I think continuity, or the lack thereof, is the single biggest problem with the post-Showa Godzilla series.GojiDog wrote:I was never a fan of the Millennium series approach of "Each movie is a standalone story".
The tight knit continuity was one of the strengths of the Heisei series, which felt like a comic book come to life at times with its evolving story and past events causing new ones two or three films down the road.
And even though the continuity was far more loose in the old days, the Showa series did have some nice little beats to connect the films together, and I felt like Godzilla got a full character arc all the way through the series too.
The problem with the Millennium films is that there is a lot of time wasted on exposition: What is Godzilla, when did he first show up, what is the status on the war with Godzilla, and when will he return, etc. How many times can I have Godzilla's status explained to me in a row? Oddly enough, G2K, the first film in the series is one of the only ones that avoids this by straight up treating Godzilla as already established and not explaining anything, which I kind of liked actually. Even if it wasn't the case officially, I guess it kind of allowed me to pretend that the G2K Godzilla is Godzilla Junior from the Heisei Timeline and this is his adventure.
But when you look at G2K, GXM, GMK, and GXMG all in a row, it is a bit jarring to have 4 completely different timelines and 4 different wars and methods of dealing with Godzilla. I guess it works as kind of a "choose your own adventure" format with 1954 being the only constant, and then the directors and writers can put their own spin on it, and the fans can latch onto the one that fits their personality the most.
However, I appreciate films in a series to follow at least some kind of continuity, and the constant restart button was growing tiresome. I remember being sick to death of it by the time GXMG was coming out, and when I heard Tokyo SOS was actually going to be a direct sequel, I breathed a sigh of relief. It doesn't help that alot of these movies ended on cliffhangers that could have led to sequels: Godzilla is still alive in G2K and could go on defending Earth against terrible monsters, Godzilla survived the Dimension Tide in GXM and will have to be dealt with again, Godzilla's beating heart is shown at the end of GMK, signifying that he may return, and Tokyo SOS had a cryptic post credit scene hinting at monster DNA experiments. The fact that none of these cliffhangers were even attempted to be followed up on is disappointing.
To be honest, I don't like the close continuity of the Heisei films because it isn't utilized well. Other than Miki as a recurring character, Junior growing up during the last three movies and MKG being used to build Mechagodzilla, what good really came of the close continuity? Sure, Space Godzilla tried to make connections to Biollante and Mothra, but they felt like a forced effort to make fans like a badly written film. Stylistically, tonally and thematically, I think the Heisei films were limited by trying to fit in the same tight-knit continuity. They're honestly pretty bland, by and large. I think I would like the Heisei series a lot better if it had a looser, Showa-esq approach to continuity to allow for more creative freedom by individual writers and directors.
But then there's the total lack of continuity in the Millennium series, and I agree that rewriting Godzilla's history again and again gets old fast. I think, for the first three films, this worked okay. To me, the problem starts with GXMG. The film basically feels like a remake of Megaguirus, so much so that I'd rather have it be a sequel to Megaguirus than the fourth new beginning in a row. To address the title of this thread, I don't think G2K and Megaguirus belong in the same universe, but I think this might've worked well for Megaguirus, GXMG and Tokyo SOS. With some narrative reworking, we could have had a proper trilogy in the midst of the Millennium series. Instead, for the second half of the Millennium series, we got a bland retread of Megaguirus, an even blander sequel to that film, and then yet another movie with no connections to anything before it.
I'd also love to have seen a sequel to GMK, if it was done well and saw Kaneko return, which he didn't want to because Toho was so controlling. This year at G-Fest, I got to speak with Kaneko and told him how much I loved his films and wanted to see him helm another kaiju project. Later, he commented that many fans had told him this and may consider doing another Godzilla movie. Here's hoping (and hoping that Toho gives him free reign this time).
TL;DR - close but underutilized Heisei continuity bad; lack of continuity in Millennium also bad; 3 Tazuka films could have been trilogy; GMK good
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