Legendary's Godzilla 2 & beyond - News & Rumors

I really hope they eventually open it up for non HBO subscribers.

 

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I'm a tad jealous myself, but Greg Keyes is a great writer and I'm sure he'll do a fine job. I really enjoyed his PLANET OF THE APES prequels.

And I figured out long ago that writing one novelization does not necessarily make you a shoo-in for the sequel. When I was young and naive, I once made the mistake of assuming that I would be doing the novelization of ELEKTRA just because I did DAREDEVIL, then Yvonne Navarro got that gig. Oops! Had to scramble to find another project to fill the hole in my schedule I had left for ELEKTRA . . . ..

Ironically, I ended up doing a bunch of ALIAS novels starring . . . Jennifer Garner.

 

The final trailer:



Looks cool, but I'm always annoyed by how Americans pronounced "Ghidorah." It's the Japanese approximation of "hydra," the many-headed dragon of Greek myth, so it should be stressed on the first syllable; the "o" is only there because Japanese doesn't have standalone consonants besides N. The original English-language version that showed on TV all the time in my youth was called Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster, so hearing it pronounced "ghee-door-uh" has always seemed wrong to me, even before I learned Japanese phonetics. (Plus the kaiju's name is actually King Ghidorah, but the recent Godzilla anime trilogy dropped the "King" for the first time, so I guess I can't complain anymore about the US version doing it too.)

It's ironic how Americans always tend to put the most stress on the syllables of Japanese words that are supposed to be stressed the least. For instance, the "U" in Japanese words is usually barely pronounced at all unless it's a double-length vowel (as in kaijū), but English speakers always stress the U in words like kabuki, Subaru, and Kobayashi Maru.

 

I think I'll hold off watching any more trailers. I fear by this point they may reveal some plot elements bordering on outright "spoilers". Besides, it's only a few weeks away. I think I can "hold out".

 

Do spoilers really matter that much in a Godzilla movie? You pretty much know it's gonna end up with a big monster fight. It's not like Millie Bobby Brown is likely to find out that Godzilla is secretly her father.

 

17 Kaiju?

Um, okay, not sure there even where that many and I'd watched quite a lot of the classic movies.

 

Oh, easily.

https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Category:Toho_Kaiju

Just to list "starring" kaiju alone in Toho's films, you've got Godzilla, Anguirus, Rodan, Varan, Mothra, King Kong, King Ghidorah, Frankenstein/Sanda, Baragon, Gaira, Ebirah, Minilla, Hedorah, Gigan, Megalon, King Caesar, Biollante, Battra, SpaceGodzilla, Destroyah, Orga, Megaguirus, and maybe a few more depending on how you count them, and that's not even including robots like Moguera, Mechagodzilla, and Jet Jaguar.

 

I'd love to see a separate Mecha-Godzilla one later (a separatist group who oppose the Kaiju and build a jaeger like version to destroy him), and I'm pretty sure the Kong one is coming next year?

Hmm, we'll see how many of those appear and how many they create new for a modern audience.

 

True story: I had to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement to read the script for the 1998 GODZILLA reboot and read it in the Sony offices rather than take a copy off the premises. After I got back to the Tor offices, people pressed me for details but I was sworn to secrecy. All I could do was lower my voice, look around warily, and whisper:

"It's a Godzilla movie."

 

Spoiler: She's actually reprising Jane from Stranger Things and she's the real hero of the film!

 

I thought she was named Eleven. Or was that another character? I haven't watched that show. (People gush about how well it evokes '80s Spielberg and Stephen King films, but I never much liked those.)

 

That was her number, her name is Jane

 

You'd know that if you watched the show. And you really should watch it.

 

Russian poster:


Chinese poster:

 

The Japanese have a hard time pronouncing english properly as well. Ya know, engrish? So it's even.

But there's one TV spot that turns the Ghidorah pronunciation into a gag, so don't take it so seriously if even the film doesn't.

 

The difference is that "Ghidorah" is derived from the word "Hydra" in the first place, so it's hardly difficult for an English speaker to pronounce it that way. That's what was done in the original '60s English dub that I grew watching on TV, under the title Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster.

Just in general, English has more flexible phonetics, so it's easier for an English speaker to adjust if they make the effort. For instance, the Japanese have to turn a word like "Hydra" into something like "Ghidorah" because the "dr" sound simply does not exist in Japanese, so "dora" is the closest they can manage unless they've specifically learned to speak English and worked to master the pronunciation. But it's a far simpler matter for an English speaker to say "Ghee-do-rah" instead of "Ghi-door-ah," because we have no rigid rule for which syllable to stress in the first place.

Besides, I've watched enough Japanese TV to recognize that "Engrish" is not a case of the Japanese pronouncing English words "wrong" -- rather, it's a case of them adapting their pronunciation to fit Japanese phonetic rules. The adaptation is done in a consistent and predictable way, so linguistically speaking, it's more of a creolization than an error. Heck, that's built into kaiju names in the first place -- Godzilla derived partly from "gorilla," Ghidorah from "hydra," Mothra from "moth," Radon (i.e. Rodan) from "pteranodon," Anguirus from "ankylosaurus," etc. It's not mispronunciation, it's linguistic assimilation.

 

And now for something cool!

Blue Oyster Cult's famous ode to the Big G will actually be heard at some point in "King of the Monsters"! Seriously! Alas, it is a "cover" version (so Warner Bros. can reap more profits) and I suspect it will play only during the closing credits, but still...! Who among us would have realistically believed that song would ever be officially heard in an authentic Godzilla flick?! Not me, anyway.

 

I wonder if that includes the MUTOs and all of the creatures from Skull Island, or just the big names ones like Godzilla, Kong, Ghidorah, Rodan, and Mothra?

 

So, I found this online. Make of it what you will.

 

Not sure what that means.....