How could Toho make Godzilla even "weirder"? What new directions might they go in after 2020?

[ShinGojira14]

One thing I appreciate about Shin is how it doesn’t pointlessly explain everything that happened. The vague ideas give an idea of what happened but allows people to fill in the blanks.

A brilliant case of Less Is More.

[LegendZilla]

One thing I appreciate about Shin is how it doesn’t pointlessly explain everything that happened. The vague ideas give an idea of what happened but allows people to fill in the blanks.

May I ask if vagueness and ambiguity your preferred form of storytelling? I'm just curious because it's fine if it is, even if it's not mine. I think a good balance in any narrative would be having one clear cut answer for every hole to fill in yourself. I've been wanting to ask you this for a while now.

[LSD Jellyfish]

One thing I appreciate about Shin is how it doesn’t pointlessly explain everything that happened. The vague ideas give an idea of what happened but allows people to fill in the blanks.

May I ask if vagueness and ambiguity your preferred form of storytelling? I'm just curious because it's fine if it is, even if it's not mine. I think a good balance in any narrative would be to strike a balance by having one clear cut answer for every hole to fill in yourself. I've been wanting to ask you this for a while now.

I apologize as this is a bit of a tangent, but I think it applies to a lot of what is currently going on with Godzilla.

If it's important for us to know, then by all means a story should provide us with the information. I don't think ambiguity or clearness in a story is entirely better than one or another.

Shin Godzilla was not about Goro Maki's life, nor was it about his down fall. It was about Godzilla appearing, and characters figuring out a way to kill him. The picture we are left with is sufficent enough: Goro Maki was disgruntled by the United States and Japan for being partially responsible for his wife's death and the dumping of nuclear waste. We know that he was able to map out Godzilla's genetics, and postulate a lot about what the creature was and could become. We know that he was aware that others might view his notes with the phrasing,"the rest is up to you". It's possible to interpret that in a variety of ways, either as a direct mocking challenge, or a sincere plea that people could solve a problem he couldn't. Any more time devoted to Goro Maki would've taken away from the main narrative, and distracted us from the main threat of Godzilla. It doesn't matter to the narrative where exactly Shin Godzilla came from, the fact is Godzilla is here. It's satisfying enough, and the mystery around it is intriguing. If it's in your own "head cannon" that Goro Maki was sinister, and his suicide was the catalyst somehow for Shin evolving (either fusing, or being protein to feed on, or whatever you come up with), I think that it's a valid interpretation of events, but isn't something that's definitive. You can also interpret it as regret and guilt on Goro Maki's part that he has created/allowed a monster to exist.

To give an example of ambiuguity I don't like, I wish Godzilla SP just did a little more to give us a concrete answer of how/where monsters are coming from. In that case, the series goes out of it's way to explain how various scientific and thereoetical concepts works, but doesn't do much to just give us a clear picture of where the monsters are exactly coming from. This isn't a vital question that ruins the series for me, and part of me believes that it was left a little obfusciated intentionally for a possible season 2, but it's a clear example of something I'd like a little less ambiguity.

The same goes for Legendary Godzilla/the Monsterverse. They have all this really interesting and unique stuff going on with the Hollow Earth, people that worshipped Godzilla, and other titans, but other than a few brief gestures, don't really seem interested in exploring some of what's going on.

I know that novels/supplemental material clear these things up (this applies to Shin, Lgendary, and SP), and those are cool, but I always view those as seperate interpretations from the film/tv series, that I can enjoy seperately.

As I was typing this out, it dawned on me that all things considered, Legendary Godzilla is pretty strange. Of course, compared to Shin and Ultima he has more tangible physicality and powers, but the idea of a giant species of semi-sentient lizards living in the Hollow Earth, being worshipped as dieities, and fighting with giant apes is 100x more insane visually than anything that Toho has recently put out.

[LegendZilla]

^I would argue that Shin, rather than being about Godzilla himself, was more about the impact and ramifications Godzilla's presence has on the cast of characters and the environment they live in first and foremost. It did not really treat Godzilla as a character in his own right, but more of a plot device. Like I said before, that version of the character was a giant zombie in more ways than one.

[godjacob]

Shin Godzilla was a back to their roots story to the 54 Godzilla in the truest sense of the word. Shin represented the destructive negligence that resulted from Japan's incompetent government officials in the wake of a national crisis. Much like how the original Godzilla was a representation of nuclear destruction and reckless testing of such destructive energy.

[LegendZilla]

^I appreciate the desire to take the character back to his thematic roots, but one too many creative and stylistic choices sullied my taste with the film I'm afraid.

[Janjira-York]

god I dislike shins edgy mass of meat being this ever evolving thing, to me is just this really tryhard take on the original concept.


Legendary IS weirder than most of toho stuff its just right after he came up the really weirder shit began and honestly thats good it keeps things interesting for as much as I dislike burned meat purple rave shin that abomination felt new and unpredictable.



pretty sure the only way to make a G weirder is honestly go full alien either giant sapient reptilian race or space horror coming to say punish man kind for messing with the cosmos in some way.

[LegendZilla]

I actually won’t mind taking Godzilla and putting him in a high fantasy-setting.

[SpiderZilla]

Turn Godzilla into a walking biome that deposits previously-unseen and dangerous insects, bacteria, and plant life wherever he goes, spreading predators, disease, and pestilence that populations must struggle to survive. The threat wouldn’t become apparent until months or even years after Godzilla’s trip through an area but even then the connection to Godzilla would not be apparent, allowing the threat to grow unchecked after Godzilla’s departure. In addition, Godzilla’s radiation would continuously generate new mutations in his biome such that mankind would regularly need to develop new countermeasures.

