Filmland - 8 Kaiju That Should Join the MonsterVerse

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We’re now a couple weeks out from Kong: Skull Island, the 2^nd installment of Legendary’s proposed “Monster-Universe” of films.  For those not in the know, this is a planned shared universe of giant monsters movies that’s been in the works for a while now.  The concept originated with Legendary’s desire to reboot Godzilla for the modern blockbuster age when they came across the script for Pacific Rim.  They like some of the concepts but ultimately ended up deciding to make a Marvel-style shared universe instead.  The first installment in this was 2014’s Godzilla, directed by Garreth Edwards, which wasn’t great. 

However, Kong: Skull Island looks fresh and Godzilla: King of Monsters is showing a lot of promise, bringing in Michael Dougherty, director of Krampus and Trick r Treat, as a new director along with three classic monsters in Rodan, Mothra, and Ghidorah.  All of this is leading up to an eventual King Kong vs. Godzilla remake, though there’s plenty of room for franchise expansion beyond that.  That subject of franchise development is what I’m here to talk about today with 8 classic Toho Kaiju who should appear next in the giant monster-verse. 

1st Godzilla 2016 Images

In case you hadn’t heard there’s a new Godzilla movie coming our way real soon.  I wouldn’t blame you for not knowing, the last one was only a couple of years ago and even though sequels come out quick these days there’s usually more of a gap than that, especially given all the production shenanigans now plaguing Legendary studios.  However, this new Godzilla film isn’t a sequel to the 2014 formula snore-fest with a better than expected ending, it’s a whole new Godzilla movie produced by Toho, the Japanese studio that invented the king of the monsters.  While none of the Godzilla films are objectively great movies the very achievement of Godzilla himself is pretty impressive, one of the truly modern pop icons that comes exclusively from the world of film. 

The entire genre of “giant monster movie” was more or less defined by Toho and it was Godzilla that helmed that flagship.  What’s more, a lot of now common ideas like broader, inter-movie continuity originated in the Toho Kaiju franchise as well as the Universal monster movies.  As such, the launch of a new Godzilla film from the people who created him is a big deal and now we have our first images and they’re absolutely terrifying.