way, with Godzilla ripping off the left head (Kevin to some). A B-2 Bomber would arrive on the scene and fire the Oxygen Destroyer missile. It's effect would still involve a green glow, but it would be more like a chemical reaction, like when baking soda fizzles over.
Godzilla appears to be dead, Ghidorah survives and regrows his head. Rodan would fly up, beaten and battered, and with an obvious sense of reluctance, bows to Ghidorah. Then Ghidorah does his roar, and the other Titans wake up. I switched the two parts around because I feel like it should be made clearer what Ghidorah is doing.
"Long live the king".
While Mothra emerges from her cocoon back in China, MONARCH deduces that Ghidorah is an alien. His regeneration ability is explained as a biological necessity for a creature that travels through space, where debris travel at such high speed that a speck of dust could cause as much damage as a nuclear blast, and his wings might act as solar sails. The three-heads would be a further insurance policy against damage. If one is damaged, there are still more to run the rest of the creature. Finally, it's explained that his lack of dependence on oxygen is the reason he was able to survive for so long in the ice; he was in no danger of suffocation.
As a further new scene, we actually get to see when Ghidorah touches down in Washington. Senator Williams is killed when her evacuation chopper is destroyed by Ghidorah, similar to how the Japanese cabinet was taken out in Shin Godzilla. Admiral Stenz has already left by this time for Castle Bravo.
Meanwhile, both Madison and Emma are horrified at what has happened...but for entirely different reasons. Madison is concerned about the people, but Emma is focused solely on her perfect ecosystem potentially going extinct. Yeah, I'm trying to make her way less sympathetic here. Anyway, we get the scene where Emma explains to Jonah that they could turn this whole thing around by hooking up the ORCA to Boston stadium's speakers, with Madison listening in the whole time.
Jonah tells Emma that they'll do no such thing...
...and then shoots her through the head.
Yes. I just went there. Emma Russell is dead, exit stage right. No redemption arc, no reconciliation with Mark or Madison, no trying to milk sympathy from the character, just pow. And in the process, Alan Jonah becomes a much scarier and more competent villain, who then tells his men to get the ORCA and destroy it. Madison, still reeling from hearing her mother's headshot, sneaks through the bunker and retrieves the ORCA, and is chased out by the terrorists, managing to escape in a Humvee and losing them in the forest.
At this point, we'd get a montage of all the chaos going on around the world; Behemoth in Rio de Janeiro, Scylla in Phoenix, Methuselah in Munich, Bunyip in Sydney, Abaddon in Moscow, Leviathan in London, and so on. Mothra would have an earlier scene here, stopping Quetzalcoatl from attacking a jet airliner as she makes her way to Castle Bravo.
Mothra arrives at Castle Bravo, they realize Godzilla is still alive and go down to revive him with a nuke, while the surviving military and MONARCH forces head to Washington to confront Ghidorah.
The battle with Ghidorah and Rodan would (once again) get more footage and battle scenes and we'd actually get to see Maser cannons being deployed. One of the things that annoyed me was that Maser cannons do exist in the MonsterVerse (we see them on a readout at Castle Bravo) but they never bothered to USE them!
(Ahem), anyway, Madison is able to get the ORCA working, and pacifies the Titans around the world. Unfortunately, it also catches Ghidorah's attention. Rodan looks like he might desert Ghidorah, but then the three-headed dragon shoots him a look(s) and a growl that basically says, "I don't care what that...that thing says, you still belong to me". The two fly away from Washington to track down the signal. Jonah and his band of terrorists have also realized where Madison and the ORCA are, and begin to converge on her as well, intent on keeping her from halting Jonah's plans of letting the Titans run amok.
Meanwhile, the submarine the rest of MONARCH are in gets pulled through a whirlpool into the Hollow Earth (and they actually bother to say right then that the weapons systems are damaged instead of waiting until later). They discover not!Atlantis, and Godzilla in a radioactive lava temple inside. Serizawa does his sacrifice, and Godzilla goes to the surface, fully restored. After he does his "Call to Arms" thing, Mothra appears, and the two of them swim/fly off to defeat Ghidorah once and for all.
Back in Boston, the terrorists finally find Madison and the ORCA. Just as it looks like they're about to kill her, Ghidorah arrives. He slaughters the terrorists with his gravity beams, and kills Jonah by picking him up between his two heads and pulling him apart, like that scene with the spaghetti in Lady and the Tramp, while Madison manages to escape. She throws away the ORCA, Ghidorah destroys it (for good; it's not coming back), he goes to kill Maddie...
