So this is my new little Experiment. It’s certainly different from what some folks would probably expect. I imagine someone has done a Godzilla crossover with Star Wars at some point, but I’m not looking for anything super epic or long with this. This is just something I thought would be really fun to do, bringing two huge film franchises together in a mixing of their unique settings and tropes. Don't worry, Wormhole Chronicles is not cancelled, we're just on a season break of sorts until we can sort out some complications and I wanted to do a little something different to keep my creative juices flowing.
When I was a kid, Dinosaurs were so awesome to me. Giant reptiles that roamed the earth millions of years ago, learning about them was like finding out dragons were once real. And one day, watching some really silly barely education Dinosaurs VHS tape, I discovered the ultimate dinosaur. Godzilla, King of the Monsters, the terror of Tokyo, five hundred stories of sheer terror! He was dubbed over with a ridiculous voice over that made him sound like Patrick Starfish several years before his time, but I didn’t care, I wanted to know more about him. I read up about Godzilla at the library, learned about his movies, tried to catch them on TV. Eventually I scored a bunch of tapes and DVDs detailing some of the Big G’s greatest adventures and it was a wonder to behold. Godzilla got me into the early days of Science Fiction in film and spawned an appreciation in me for 1950s b-movies and giant monsters in general.
Around the same time as my introduction to the King, I was watching the remastered Star Wars VHS trilogy. This was before Lucas decided to extensively change stuff. We still have those tapes somewhere I think. They’re probably a collectors item now. The point is I got to see Star Wars in a form that was as close to the original release as possible and it was a pretty magical thing. I remember watching all three films on three separate nights in a row and found myself sucked in. Han Solo was of course my favorite, cause he had the cool ship, had all the best lines, was best buds with space bigfoot and of course he got the Princess. It didn’t hurt he was played by Harrison Ford, who had played my other childhood icon Indiana Jones. Everyone else wants to be a Jedi or Sith, me? I wanted to be a smuggler, like Han, cause he was cool. That or a Bounty Hunter, cause they got Jet Packs.
I followed Star Wars pretty closely from that day on. I picked up any game I could, just to play them. Although I never got into the books, but I did pick up the Droids and Ewoks cartoon series on tape. The point is I was a huge Star Wars fan, but never got as into the other elements of it because I didn’t know how to find the books and whatnot. I was a dumb kid, blame the fact there wasn't a bookstore nearby. As an aside, I’m the anomaly. I recognize Empire Strikes Back as the best movie from a technical standpoint. But my favorite is Return of the Jedi and screw anyone who says otherwise but the Ewoks friggin rule and I always loved them and always will. Those little crazy teddy bears were awesome!
But I’m kinda weird like that you see, a lot of the Star Wars controversies that ticked others off? Never bothered me. Episode One? I was actually one of the early defenders of it and even now don’t think it’s all that bad. The Gungans? I don’t hate them. I get not liking Jar Jar, I realized why he didn’t work, but the Gungans didn’t bother me and still don’t. The crappy romance plot? I largely just ignored it cause I was more interested in what Obi-Wan was doing at the time and just kinda tuned it out. I actually thought it made sense why Anakin goes evil. I understood why love was dangerous for Jedi. I accepted a lot of the stuff in the prequels and saw every one in theaters like everyone else.
I Was one of Ahsoka’s early fans before people stopped hating her, that’s not to be hipster, that’s just how it was. I never really understood the hate, mainly because people complaining about Anakin being wrong and her being right was something I felt was in character. Come on guys, this is Anakin... when are any of his choices or reactions right or well-thought out? And when the EU got decanonized along with all those games I played and loved? I just shrugged. Like, oh? Really? Cause to be honest, the EU always felt a bit daunting to me and I didn’t like a lot of the stuff I found out about it. Got too grimdark in some places, especially with Han and Leia’s kids. That felt so wrong to me. I realized that this was just a temporary shift and eventually some of the old stuff, the good not shitty stuff, would come back in. And the release of “Tarkin” has pretty much re-canonized “Darth Plagueis” so that prophecy came true. And it will come true for other elements of the Star Wars universe if we let them.
