Chief Godzilla Officer

"Gotcha! Had you going there for a year
and a half, didn't I? President Trump...
you should see the look on your face."

Brace yourself for probably the greatest news ever. The-huh? What's that? No...no, sorry, Hillary Clinton didn't pop into the White House briefing room, high-five Sarah Huckabee Sanders and announce that the last twenty months have been an elaborate prank and that she really is the President. So let's say what I'm about to talk about it the second greatest news ever. Still braced? There's going to be a Godzilla movie universe. The announcement comes from Keiji Ota, the Chief Godzilla officer for Toho studios, the film company that makes Godzilla movies.

Oh, and incidentally, the fact that 'Chief Godzilla officer' is a legitimate job title is the third greatest news ever. And in further incidental-ism, where was that career option on career day in grade school? Like, I would have tried in life if I knew that there was a chance that I could have an office with a door that reads 'Chief Godzilla Officer.'

"For all sad words of mouth and pen, the
saddest are these, 'It might have been."

-John Greenleaf Whittier on

this exact situation

What? I'm not saying it was a bad movie,
I'm just saying it was...yeah, it was bad.

Where was I? Right, there's going to be a ton of new Godzilla movies, possibly as many as one every year or two. It's all part of a stunningly original plan to weave a complex story over the course of multiple films which when taken together will provide audiences with a...a...wait, have they seen an actual Godzilla movie? I ask because they're not exactly full of deep plots. I'm not complaining, I love these movies, I'm just not sure it's the kind of dense narrative that would support a shared cinematic uni-oh, right, Infinity War.

As well embalmed as he must be, Tom
Cruise doesn't actually play the title role. 

Anyway, if it sounds like cinematic universes are what every movie studio in the world is doing right now, that's because they are. After Marvel made all the money in the world with the MCU, Fox jumped in with X-Men/Deadpool/Fantastic Four (no, really), Disney's got its Star Wars spin-offs, and even Universal tried to hop aboard the whatever-verse train with that one Tom Cruise meets the mummy bullshit. Didn't see it? That's ok, no-one did. I mean, no one. In the world. Anyway, the point is everything is a goddamn universe right now.

But before we all jump on Toho for bandwagoning, it's probably important to remember that they've been doing the whole shared continuity thing for like sixty years. First was all the MST3K-fodder Godzilla movies from the fifties, sixties and seventies along with standalone monsters that started in their own movies and then verse'd Godzilla, like Mothra, Rodan and even King Kong.

Above: Jessica Lange in the 1976 King Kong remake which,
think technically puts Tootsie into the Godzilla canon.

I didn't forget about this one, we're
just not going to talk about it, ok?

Then they started over with Godzilla 1985 which was a sequel to the original, but ignored the sequels. This was followed by another reboot with Godzilla 2000 which ignored all the previous movies. So that's three mainline, Toho-produced Godzilla shared universes, and that's leaving out the animated series, the later animated series, an anime series (different), the Brian Cranston one from a couple years ago that is itself the first part of a completely different Godzilla movie universe made by Legendary Pictures.

Oh, and also there was Shin Godzilla, the 2016 Japanese reboot which is reportedly not part of this new, new, new Godzilla universe. Still with me? Cool, because they didn't invent shared cinematic universes either, and even if they did, it's just meaningless branding jargon and we should all just relax.

"Bullshit: it's literally our job."

-Marketing people

Shit, did I just write Hangover 4?
Tell me I didn't write Hangover 4...

Back in the forties Dracula was crossing over with the Wolfman who in turn was crossing over with Frankenstein. Then Abbott and Costello got involved which is weird, because those were legit horror movies and they did a comedy mash-up with the 'Who's on First?' guys. I don't know if there's perfect 21st century equivalent, but I think it's a little like if the characters from The Hangover were human centipede'd and then stuck in the room from Saw with the ghost from The Ring.

Anytime characters crossover from one thing to another, it becomes a kind of shared universe, doesn't it? Scooby-Doo used to hang around with Batman, but do we really need to construct a universe about it? The point is I am super-thrilled that there's going to be more Godzilla movies, and monster team-ups and crossovers with King Kong and Mothra. But for real, this is not a new idea.

"Good work kids. Thanks to you, the families of the many, many
people the Joker has brutaly murdered can finally get some closure."

-Batman, on one of his tonally

inappropriate crossovers