...and then Godzilla and Mothra show up, and the final battle begins. The only interruptions we get are Mark and the others going down to find Madison, and once they do, that's it for them, they're out of there. No cutting away, just the monster climax fight we've all been waiting for. The military still take part in the battle, with the Argo and Maser tanks and so forth, but nothing too obtrusive.
Godzilla and Mothra tag-team Ghidorah, and for a while, it looks like things are going their way. Then Ghidorah summons Rodan to battle Mothra. Things go on like they did in the movie, with Mothra paralyzing Rodan with her stinger; Rodan would be shown twitching and frothing on the ground from the venom, alive but paralyzed. Ghidorah gets a power boost by chomping down on Boston's power lines, and stuns Godzilla before grabbing him, flying into the air, and dropping him.
Before Ghidorah can finish off Godzilla, Mothra reappears for one last stand. She lasts a lot longer against Ghidorah here, even displaying some new abilities, such as emitting a poisonous gas from her wings, and firing little bursts of electricity-like energy from her antennae, like a taser. Eventually, Ghidorah manages to critically wound her, and then turns his attention the military and the fleeing scientists. As the focus shifts back to Mark and Madison, they manage to board an osprey that becomes damaged by a stray shot from Ghidorah's beams. This is where the cut landing sequence on the Argo would take place, except it would just be Sam Coleman who drops the spare to open the doors. He is MONARCH's tech guy, after all, I think he should be the one to figure it out.
Mothra, mortally wounded but alive, crawls her way over to Godzilla. There's a brief moment between the two (shipping fuel? you decide), and then Mothra climbs onto Godzilla's side and begins to transfer her energy to him in the same way Rodan transferred his in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II.
The scientists on the Argo report that while Mothra's energy levels are dropping, Godzilla's are increasing...to the point where he's about to go thermonuclear. With the last of her energy poured into her ally, Mothra vaporizes entirely.
Godzilla goes into Burning mode, fries the living daylights out of Ghidorah, and then chomps/vaporizes his final head, same as in the movie. As the dust settles, several other Titans emerge from the smoke and surround Godzilla. Rodan, who has recovered by this time, appears to. Instead of being initially confrontational, the volcanic pterosaur appears relieved that he no longer has to serve Ghidorah, and is the first one to bow, followed by the other Titans. Godzilla roars, proclaiming himself the true King of the Monsters.
Since Alan Jonah was killed off, the post credits scene is completely different. Dr. Chen visits the makeshift containment facility where Mothra metamorphosed, which is now being overseen by her twin sister, Dr. Ling, who tells her sister she has something to show her. They go behind the waterfall, where there's a brand-new Mothra egg.
And that's my rewrite of "Godzilla: King of the Monsters". It may not satisfy the problems that everyone had with this movie, but it clears up a lot of the problems I had. Jonah is a much more prevalent threat, there's no trying to milk sympathy from Emma, the monster fights are given even more focus, and the new Titans are given a chance to shine in their rampage sequences.
What do you think? Did I do a good job fixing up the movie? Did I make it worse? Do you like them both?
I really like it! I do love the movie but I feel like this improves on things. Though I feel like having a fight between Mothra and Quetzalcoatl as well as one between her and Rodan during the final battle would kind of feel repetitive, unless Quetzalcoatl isn't going to be a pterosaur or bird like usual. It's more of just a personal pet peeve of mine when there are monsters that are very similar in design to others, I like them all to be unique, which is why I really appreciate monsters like Scylla and Behemoth. I wish they showed even more of them. I would rather see her fight some other monster at that time. I think having a short confrontation between Godzilla and Rodan would be neat too, though I'm not sure where that would fit in.
