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Godzilla, Kong, Gamera & Co.: The Kaiju Mega-Thread

I was a little surprised Kentaro didn't even consider the idea of them having ended up in the Hollow Earth, and just took Tim and Verdugo's word that they were dead.

I don't think Kentaro even knows about the Hollow Earth, does he? It's a long-discredited theory at this point; even Monarch treats it as unconfirmed in KOTM in 2018, three years after this. And Hiroshi in 1982 dismissed Bill Randa's theories as crackpot stuff. So what happened back in 1962 must have been classified.


Well, if my memory isn't letting me down, wasn't Monarch basically a sad shell of itself at the beginning of Kong: Skull Island? With Randa going door to door with Congressmen trying to beg for any funding he could get? Presumably, then, this incident is what leaves the organization in such dire straights. And Kong is what puts them back on the map.

Yeah, and the show helps explain a plot hole I wondered about in K:SI: if Monarch and the US military cooperated in attacking Godzilla in ’54, why is the government in '73 dismissing the existence of Titans? If Monarch was discredited and the whole business classified, that resolves the discrepancy, more or less.
 
Well, if my memory isn't letting me down, wasn't Monarch basically a sad shell of itself at the beginning of Kong: Skull Island? With Randa going door to door with Congressmen trying to beg for any funding he could get? Presumably, then, this incident is what leaves the organization in such dire straights. And Kong is what puts them back on the map.
Oh OK, I forgot about that scene.
I don't think Kentaro even knows about the Hollow Earth, does he? It's a long-discredited theory at this point; even Monarch treats it as unconfirmed in KOTM in 2018, three years after this. And Hiroshi in 1982 dismissed Bill Randa's theories as crackpot stuff. So what happened back in 1962 must have been classified.
I thought he was part of the conversations about it last week, or was that just Cate?
 
Scene from the season finale. Spoiler ahead.

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That didn't quite end the way I was expecting.

Me neither. I was expecting a larger time jump, but I guess they want season 2 to lead into or overlap with KOTM.

So Keiko said she'd been there 57 days, I think, when 56 years had passed outside. And I think Shaw said he'd been there a couple of weeks? If it was 3 weeks, that would line up with his 20-year jump, though it's unclear how he escaped the first time. I guess that means Cate and the others were stuck there for about 2 days, unless the time differential is inconsistent.

When Verdugo mentioned Monarch getting all hands on deck for the crisis, I wish they'd at least name-dropped Serizawa, Brooks, etc. from the movies. It's annoying that there's no overlap in present-day Monarch personnel between movies and series.
 
That was a great finale.
I'm curious if Shaw is dead or if we might get a rescue mission if we get a second season. If he is dead, I can of see the thought process being giving the Randa's Keiko back, but at the same time taking Shaw away.
Them being on Skull Island at the end was a huge shock. If we do get a second season I'm curious what they're going to do with Apex, since they were the bad guys in Godzilla vs Kong. Are they gonna add some new context that makes them not so bad? Or just show us a little more about them, but not actually redeem them?
 
That was a great finale.
I'm curious if Shaw is dead or if we might get a rescue mission if we get a second season. If he is dead, I can of see the thought process being giving the Randa's Keiko back, but at the same time taking Shaw away.

We saw no more evidence of his death than we did of Keiko's, so there's no reason to think he didn't survive. Now that I think about it, we never really got an explanation for how Shaw got out of Axis Mundi the first time. It looks like he was sucked through the rift from his capsule to the forest area and was trapped there alone for a couple of weeks, which was how he knew its dangers, but it's unclear how he got back from there. So maybe there's still more of Shaw's story to reveal.


Them being on Skull Island at the end was a huge shock.

I wasn't expecting it, but I wasn't the least bit surprised. It's the biggest piece of Monsterverse mythology they haven't focused on yet, and given that season 1 largely revolved around Godzilla, it makes sense that they'd want to center season 2 more around Kong. Also, the season began on Skull Island with Bill Randa in '73, so there's a symmetry to bringing Keiko Randa and her grandkids there at the end.


If we do get a second season I'm curious what they're going to do with Apex, since they were the bad guys in Godzilla vs Kong. Are they gonna add some new context that makes them not so bad? Or just show us a little more about them, but not actually redeem them?

Maybe do the same they've done with Monarch, show that there are different factions within it. Brenda seems to be borderline-redeemable.
 
We saw no more evidence of his death than we did of Keiko's, so there's no reason to think he didn't survive. Now that I think about it, we never really got an explanation for how Shaw got out of Axis Mundi the first time. It looks like he was sucked through the rift from his capsule to the forest area and was trapped there alone for a couple of weeks, which was how he knew its dangers, but it's unclear how he got back from there. So maybe there's still more of Shaw's story to reveal.
OK. I saw a quick flash of something after he fell, and I thought it might have been his fried body or something like that.
I wasn't expecting it, but I wasn't the least bit surprised. It's the biggest piece of Monsterverse mythology they haven't focused on yet, and given that season 1 largely revolved around Godzilla, it makes sense that they'd want to center season 2 more around Kong. Also, the season began on Skull Island with Bill Randa in '73, so there's a symmetry to bringing Keiko Randa and her grandkids there at the end.
I hadn't thought about that, but that makes it even better.
Maybe do the same they've done with Monarch, show that there are different factions within it. Brenda seems to be borderline-redeemable.
I could see them going in that direction with Apex.
 
The show was okay but it didn't really add anything new to the franchise that we didn't already know. The new Kaijus weren't that particularly interesting as well.
 
The show was okay but it didn't really add anything new to the franchise that we didn't already know.

It revealed the origins of Monarch, and put Bill Randa's role into context with the larger story, which was good (though I wish they'd managed to tie the story in to movie characters like Brooks and Serizawa). It also established how Monarch went from the secret organization in the first film to the public one in KOTM, although the reasons for their coming out weren't established as clearly as they could've been.

Mainly I'm just glad to see an American Godzilla production that centers on Japanese and Japanese-American characters. It makes it feel closer to the source. And so much of it was set in Tokyo and delivered in Japanese dialogue that it felt like a truly international collaboration, something made for both audiences at once.


The new Kaijus weren't that particularly interesting as well.

I though they were okay. And it made sense for a prequel/in-between story to feature "B-list" kaiju other than Godzilla, given that there was no mention of them in the movies set subsequently.
 
The black & white version of Godzilla Minus One, aptly titled Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color, will get a one-week-only theatrical release in the US starting January 26.
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Watching the trailer, seeing the movie in B&W might actually be a different experience. Alas, it does not look like we Germans will get to see this version on the big screen.
 
Watching the Apple Plus show. One more episode to go. Not bad and fairly entertaining although I feel like I am missing big chunks of the story because I don't do Captions/Subtitles.
 
Watching the Apple Plus show. One more episode to go. Not bad and fairly entertaining although I feel like I am missing big chunks of the story because I don't do Captions/Subtitles.

Yeah, there's something weird with Apple TV where you have to have all the subtitles turned on to get the foreign-language dialogue subbed in English. Once I figured that out, I had to go back and rewatch parts of the first episode to catch the Russian and Japanese dialogue I missed. Since then, I've just left the subtitles on constantly on Apple. It helps me even when the English dialogue is a bit muddy or vague, which is often the case with modern sound mixes, particularly with my very old, low-grade computer speakers.
 
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