The "Unused Toho Creations" Thread!

[LamangoKaijura]

The One and Only just posted an image similar to this one. From the Godzilla wiki:
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d41/s ... a3f643.jpg
"Destroy All Monsters Original Draft.jpg"/''

"HEY GUYS! HI! HI GUYS! HELLO!"
"GO HOME, MAGUMA"

[Godzillabriano]

I can imagine Maguma and Zilla at a bar, pouring they're hearts out about how misunderstood they are.

The movie would be called,"Zilla & Maguma: The birth of a beautiful friendship."

The original draft looks like the opposite of what we got. Putting emphasis on the less popular monsters. Something that Toho doesn't seem to do.

[KaijuX]

Maguma looking ugly? Man, he's the prettiest thing in the world compared to that Oodako under there. That thing is just... WTF. O_O Granted, this is probably concept art of sorts at best, so I can give it some leeway. The face of that thing is something else, though.

[LamangoKaijura]

The hell is Godzilla even aiming at. 'CURSE THESE GOOGLY EYES'

[Radek]

Welcome, Radek Yeah, A Space Godzilla's been covered a few times on here. Can't remember if it was in this topic specifically, though.

Hey- yeah, I'm pretty sure this detailed breakdown of the story was posted somewhere on the boards. I can't read Japanese, took all the info from there. It would be actually cool to have some info on the story on TK web site- maybe there's some comments that Otomo made on it, stuff like that. Are there any plans to add info on less known publications like this to the site?

[SuperMonsterZero]

Uh...just for the sake of not really knowing where to put this, I'll just stick it here and ask: How the hell have I never heard of this???

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospect ... have-been/

No one responded to this post. Has this been addressed somewhere before? I'm pretty sure this is the actual plot from Sekizawa's version. I specifically remember someone on this board posting a very low resolution image of a Japanese summary of Batman vs. Godzilla, which specifically mentioned "Barbara" (バーバラ) and "Vassar" (ヴァサー). This article mentions that "Barbara reunites with her Vassar college chum".

The article states: "Whatever knowledge Dozier had of Sekizawa’s work is unreported in the official 22-page treatment for Batman Meets Godzilla, filed in the producer’s archives without an author or date (but plenty of handwritten grammatical corrections)."

What I think is that Toho and Greenway were working together. Sekizawa wrote the treatment and someone at Greenway (Lorenzo Semple?) revised it. Why else would William Dozier have this treatment lying around?


Edit: Here's a Japanese source. It's a site called Cyberkids1954. It was cited in the Media Blasters Megalon commentary at one point so I assume it's legit. They have a collection of scripts by Toho, Daiei, Toei...

On their Toho page (http://www.cyberkids1954.com/toho_script.html), scroll down and you'll find the section on Batman vs. Godzilla (バットマン対ゴジラ), including that low res page I mentioned, as well as the second half, plus pages from two later Batman vs. Godzilla screenplays handwritten by Shinichi Sekizawa (関沢新一).

Now, the article Captain Aktion linked mentions a villain: Klaus Finster. On the Cyberkids1954 page, look at the two pages of the second screenplay by Sekizawa. All over them you see a name: フィンスター (Finster). This article is the real deal, guys. This is the plot to Batman vs. Godzilla.

Images blelow:

Spoiler:

Page one of treatment. It features the title (バットマン対ゴジラ), and mentions "Barbara" (バーバラ), and her "Vassar College roommate" (ヴァサー(Vassar)カレッジのルームメート).



Front page of second handwritten screenplay. Features alternate title: "Godzilla vs. Batman" (ゴジラ対バットマン).



Interior page from second handwritten screenplay (page 50). Look at the third column from the left. The text says "Finster" (フィンスター).

[Young Guy]

Godzilla vs Batman was...official?!?! They actually considered making it? I always thought it was a hoax like Godzilla vs Satan.

[Pkmatrix]

Godzilla vs Batman was...official?!?! They actually considered making it? I always thought it was a hoax like Godzilla vs Satan.

