How To Fix American Godzilla Movies

You might be wondering why I haven’t written much lately. One excuse is that Turner Classic Movies has been having weekly monster movie marathon’s. They do this every year. It’s usually Universal and Hammer films, but this year they’ve been showing classic Godzilla movies.

These films are mostly from the 60s and 70s. I’m also familiar with the 90s Godzilla movies because many of them used to be on Crackle. (Is Crackle still a thing?)

One thing I’ve come to realize is that the B plot actually matters.

Now when I say B plot, I’m of course referring to the part of the movie that follows the human characters. To keep it special (or maybe reduce costs), monster fights are reserved for about a third of the movie at best. Since North America insists on having 3 hour movies, they’re probably down to a fourth or fifth of the runtime, but let’s be generous and say the A plot is 1/3 and the B plot is 2/3’s of the runtime.

A good B plot is entertaining on its own, while building tension for when it converges with the A plot.

Now let’s compare a little.

American Movies
- Military enlists Scientist to fight Godzilla.
- Military enlists Scientist to fight Godzilla.
- Military enlists Scientist to fight Godzilla.

To be fair 1997 had the funniest B plot, while it was the A plot that was lacking and the newest one had the best A plot, with Mothera and King Ghidorah.

Japanese Movies
- Scientist is indebted to evil aliens for saving his daughters life by turning her into a cyborg. Meanwhile archeologists are trying to solve a riddle, so that the can awaken a giant dog monster.
- Two possibly homosexual guys, and their kid, build a robot very similar to Ultraman, to be pals with Godzilla.
- Princess falls from a plane, and starts believing she’s a Venusian, while being able to predict the future.
- Political Spoof about what government officials do during a Godzilla attack.
- Top Gun, homage, where a woman competes with other soldiers to be the pilot of MechaGodzilla.

Basically what I’ve observed is that North Americans are trying to make the same 'war movie' formula work over and over again, while the Japanese just throw anything at the wall, and see what sticks.

The surprising thing is that even after over 30 movies neither side, really knows what to do for 2/3’s of the film.

Maybe it’s my own issue. For instance, I like sword fights, but find guns boring. I like horses and unicorns, but don’t care about tanks and helicopters. I can’t tell soldiers apart because they all dress the same (Maybe if they had cutie marks).

Anyway, I feel what North American Godzilla movies need is a more interesting B plot. What should that B plot be?

Also, while I’m talking Godzilla, what happened with those Netflix movies. I thought with animation they could do things they couldn’t do in other movies. I’m of course referring to the A plot. It should have had the best monster fights. If they were even on the level of the Hannah Barbara cartoon then I’d be gushing over how great they were, but they were not.