I definitely agree with you that the fights needed to focus more on the monsters, and that the monsters besides Godzilla and King Ghidorah needed a little more screentime. I REALLY wish they would show more urban destruction in these movies, in both 2014 and KOTM. Show more monsters, especially King Ghidorah and the new monsters just destroying buildings. I don't understand why the MonsterVerse thinks classic monster destruction scenes are so goddamn taboo. They didn't show it in 2014 either. In BOTH movies they either show them knocking down one single building or just show the aftermath. Ugh. I know they wanted to make Godzilla a good guy, and it works in KOTM, but maybe in Godzilla 2014 have him start destructive and then have a sort of ark where he turns into more into what he's like in the actual movie and in KOTM by the end of 2014, that way we can get an amazing Hollywood Godzilla destruction scene. And this movie definitely needed scenes of King Ghidorah and the other monsters just wrecking cities. Again, I don't understand why the MonsterVerse insists on neglecting on city destruction scenes. Do they think they're repetitive and people are sick of them? Because I'll never get sick of them.
Also, while I like pretty much all of Serizawa's dialogue, the fortune cookie line didn't work. It's a neat joke I guess, but it falls apart just because of how unrealistic it is. What kind of fortunate cookie is that long and has that much to do with a specific situation? The stuff I get is vague and literally one sentence.
But those are my only qualms. Good job!
Thanks!
Quetzalcoatl would be more bird-like in appearance than Rodan, and there wouldn't even be much of a fight; just Mothra flashing her God Rays at him and spooking him off. It would kind of hint that she's an Alpha species as well that could command as much respect among the Titans as Godzilla.
You never know, maybe Legendary thinks those destruction scenes are a bit repetitive. I mean, how many American blockbusters have the same kind of city destruction over and over again? Or maybe they think we're just a little more sensitive to that kind of thing ever since 9/11. I mean, how many movies have destroyed New York since then? The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are The Avengers and Cloverfield.
Personally, I took Serizawa's line as a bit of sarcasm on his part. Like there was an unspoken "of course I made that all up!" buried in there.
Pretty good! though honestly, i think Alan's death is a bit to... cheesy. I feel like it be better if he's just about to get stomped on but utters "Long live the King" in his dying breath. Signifying that while Ghidorah may kill him, he's satisfied with his decision all the same.
Also what do you think the other titans would look like?
I think in my version, it'd start to become clear that Jonah's talk about "restoring balance" and cleansing the Earth of the "human infection" is just a bunch of baloney. Remember, the guy dabbled in Titan parts and DNA (somehow) before he started on this. In this version, Jonah really doesn't care about saving the Earth. He wants power over whatever is left of humanity after the Titans destroy everything; the "saving the Earth" stuff is just a front to lure over followers that he can use to further his cause. As for his death, I was kind of trying to reference the scene in Cloverfield where Hud gets ripped apart by the monster.
As for the other Titans, they'd mostly stay the same as in the film, but with a few tweaks. Methuselah would retain his horn-headed, mountain-backed appearance, but his overall body shape would be reminiscent of pareiasaurs from the Permian era. Scylla would resemble some sort of clawless Japanese spider crab, and would use the dangling tentacles hanging below her mouth to grab up people and pull them into her mandibles during her scenes. She'd also have some sort of cryonic gas that she could use as an offensive weapon, or to make a nest; she'd be described as a sea-side creature who much prefers colder climates, explaining why she'd go to the Arctic in the end credits and how she's slowing down ice melting.
Bunyip would resemble the Ambulocetus, an ancient mammal believed to be an early member of the whale family. Abaddon would essentially be a giant leaf mantis. Leviathan would resemble a pliosaur, but with a slightly shorter head, crocodile-like legs, and a much longer tail. Quetzalcoatl would resemble a cross between a dromaeosaur and an Archaeopteryx, having large, bird-like wings and raptor-like sickle claws on its feet. It would have iridescent blue plumage, with an array of red, green, gold, and purple feathers on it's wings and tail.
How would you rewrite the movie if you have to keep its original draft featuring Rodan siding with Godzilla and Mothra instead of King Ghidorah?
This means you have to keep these so that they can be adapted into scenes for the finalized product without any question:
@GodzillaIsland7.2 I've long since altered the outline for my rewrite, and I've actually started work on it for real. You can find the beginnings of it here.
But to answer your question, I plan on having it so that Rodan is on Ghidorah's side up until the Boston fight. But he gradually starts to grow tired of being bossed around by him, so when he sees Godzilla and Mothra show up to challenge him, he switches over to their side when he gets the opportunity. Something like that.
Hello, there. Call me LegendaryGoji1954. Nice to meet you, JurassicKaiju14. I am new on Wikizilla. I've been patiently waiting for an update on the rewrite on Fanfiction. Have you worked on it more, since we're all stuck inside?
