After Shogo Tomiyama's pitch for a "Godzilla vs. Godzilla" movie was shot down, the search began for another monster to challenge Godzilla. Surprisingly, Godzilla vs. Bagan didn't get very far before Toho tossed it out in favor of other storylines. However, Bagan's appearance in the Super Nintendo game Super Godzilla easily makes this one of the most well known of Toho's scrapped endeavors. While not much concrete information is known, gossip at the time suggested the story would have been very similar to the previously scrapped Godzilla vs. Giant Monster Varan, only not set in 1999 and with Bagan taking Varan's role as the lead antagonist.
Details floating around about the movie's story mentioned the inclusion of the Gotengo from the 1963 film Atragon, although its exact role was unknown, in addition to the heroic Mothra. Likewise, some hearsay insisted that Godzilla was going to transform into a second form, dubbed "Super Godzilla" in the video game, though this seems unlikely given that most of the elements of that design had already been utilized on SpaceGodzilla in the 1994 Godzilla outing. Another persistent rumor was that a Bagan suit existed on the Toho lot, suggesting that this draft may have been a serious contender for the next Godzilla entry.
Whatever the case, Toho would go on to create the last film in the Heisei Godzilla series, Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995), while also creating the animated super sub movie Super Atragon (1995), although the ship featured is the Ra instead of the original Gotengo, and finally kickstart a trilogy of Mothra movies beginning with Rebirth of Mothra in 1996. |