This is how Godzilla comes back into the picture. As a fan of Big G, you have to take things with a bit of a laidback attitude. This is a franchise about a fire breathing nuclear powered dinosaur stomping around Japan and fighting alien dragons, giant moths, piles of toxic sludge, a punk rock cyborg lizard and robotic doppelgangers of himself. This is not exactly something you are required to take super seriously. At the core element of the franchise, Godzilla is silly. And I love him for it. I love when people take the material seriously, don’t get me wrong. I just accept that Godzilla is not a single interpretation or only means one thing. A lot of the things we love are silly, but we place value on them regardless. Godzilla is sixty plus years old because he’s been able to change and evolve so much. There isn’t just one Godzilla story, there are several. He’s that versatile. He can be a hero, a villain or somewhere in the middle. He’s the Wrath of the Atomic Bomb, Earth’s Champion or the Power of Nature’s Will. (There was also that one time he was the Souls of the Victims of Japan’s war crimes, but whatever.)
I guess my point is, Godzilla is able to survive without a strict canon and never really has had one. So even his less than enjoyable outings don’t really bother me. I actually think of “Smog Monster” as a little guilty pleasure for just one scene. You know the one. And if I can somehow recreate it I will. Star Wars of course doesn’t operate like that, it has a singular well-defined canon. However the Galaxy it exists in is so vast that at the same time you can tell a ton of awesome stories in it. I’d personally hate to let a bunch of books over the span of thirty years hinder someone from creating something new. Especially if the system that is hindering is kind of a confusing mess. Better to have everything be part of one canon then different levels of them. Even Godzilla’s myriad of interpretations don’t try to do that.
And in the same vein, I can find joy in things that may not be up to par with other entries in a franchise. The prequels have great lightsaber fights, Ewan MacGregor kills it as Obi-Wan in every scene he’s in and seeing the ingenious long term plans of Darth Sidious was fascinating to watch. How he manipulated the galaxy, fooled the Jedi into doing his dirty work and made himself the hero of the hour was a display of masterful villainy. Watching the Jedi get massacred by their own soldiers, who they fought and bled beside and cared for, was heart-wrenching. I truly felt I was watching the end of an era.
Star Wars Rebels, the successor to the Clone Wars animated series, has been a joy to watch purely for the sense of nostalgia it evokes. And plus we got a cast of awesome characters in the crew of the Ghost. Recently, Ahsoka was revealed to be alive and well. It’s great to see her again, especially as an awesome Rogue Grey Jedi helping to fight the Empire. And in the same year it premiered, we got a new Godzilla film from America that DIDN'T totally suck. One that not only seemed to actually get the character, but did its best to present us with a solid kaiju story to boot. And next year, on the heels of a new Star Wars film in fact, Toho is doing another Godzilla movie to celebrate its success. To see both franchises coming back with avengeance in books, films and TV form brings a warm feeling to my heart. Knowing that these two icons of my childhood are alive and well seems to validate my love for both.
I got this idea thinking back to a Clone Wars episode that introduced the Zillo-Beast and thought, wouldn't it be awesome if Godzilla actually fought that thing? And then I thought, wouldn't it also be awesome if Godzilla took on a fleet of AT-ATs? It just clicked from there, the prospect of Godzilla fighting against the Galactic Empire was too good an idea to pass up. So I crafted an outline and decided to put it to paper. Just a little something to pay tribute to two franchises I love so dearly. In coming Authors Notes, I’ll be sharing bits and pieces of my writing process and stuff about the respective series in general. Feel free to use music from the films when reading, I know I did. For you Kaiju fans, look out for potential easter eggs I’ve hidden in the text that callback to Godzilla’s many films in one way or another. I’ll give you a small hint for one set of them, numbers and letters. I’ll see how you do on this first round, hopefully the next couple are harder to solve. For now, stay tuned, there is more Kaiju action in a Galaxy Far Far Away to come.
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