Been working on it, but it's been a bit slow going. I hope to have the next (or rather, the first proper) chapter up sometime soon.
But I'm definitely working on it.
Thanks for taking an interest in it.
You're welcome, man. Hey, I've had ideas for how the unseen Titans could look.
Hey, sorry if you're busy, but I had an idea. You know Kraken? The Titan in the novelization that actually doesn't have a designation? What if Monarch gives him a designation, but it's Cthulhu?
Hmm, A lot of ideas presented in this fan fiction really nice, and some aspects would have improved the film greatly, like the Oxygen Destroyer buildup and the scrap between Mothra and Quetzalcoatl, but other aspects like Emma Russel dying earlier, eh, not so much. Personally, I may actually prefer this version over the one we got, but I'm still not exactly sure.
Thanks for your feedback! I've actually long since removed Emma's earlier death. But a lot of the other things will be incorporated into that fan rewrite I'm working on over on Fanfiction.
I saw the first chapter of San Francisco for the rewrite. I love it.
You're welcome. I wonder how certain characters will act differently in your rewrite.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. This rewrite actually fixes all the few complaints and nitpicks I have with KOTM. You are truly talented, JurassicKaiju14. Keep up the good work.
Thank you! I'm actually working on making it a reality over on my Fanfiction account, if you're interested. There's a few changes from this draft here, but quite a bit of it is still in place.
I can't wait for Chapter 2: Temple of the Moth. Hopefully, we see more news reports stuff.
Not sure how reliable We Got This Covered is, but recently they've put out an article stating that test screenings for Godzilla vs. Kong did not go well, and the film will now undergo heavy reshoots starting in January.
And with this, I am now officially concerned for this movie.
I suppose it's a good thing that they decided to delay it to next November. Let's just hope all of this extra time and reshooting will amount to a decent film, and we don't wind up with a muddled Justice League situation...
I hope they're pretty much sticking to the original draft of the film. I don't want Michael Dougherty to take the creative aspect of the film.
He apparently helped write the thing. So he's already part of the creative aspect.
And what if the original draft of the film is bad?
Oh dear. The movie undergoing reshoots isn't the greatest of news. The fact that they need to reshoot parts of it somewhat concerns me, as if the fact that Adam Wingard is directing it wasn't already concerning enough. I just want this movie to be really good...
JurrasicKaiju14 the original draft may be good tough,but I don't want Michael Dougherty to take the creative aspect of the kaju fights, I know why he chose to do rewrites,because he's worried that Adam is going to mess up with his characters he's like"oh man,Adam is going to mess up with my characters, he's going to make Alexander Skarsgard to be the main character and my characters to be the side characters".
Relax, everyone. The test screenings were probably deemed bad by the same people who deemed KOTM bad.
OK, are we sure that those aren't bootlegs? I mean, c'mon, those look like somebody made a couple of bootlegs of Bandai and NECA figures, stuffed them into a box, put a picture of a Godzilla figure up in the corner and then slapped a Playmates logo on it.
So either the toys are really that bad or these are just fakes.
My reaction(s) in a nutshell: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3qdWWdhl5jI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KAGCyavAu8U
XD
Page fixed.
Ladies and gentlemen, those who care, it is official. After a while of spouting out ideas and beating around the bush, I am finally beginning by fan-rewrite of Godzilla: King of the Monsters. My goal with this fanfic is to improve upon concepts and characters from the film, while also putting in a few new spins that I personally would have liked to see.
You can find the beginnings of it here, at my Fanfiction.net account.
For a little while now, I've had it on my mind to do a fan-rewrite of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, in an effort to strengthen the story and characters, and generally improve the overall experience. Below is the revised version of the opening news broadcasts and Emma Russell's introduction scene. My goal here was to give the audience a better sense of a post-2014 world, and set-up other plot elements like Alan Jonah, the Oxygen Destroyer, and the Titans' environmental benefits, exemplified by the overgrown ruins of the destroyed cities.
Hope you enjoy, and if you have any thoughts, don't hesitate to leave a comment.
Newscaster 1 (V.O.): Five years ago, our world as we know it changed forever.