Of course it was real! There were two separate proposals too. Also: Godzilla vs. Satan wasn't so much as "hoax" as it was one of a few rumors surrounding the cancelled joint Toho-AIP Godzilla project from the late '70s. Godzilla vs. the Garguantuas is another one associated with the project.

[Young Guy]

Wow, imagine if Batman vs Godzilla was made nowadays. DARK N' GRITTY OVERLOAD!

[Godzillabriano]

But how would these two characters work? I mean batman is smaller than Kong. I know batman has his gadgets, etc but is it enough?

And why is every dream match for Godzilla are smaller than Godzilla?

Gamera

Zilla

Kong

Batman

[gigan72]

A Space Godzilla would have been a trippy film, especially with that monster with breasts he had to fight.

[Lain Of The Wired]

A Space Godzilla would have been a trippy film, especially with that monster with breasts he had to fight.

Only if it used its tits to choke Godzilla out

[KaijuDuke]

But how would these two characters work? I mean batman is smaller than Kong. I know batman has his gadgets, etc but is it enough?

And why is every dream match for Godzilla are smaller than Godzilla?

Gamera

Zilla

Kong

Batman

I assume Batman would have piloted a giant robot or something to take on the Big G...Even then, my money would have been on Godzilla

[edgaguirus]

I'd put my money on Godzilla, too, unless Godzilla was the bad guy of the film.

According to what I've read of the film, Batman would have used a variety of vehicles to take on Godzilla. A mech would probably be the climax.

[BioBagan]

Some more info about Godzilla: King of the Monsters 3-D (1983) from William Stout's blog http://www.williamstout.com/news/journal/?p=3549 :

Spoiler:

In 1982 a big part of my business was creating “presentation art” — typically a fake movie poster for a proposed movie or a painting of a proposed film’s key scene. These pictures were used to get financing for the film projects.
Director-producer Steve Miner approached me about creating a presentation piece for a 3-D American Godzilla movie. Fred Dekker wrote a brilliant script, its story seen through the eyes of a smart young junior high schooler in San Francisco. After I painted the presentation piece and after several discussions about the film, Steve hired me to storyboard the picture.

The great storyboard (North by Northwest, Blade Runner) artist Mentor Huebner was visiting my studio. I invited him to look at my boards. “My god — the detail! You really should ask about becoming the production designer of the movie, Bill.” I did just that. After a few phone calls to people I had worked with to guarantee I could handle the job, Steve hired me as Godzilla’s production designer. I convinced Steve to hire Dave Stevens and Doug Wildey to help with the storyboards (Alex Toth turned me down). Rick Baker was slated to create a giant robotic Godzilla head. Sculptor Stephen Czerkas took my redesign of Godzilla and created an articulated stop motion animation figure for us. Dave Allen was hired as our stop motion animator (no clumsy rubber suits for our Godzilla! I designed him as a cross between the classic Godzilla and a Tyrannosaurus).

It was the right project at the wrong time. With effects shots in nearly every scene, Godzilla was going to be very expensive. At about that same time four mega-budget films flopped, Heaven’s Gate being one of them, so all of the studios were big budget-shy and passed on the project. We dropped the expensive 3-D aspect but still couldn’t get a green light. To this day I would like to make our version of Godzilla. I think it would be a smash and a real career high for Yours Truly. BTW, if our Godzilla had been a success, I was in line to direct the follow-up: Rodan.

And apparently William Stout did a panel talking about the G-3D project and this website: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/68871 has some plot details with lots of artwork:

Spoiler:

My focus this weekend has been on Fantastic Fest, but I have made two quick trips up to MondoCon. The first was to check out the prints, LPs and say hi to old friends. Today the detour was to check out the coolest sounding panel ever: brilliant artist William Stout discussing the almost made 1983 Godzilla film. Genre favorite Steve Miner was to direct a script by the great Fred Dekker. This project made it through a lot of development, with Rick Baker brought on board to build a full scale animatronic Godzilla head and Dave Allen to execute the majority of Godzilla's screentime via stop motion.

