Toho Has A “Godzilla Room” Laying Down Rules For Respecting Their Property In Every Iteration
There are means for respecting canons and the integrity of characters dwelling within them. For instance, we’ve heard of show bibles, but they don’t always work how they’re supposed to – or the way fans assume they should.
Nothing seems to prevent Hollywood from taking liberties with the established lore of Tolkien, Lucas, Marvel, The Witcher, or DC to name a few.
That is unless they’re dealing with Toho and their cash kaiju Godzilla. The Japanese studio, much like the rest of their country’s content Americans enjoy, exists in a bubble cut off, immune to the whims of our film industry.
If you want to play with them, you have to play by their rules – and they have a few for their giant dinosaur.
In fact, they have an office whose job is to make sure the big guy is respected on screens at home and abroad. Toho’s “Godzilla Room” came to be in the shadow of Shin Godzilla and oversees every project to protect the brand, and to do this, they enforce strict criteria for filmmakers.
The Room’s director Tetsuya Yoshikawa explained in an interview with Livedoor that there were two specific mandates Godzilla Minus One and Godzilla x Kong had to abide by above all.
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“Some of the big rules are that Godzilla never dies and that Godzilla does not prey on people or things. We checked these things from the script stage for Godzilla Minus One as well. The same goes for the Hollywood version,” said Yoshikawa via Movieweb.
“Managing the film by clarifying agreements and principles, rather than just going by intuition, also leads to the credibility of the film,” he added.
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Hollywood could learn from this level of care, although it’s nothing new from Toho’s playbook. In the mid-90s, they had a veritable encyclopedia of requests they gave Roland Emmerich when making his 98 adaptation. He ignored them and freely made a film he didn’t want to do.
Very few were happy with that finished product, including Toho executives. They are clearly more satisfied with modern takes in GxK and Minus One – as we all should be. Having said that, though, there are minute inconsistencies to consider.
What? Well, it’s not as if Adam Wingard and Takashi Yamazaki didn’t bend the G-Room’s rules. You can’t watch those movies and say Godzilla absolutely did not prey upon any living thing for an undisputed fact.
But, who cares, as long as they made money, right?
NEXT: Roland Emmerich Did Not Want To Make His Divisive Godzilla Movie
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