(Shaky phone and camcorder footage of various events from 2014; a blurry view of the male MUTO flying away from Janjira, the Hawaii airport attack, the female in Vegas, long-distance footage of Godzilla battling them both in San Francisco, and so on)
Newscaster 1 (V.O.): Ancient Titans, larger and more powerful than any previously known species, rose up to do battle, taking thousands of human lives in the process. By the end of it all, three cities lay in ruins; Honolulu…
(A view of what was once the Honolulu Airport; grass grows through cracks in the pavement, shrubs growing in massive footprints; vines hang from the broken monorail and crawl over destroyed jumbo jets)
Newscaster 1 (V.O.): …Las Vegas…
(A trio of hikers step through the ruined streets of Vegas, grimly gazing around them at the ruined hotels, casinos, and resorts. The Eiffel Tower lays broken across the ground; the Statue of Liberty is scratched up and missing it’s torch-bearing arm; one of the Luxor Sphinx’s eyes has been gouged out, a jagged scar running across its nose and down its left cheek. As with Honolulu, vines and creepers cover all.)
Newscaster 1 (V.O.): …and San Francisco.
(In the distance, we can see the ruined skyline of San Francisco, now a post-apocalyptic jungle/city. The Transamerica Pyramid is the only skyscraper still recognizable. On the outskirts of the ruined city is a monument with several tall stone pillars. On each of the pillars are names, far too many to count; the names of the dead. A crowd is gathered before the monument, paying their respects.)
Newscaster 1 (V.O.): Two of the Titans, dubbed MUTOs by the United States government, were slain during the battle, and their bodies subsequently confiscated and shipped to undisclosed locations…
(Images of the MUTO corpses; the male, mangled and crushed beneath the remains of a skyscraper, hazmat teams swarming around it. Another view shows the female’s severed head being airlifted into a waiting tanker, while crews begin to dissect the creature’s limbs and body, ready to move the pieces into tankers of their own)
Newscaster 1 (V.O.): But the victor, the creature now known to the world as “Godzilla”, has remained elusive since that fateful week.
(iPhone footage of Godzilla descending beneath the waters of San Francisco Bay)
Newscaster 1 (V.O.): And though the so called “King of the Monsters” is most certainly still alive and roaming the oceans, actual encounters and sightings have been extremely rare.
(A brief montage of pictures, most of them of Godzilla’s spines poking above the water, noticeably changing from the 2014 to the 2019 design)
(Montage continues. A new newscaster’s voice is heard; different channel, perhaps?)
Newscaster 2 (V.O.): In the five years since the 2014 attacks, Godzilla has become the center of the biggest controversy of the century; should this massive creature be allowed to remain alive? Critics cite the creature’s destructive capablities as a threat to society, while supporters make note of his instrumental role in stopping a potentially apocalyptic scenario courtesy of the MUTO species.
(A montage of people being interviewed)
Interviewee 1: I lost my business and my home just from that thing coming ashore. Do we really want to have something like this roaming free?
Interviewee 2: He’s just an animal. I don’t think he means to cause any trouble, he’s just following his instincts. He can’t help it if he’s 400-feet tall.
Interviewee 3: I don’t care if he’s some kind of “living fossil” or whatever. This isn’t his world anymore. And if nukes can’t kill him, then they need to make something that can.
(A familiar face apppears on the screen. It’s Ford Brody.)
Brody: I was on the front lines against these things. Believe me, I know what they’re capable of. (he pauses) And I also know this: if it weren’t for him, we probably wouldn’t be here to be discussing this.
Newscaster 2 (V.O.): The controversy extends far beyond Godzilla himself, though. In the aftermath of 2014, it was revealed that a top-secret, multi-national organization, code-named Monarch, had been tracking and studying Godzilla for some time prior to the disaster, and it is believed that there might be many more of these so-called Titans that they are keeping secret from the public.
(Footage from Washington DC. Ishiro Serizawa, Vivienne Graham, and a few legal aides ascend the steps to the Capitol building. Protesters yell and jeer at them from both sides of the stairs, waving signs along the lines of “NO MORE SECRETS”, “HUMANITY IS KING”, “DESTROY ALL MONSTERS”, etc.)
Newscaster 2 (V.O.): Despite receiving new technologies and additional funding in the months after the attacks, Monarch has come under intense scrutiny by the United States government, who accuses them of not performing their original mission to eradicate the creatures before they can pose a threat to humanity.
