by Benjamin Haines » Tue Jun 17, 2014 9:12 pm
I think there's plenty of potential in having Godzilla be a menace to general populated areas in a sequel, even if it's just as natural/inadvertent as his heroic role in the first movie, particularly after what Edwards has already set up. We've seen Godzilla go from menace to hero, we've seen him remain a force of nature while going from primary antagonist to lesser of two evils, and we've seen him alternate between being the villain and being an antihero with varying degrees of menace to humanity in recent years. We've never seen the force-of-nature Godzilla go from the default hero to a provoked menace.
My idea for the sequel is to have two plotlines that converge midway through the story. The first plot would involve a NATO pursuit of Godzilla after seismic activity in the South Pacific stirs him to the ocean surface. The operation is spearheaded by a US Marine Corps general and also involves Adm. Stenz of the Navy. The general wants Godzilla dead before another incident like Honolulu happens and Stenz is agreeable to that. They track Godzilla as he makes landfall on a lightly inhabited Pacific island and the locals evacuate.
The second plot would be Monarch investigating a gigantic sinkhole that opens in Antarctica as a result of the seismic activity, led by Dr. Serizawa and Dr. Graham. The sinkhole would lead them to a deep underground cavern where lots of different prehistoric monsters like Godzilla are frozen in suspended animation. Continued earthquakes break one of the monsters, Rodan, out of the ice and wake her up.
The Monarch team rushes to make it out of the collapsing caverns as Rodan tears her way toward the surface. Rodan escapes into the open sky and what's left of Monarch joins up with NATO to track her. Godzilla spots Rodan flying and is immediately interested in giving chase. Serizawa and Graham try to convince Adm. Stenz to prevent any operation to antagonize either monster but the general is determined to kill them. Rodan attacks countryside ranches with large numbers of cattle. Godzilla catches up and the two of them have it out with each other.
Rodan knocks Godzilla into the sea and collapses a cliffside onto him, then flies off. Godzilla doesn't surface but NATO tracks him swimming in Rodan's direction. A submarine attack diverts the attention of Godzilla's wrath while Rodan attacks a slaughterhouse outside a large coastal city. A military airstrike drives an enraged Rodan to attack the city.
Godzilla arrives and he and Rodan battle throughout the city. Godzilla eventually wins and Rodan flies away visibly wounded. Serizawa fails to change Stenz's mind and he remains sided with the general as the NATO forces attack Godzilla with everything they've got. Godzilla survives it all, furiously wipes out their forces and then goes on a rampage through the city, even destroying the NATO command post. The climax of the movie would be Serizawa and Graham racing to escape the city with their lives after Godzilla kills Stenz and the general.
The movie would end with Godzilla returning to the ocean at sunrise with the city behind him mostly rubble and raging fires, in contrast to the ending of the first movie and illustrating the consequence of provoking Godzilla, leaving people to wonder if they may have just blown their chance at having a monster that fights on their side by circumstance. Just before the credits roll, we see Anguirus, Mothra, Varan, Baragon, Kameba, and other prehistoric kaiju emerging from the Antarctic sinkhole, awakened by Rodan's earlier tear through the caverns. Among them is a second Rodan with a larger, brightly colored head crest - a male. The third movie could show the world coping with the increasing regularity of monster appearances and then bring in King Ghidorah from space.