[LegendZilla]

Turn Godzilla into a walking biome that deposits previously-unseen and dangerous insects, bacteria, and plant life wherever he goes, spreading predators, disease, and pestilence that populations must struggle to survive. The threat wouldn’t become apparent until months or even years after Godzilla’s trip through an area but even then the connection to Godzilla would not be apparent, allowing the threat to grow unchecked after Godzilla’s departure. In addition, Godzilla’s radiation would continuously generate new mutations in his biome such that mankind would regularly need to develop new countermeasures.

That's pretty much what both Shin and PolygonGoji were.

[SpiderZilla]

Turn Godzilla into a walking biome that deposits previously-unseen and dangerous insects, bacteria, and plant life wherever he goes, spreading predators, disease, and pestilence that populations must struggle to survive. The threat wouldn’t become apparent until months or even years after Godzilla’s trip through an area but even then the connection to Godzilla would not be apparent, allowing the threat to grow unchecked after Godzilla’s departure. In addition, Godzilla’s radiation would continuously generate new mutations in his biome such that mankind would regularly need to develop new countermeasures.

That's pretty much what both Shin and PolygonGoji were.

I wouldn’t say they’re the same. Shin left a radioactive trail but once he was defeated the threat was essentially over. Polygon changed the planet’s ecology but the mechanism of that change is unclear and the story didn’t show humanity’s struggles to identify or prevent those changes from taking hold. In neither case do we see Godzilla depositing animal, plant, or microbial life to the areas he visits.

I’m talking about a “weirder” Godzilla that represents multiple ecological threats where surviving a Godzilla attack is only the begging of the problem rather than the end of it. The closest analogy in my mind is the original Cloverfield monster where you can see it unintentionally dropping parasites which attack people long after the monster has left, but I’m suggesting that this type of problem could be made into a much bigger part of the threat.

[JAGzilla]

Honestly, that's a really cool monster idea. I don't know how well it would work for Godzilla specifically, but could be great for something like Hedorah, Biollante, Dagahra, or potentially even Ghidorah.

EDIT: Or Destoroyah! It's s perfect for him. Everywhere he goes, he leaves a trail of smaller organisms that (among other forms of threatening behavior) inhale oxygen and exhale Micro-Oxygen, poisoning the air and rendering whole cities uninhabitable.

[ShinGojira14]

Honestly, that's a really cool monster idea. I don't know how well it would work for Godzilla specifically, but could be great for something like Hedorah, Biollante, Dagahra, or potentially even Ghidorah.

EDIT: Or Destoroyah! It's perfect for him. Everywhere he goes, he leaves a trail of smaller organisms that (among other forms of threatening behavior) inhale oxygen and exhale Micro-Oxygen, poisoning the air and rendering whole cities uninhabitable.

That would be super scary. I'd be fully down for it, for Godzilla or any of the other Kaiju you mentioned.

[LegendZilla]

Honestly, that's a really cool monster idea. I don't know how well it would work for Godzilla specifically, but could be great for something like Hedorah, Biollante, Dagahra, or potentially even Ghidorah.

EDIT: Or Destoroyah! It's perfect for him. Everywhere he goes, he leaves a trail of smaller organisms that (among other forms of threatening behavior) inhale oxygen and exhale Micro-Oxygen, poisoning the air and rendering whole cities uninhabitable.

That would be super scary. I'd be fully down for it, for Godzilla or any of the other Kaiju you mentioned.

It would give Godzilla a break from such a treatment.

[ShinGojira14]

Honestly, that's a really cool monster idea. I don't know how well it would work for Godzilla specifically, but could be great for something like Hedorah, Biollante, Dagahra, or potentially even Ghidorah.

EDIT: Or Destoroyah! It's perfect for him. Everywhere he goes, he leaves a trail of smaller organisms that (among other forms of threatening behavior) inhale oxygen and exhale Micro-Oxygen, poisoning the air and rendering whole cities uninhabitable.

That would be super scary. I'd be fully down for it, for Godzilla or any of the other Kaiju you mentioned.

It would give Godzilla a break from such a treatment.

What would? What treatment?

[LegendZilla]

^Instead of having weird takes on Godzilla, give other kaiju the same treatment.

[ShinGojira14]

^Instead of having weird takes on Godzilla, give other kaiju the same treatment.

Both can be done.

[LegendZilla]

^Instead of having weird takes on Godzilla, give other kaiju the same treatment.

Both can be done.

Heck, why not make more original monsters with a ton of weirdness to them?

[AllosaurHell]

- Godzilla having hair and horns like the Polygon trilogy concept art.
- Godzilla actually being a whale ape.
- A Space Godzilla and God's Godzilla actually getting made into real movies, nuff said there.
- Shin Godzilla evolving into a literal universe and becoming God as is constantly rumored by many online.
- Godzilla being an alien, like the Tristar 1995 draft and A Space Godzilla.
- Godzilla being a humanoid with almost none of the iconic features he has, like the original mushroom head concept art from 1954.
- Godzilla being a human instead of a dinosaur/prehistoric reptile that gets mutated.
- Godzilla having the ability to shrink into human size like Jet Jaguar and Minya.

[Voyager]

Make Godzilla a Shonen anime protagonist.