(Montage ends. Cut to Dr. Emma Russell, bent over a table upon which the ORCA device rests. A laptop is hooked up to it, transfering data while she fiddles withe some of the more technical bits. The room is dark; Emma is silhoutted by light coming through a window, outlining a focused, determined look on her face. A TV is in the background, and we continue to see and hear from it while she works.)
Newscaster 3 (V.O.): …although continually denied by the government, rumors and conspiracy theorists claim that the military has begun testing experimental chemical weapons, in the hopes of finding a non-nuclear solution to potential future Titan attacks…
(Emma glances up from her work. A montage of images; blurry photos taken from a boat, showing what looks like a glowing mushroom cloud in the distance; pictures of dead fish and other sea-life, their bodies horrifically corroded, some practically stripped to the bone.
Emma purses her lips; she has a look of obvious disdain.
A beep from the computer. She turns away from the TV. The laptop screen reads: “BIOACOUSTIC DATA DOWNLOAD COMPLETE”. She unplugs the laptop, and gives the ORCA one last look-over inside its case.
She looks up at a framed picture mounted on a shelf. It’s the entire Russell family; Andrew sits in the middle, smiling like the happy little boy he was.
Emma’s determined look falters. For a brief moment, we can see the grief and pain that drives her.
The moment passes. She turns back to the ORCA and closes the case. Picks it up and exits. The TV remains on as she leaves.)
Newscaster 4 (V.O.): …other Titan-related news, two trespassers were apprehended last Monday attempting to break into a Sudanian government facility in Jebel Barkal, believed by some to be secretly a Monarch research outpost. The two were identified as having ties with Alan Jonah…
(A picture of Alan Jonah, in all of his Tywin Lannister-ness, appears on the screen)
Newscaster 4 (V.O.): …a former British Army Colonel and MI6 agent turned eco-terrorist and mercenary leader, who reportedly has taken an interest in Monarch’s Titan-based operations. As of now, Jonah’s current whereabouts and motives are currently unknown, and any potential information is to reported to authorities immediately.
Once again, hope you enjoyed, and make sure to leave a comment if you have any thoughts.
As someone who eats up world-building in kaiju stories like candy, I would have loved to see most of this in the film. Ford's brief statement is pretty much exactly what I wanted out of him at the end of G14 too. I think the part about the Oxygen Destroyer should have been phrased more professionally though (even Fox might balk at directly citing "conspiracy theorists"), and mentioning Jonah is unnecessary, since he's entering the movie pretty soon anyway.
Thank you for the feedback! There was initially going to be a little blurb about a program to build walls for coastal cities, a la Pacific Rim, but I didn't quite know where to put it and I ended up leaving it out entirely.
I actually considered having him replace Barnes (the guy who drops the F-Bomb when Ghidorah wakes up) in my version of the story, but I feel like he would kind of be wasted. And it feels odd for him to immediately join Monarch's G-Team after everything he did to get back to his family in 2014. I'll probably just leave his cameo as just that–a cameo.
Hey. The box office number for Godzilla King Of The Monsters 2019 movie has updated again. Can you see if that number is the final total number? I don't understand how the Box Office Website works sometimes.
Ahh, the humans. Interesting little creatures, aren’t they? Depending on who you asked after watching Godzilla: King of the Monsters, they either were okay-but-not great, or they were so unbelievably awful that they ruined the movie and made 2014 look like a masterpiece (not that I think it's bad, I just liked KOTM much better). I mean, why sympathize with a fractured family that’s fallen apart in the wake of a horrific tragedy when you can be watching giant monsters ripping the life out of each other, right?
Well, I’m going to make a pretty big confession here. You ready? Here it goes.
I didn’t think KOTM’s human characters were all that bad.
Now, now, c’mon. Hear me out. I’m not saying they’re great. I’m just saying that they weren’t as apocalyptically bad as everyone likes to make them out to be. At the very least, they didn’t have me tearing my hair out and wishing for the monsters to just eat Millie Bobbie Brown or anything like that.
Besides, I stopped wishing death on child characters after school shootings became more frequent.
I’ve seen a lot of comments around YouTube saying that they wish there was a Godzilla movie that just cut out the humans entirely and focused solely on the kaiju. One particularly idiotic commenter wrote that Serizawa’s sacrifice could have been replaced by Mothra swimming down to Godzilla’s lair and recharging him with her radioactive dust or whatever.