William Stout came on with another great artist named Dave Stevens to do storyboard and concept art. Stout's work so impressed the producers that he ended up being promoted to Production Designer. Apparently his storyboards detailed the sets so specifically that he was already kind of doing that job.

Stout took the stage with Mondo head honcho Justin Ishmael to give us the backstory to the genesis of the project (calling Dekker's work the “best script I've ever read”) before taking to the first row with a mic and a flashlight to cue the old school slide projector and walked us through the movie that could have been.



So, Steve Miner was coming off the heels of two genre successes in Friday the 13th Part 2 and 3-D and somehow got the rights to attempt to launch an American version of Godzilla. Pre-Night of the Creeps and Monster Squad Fred Dekker wrote the script and William Stout was brought on to do storyboards and pitch art (and, as mentioned above, eventually was elevated to production designer).

They built a pitch package to try to get a studio to sign on to this ambitious project, which was planned to film in 3-D. Stout ran through the storyboards he had, which covered a goodly amount of the action in the film. I was able to snap a few photos, which I'll pepper into the rundown below.

THE STORY:
The film started with a quote: “Listening through the mist --- distant glow of dragon's cries, a warrior waits” before opening in space on a meteor flying towards camera. On Earth some dudes at NASA notice it and realize it's headed towards a satellite carrying nuclear missiles .

The meteor crashes into the satellite, sending one nuke crashing towards the Earth. The NASA guys are able to fire an interceptor missile to knock the nuke off course, away from populated lands and into the sea. It crashes into the water and shortly thereafter detonates. The NASA guys cheer, but the music was supposed to be ominous as the camera pushes into the irradiated water, past fish carcasses, with the title “GODZILLA 3-D” materializing.

He then went through a sequence that introduced the Snake Plissken-esque eye-patch wearing hero of the story, a character by the name of Daxton. There's a salvage flotilla at sea with some trawlers going about their fishing duties around them. One of these trawlers gets raided by scuba divers who turn out to be Russian bad guys (this was 1983, afterall) who want to be able to spy on the flotilla.

They see Daxton arrive. Turns out he's there to investigate something under the water. He takes a team and dives down to a sunken sub. The storyboards made it look like a bit of a horror movie sequence. Dark, creepy, empty sub. No sign of life or death. It's just empty. For a while, at least. They soon start finding bodies and one of Daxton's crew grabs his throat and collapses. The rest put on their regulators and breath tank oxygen as they follow the trail of bodies to a room containing nuclear missiles. One is missing.

Stout didn't say, but I'd guess this sequence happens a little bit after the above-mentioned arrival of Daxton since I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be those Russians getting there before our hero does, gassing the crew and getting out with a nuke.

Some of the connecting tissues will be missing since they didn't need to storyboard most of the exposition stuff and Stout said he hadn't read the script in decades.

The next sequences shown all focused on teasing the arrival of Big G. One very Jaws-like scene sees a fishing trawler (which was boarded to look exactly like the Orca, by the way) whose nets get snagged by something big under the water, which starts towing them around the ocean until they cut free. Another shows some Islander kids playing around a small pond. Camera pulls up to reveal that pond is in the shape of a giant lizard foot. Some soldiers cut through the pond as well, not realizing what they're walking across. Those soldiers enter a village and notice radiation burns on some of the villagers. Something big catches their attention. The soldiers look up, fear on their faces. Cut to...

An iguana's face. This is little Kevin's pet iguana who he's showing off at a school show and tell. Kevin is Daxton's kid and was to be one of the main characters of the story. He goes to school in San Francisco, gets made fun of for bringing an iguana to school and when his hot mom (drawn to look like Pat Benatar) picks him up from school that doesn't help his rep very much.

There was some stuff establishing Kevin as Daxton's kid (shots of his father driving across the Golden Gate Bridge to pick him up, etc) and a bit where this 10-ish year old boy is driving a jeep around sand dunes, his father in the passenger seat looking nervous.