I think that’s a stupid idea. Both of them, actually. Mothra just isn’t a swimmer, unless she pulls some kind of Aqua Mothra stunt like in Rebirth of Mothra II, but then people would say the movie was even more ridiculous.
Here’s the thing about human characters in Godzilla movies. As “annoying” as they may be, they’re actually essential to making them work. Having human characters reminds the audience of what the stakes are, and how dangerous these creatures are. The most effective scenes of the original 1954 film aren’t the ones where Godzilla is pulling high-tension wires down or looking in on subway trains; it’s the ones after the rampage, the ones where little children are being diagnosed with lethal doses of radiation; where the populace finds itself praying from deliverance from what seems to be a wrathful god of destruction; when Japan finds itself once again pulled into the nightmare of a potential atomic holocaust.
One of my favorite scenes from KOTM is the opening flashback to the San Francisco battle. Mark Russell staggering through the wreckage, calling out for Andrew, his voice betraying the realization that he’s already gone; Emma staring at the carnage, numbly stroking a young Madison’s hair. And then he steps through a building before them. This titanic, nigh-unkillable force of nature. And I suddenly began imagining just how terrifying it would be to be in their shoes; to fell utterly small and insignificant before this massive beast. To realize that we’re no longer in control…and maybe we never were.
Whether Godzilla is an allegory for the Hiroshima bomb or the folly of Man in general, the humans are an essential part of driving those messages home; they’re the ones who are affected by the creatures’ actions. Without them, the movies would collapse in on themselves. They’d basically devolve into speculative evolution documentaries or something; fun to watch, but ultimately with no meaning behind them whatsoever. They really would become the mindless monster romps that people write the Godzilla franchise off as.
But you probably want me to get on with it and talk about what I thought of the characters themselves, so let’s get on with it.
I was actually surprised by how much I liked Mark Russell. In fact, I’d say he was my favorite character out of the whole thing. I like how they took the classic “Godzilla-hurt-me-and-now-I-hate-him” trope, but then handled in a way that makes him look a lot smarter and more likable. He makes it no secret that he wants Godzilla dead; but when he actually shows up, he’s not stupid enough to just tell Monarch to fire everything. In fact, he authorizes them to stand down unless they know it’s a fight that they can win. It shows that he’s not letting his hatred get the best of him, and that he’s not so blinded by it that he’s willing to risk innocent lives to achieve his fantasies. And in the end, when he realizes that Godzilla is actually essential to the continued survival of both humanity and the world at large, he’s able to let go of his hate. He’s also got quite a few moments of selflessness as well, going back to rescue the G-Team troops from the collapsing Antarctic base, and offering to help fix the Argo’s hangar doors to get the Isla Del Mara survivors safely on board.
One thing I’d like to point out about Mark; I’ve seen a lot of people complaining that he’s a know-it-all that everybody listens to. But there’s a reason for that. According to his bio on the Monarch Sciences website, he held the title of Senior Anthrozoologist, with expertise in wildlife behavioural science, zoomusicology (whatever on Earth that is), biocommunication, and apex predation. The reason why people at Monarch listen to him is because they would have listened to him anyway; he was one of their top members before he left. I suppose it’s a fault of the movie for not making his status clearer, but it’s still something to keep in mind.
I thought that Madison Russell was a pretty-decent child character. She’s definitely a far-cry from Ichiro from Godzilla’s Revenge and the many child characters of the Showa-era Gamera films. She never felt annoying or irritating to me, and I thought she played her part in the story pretty well. And let’s be honest; it takes some serious guts to stare into the eyes of a three-headed space demon and roar back at him in defiance.
As for Dr. Serizawa…well, what can I say that hasn’t already been said about him? He’s not a particularly complex character, but he serves his purpose well, and his sacrifice to save Godzilla’s life is up there with the Big-G’s death in Godzilla vs. Destoroyah as one of the most gut-wrenching scenes of the franchise. He also gives Mark some pretty good advice: “Sometimes the only way to heal our wounds is to make peace with the demons who made them.” And in this world where we’re constantly clapping back at the people who do us wrong, I think that’s a pretty interesting message to think about.
I don’t remember if it was in the movie, but the novelization mentions that Vivienne Graham was friends with Mark following his divorce with Emma, and she also served as a sort of surrogate aunt to Madison while she and her mother were at Monarch, as seen in Godzilla: Aftershock. With this in mind, it makes her death at Ghidorah’s jaws a lot more meaningful in-universe.
I thought Dr. Chen was okay. I think she’d make a good successor to Dr. Serizawa in future films. Ironically, I seem to be the only person around who wasn’t too keen on her being one of the MonsterVerse incarnations of Mothra’s Shobijin. I get it was meant to be a nice little reference, but it actually fell kind of flat for me. It didn’t really need to be there, and they didn’t go anywhere with it. Compare it with the Oxygen Destroyer, which, in spite of it’s sudden appearance and absence of a build-up, has lasting consequnces on the story.
Colonel Foster as okay as well. I was pleasantly surprised that they didn’t try to make a big deal about her being an African-American woman in a position of power. She’s the leader of an elite military group and that’s all that’s said about her. As it should be. On a side note, the movie’s avoidance of falling into the pitfalls of social justice promotion is one of the things I liked about it. I didn’t come to this movie to see yet another commentary on our current political climate; I came here see a monster movie.
I feel like the character of Rick Stanton was kind of wasted. I don’t think I need to tell you that he’s basically the Director of the One-Liners Department. He has his moments, like when he helps coordinate the air-strike on Rodan, or when he sounds legitimately crushed at Godzilla’s apparent death, or when his voice cracks a little when Serizawa goes to deliver the nuke to Godzilla, but other than that, he’s just the movie’s joke machine, and he got as old as he was really quickly. It’s honestly a pity, because he’s listed as a Crypto-sonographer; he works in the sounds department. If I was writing the movie, I think I would have him work with Mark more on trying to decipher the missing piece of the ORCA signal; he’d be a sort of cool uncle-type character, making a few jokes here and there, but always being there to talk to and confide in.
The rest of the characters were just kind of “meh” to me. I really think Sam Coleman should have been the one to get the Argo’s hangar doors open, seeing as how he’s Monarch’s Director of Technology and all. If there were any characters in the movie that I legitimately didn’t care for, it was the three military people, Barnes, Martinez, and Griffin. I just couldn’t get into them at all.
Readers: “Hey, wait a minute! What about Tywin Lannister and the Crazy-PETA-Lady? Aren’t you gonna talk about them?”
I’m getting them, I’m getting to them. I just saved them for last because I needed more time to sort my thoughts out on them.
First, Jonah Ala–I mean, Alan Jonah. Again, he was okay. I’m not really into Charles Dance, so I wouldn’t know how to gauge him against his other roles, but I thought he was okay. There’s an interesting tidbit in the novelization that I really wished made it into the movie, where he tells Emma that his daughter was abducted and murdered while he was out fighting a war, which helped fuel his misanthropy. I think this little bit of trivia would have helped fleshed out his motivations, at least a little.
And now we get to the person that everyone talks about. Dr. Emma Russell, Monarch Chief Paleobiologist and Director of Bioacoustic Studies, and the lady who thinks releasing the Titans upon an unsuspecting world in the name of restoring the natural balance is a good idea.
A lot of people have said that her motivations are really confusing. But that’s the idea. Emma’s a mentally broken nutcase; she really has no stinkin’ clue what she’s playing with here. And isn’t that the theme of the Godzilla franchise? Playing with forces we don’t understand will inevitably bite us in the rear end? Don’t get me wrong, I got a little tired of her after the movie went on, but I still can’t deny what the point of her motivation was.
Something that I’ve come to realize about Emma and Mark is that they were both broken by Andrew’s death. But they were broken in different directions. Mark blamed Godzilla for the death of his son. But Emma went the other way; she blames humanity for awakening the Titans and resulting in Andrew’s death.
Of course all of this doesn’t change the fact that I did get a little tired of Emma after a while. I remember after that flashback was over and it cut to a close-up of her crying face I was like “Gah! Where did that come from?”. It doesn’t really help that the movie tries to milk her sympathetic side when I honestly think she would have worked better as a straight-up madwoman.
So for those of you who plowed through to the end, here’s my final summary: I don’t think the human characters of KOTM were cinema-endingly bad. I thought they were mostly okay, with a few that actually stuck out to me. Having watched Godzilla movies for a while now, average characters is nothing new to me. That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t try and write better characters; I’m just saying that I’m used to it and one more so-so character roster isn’t going to bother me too much as long as I get my monsters. Which I did. I feel like they still cut away a little too often, but I still got my monsters.
So I’m happy.