The first big reveal of Godzilla is a personal connection moment between the King of Monsters and this kid. Kevin's iguana rests on his shoulder as Godzilla comes across him. It seems to confuse Big G that this human is friends with a reptile and he regards him curiously before heading off... you know, to fuck up San Francisco.



Much like the recent Gareth Edwards film, he starts with the Golden Gate bridge and moves into the city, the idea being he would be fighting army tanks and choppers and cops and other annoying humans as he destroyed famous San Fran landmarks, including DiMaggios. There were many boards showing army guys firing bazookas at Godzilla, tanks firing on him, etc.

For some reason the Russian bad guys are also in the mix and are in a chopper which Godzilla takes notice of. While trying to evade, the main Russian bald bad guy falls out. Godzilla catches him in the air, looks at him resting in the palm of his hand and then squishes him. As you do.

Not exactly sure the order of events here, but I take this to be part of a big late second act or early third act sequence. I do know that Godzilla ends up hiding out at Alcatraz and that's where the finale is set.



Daxton is piloting a fancy helicopter of some sort that's able to fire one nuke. The plan is to fire it directly into the monster's mouth, detonating inside the beast.

This puts young Kevin in a bit of a bind. He has a bond with Godzilla, but the monster is tearing up the city, killing people and will kill his dad if he doesn't step in. So, he calls out to the monster, distracting him away from his father and allowing him time to aim and launch the missile.





Godzilla crawls towards the ocean after the nuke goes off inside him. I couldn't tell if he sinks into the water or dies on the shore, but either way it's sad for Kevin (and us, too, probably).





But at least Kevin has his family back safe and sound:



That was all she wrote in terms of story beats. The rest of the panel was a Q&A, mostly focused on why it didn't happen. Stout said that at every studio the outcome was exactly the same. They'd get 14 yeses as the project rose up to the top guy and every single studio said no at that stage. Apparently this was right after there were a handful of major budget bombs, including Heaven's Gate, and all execs were gunshy about giant budget movies. Nobody wanted to take a risk, so while everybody agreed the presentation was amazing and the crew they had gathered was great it always fizzled at the top level.

Rick Baker never got to build the full scale animatronic head, but Dave Allen did construct a prototype stop motion Godzilla.

Spoiler:

[LSD Jellyfish]

I'm really happy we got to see this, it's definitely interesting and a bit darker than a lot of the other films.

[G2000]

Hey, Godzilla '83. I still have the script saved somewhere.

That art's new, though. Well, not new, but....you know what I mean.

[Pkmatrix]

Wow, I've never seen a few of those storyboards before! The headshot of the Stoutzilla is new to me, at least. I've got a copy of the GKOTM3D script too, I snatched that up as soon as it turned up online! XD

[SuperMonsterZero]

But how would these two characters work? I mean batman is smaller than Kong. I know batman has his gadgets, etc but is it enough?

And why is every dream match for Godzilla are smaller than Godzilla?

Gamera

Zilla

Kong

Batman

I assume Batman would have piloted a giant robot or something to take on the Big G...Even then, my money would have been on Godzilla

If you had read the linked article that describes almost the entire plot of the movie, you would know that Batman would not have piloted a giant robot to fight Godzilla. In fact, in 1966 there was no such thing as a giant robot with a pilot inside. The first Japanese giant robot with a pilot was Mazinger Z in 1972.

An earlier version of the "Batman Meets Godzilla" story involved Batman using a remote-controlled female Godzilla robot to trick Godzilla, but that idea was revised to be a device that emitted a Godzilla mating call instead. It's nothing like Leopardon from the 1978 Toei Spider-Man.

[GigaBowserG]

This was pulled from a book, "Godzilla vs Mothra SPFX". Not sure if Hedorah was supposed to show and do battle with the Big G, but it looks pretty awesome. One of his eyes is flying off and still shooting a laser beam