So Godzilla being in a Star Wars universe setting poses some interesting challenges. For one, he's a lot bigger than some of the stuff we'd regularly see. Let's be honest, even the AT-STs are kinda puny. They don't pose much of a challenge size wise. Power level wise they are stronger than most weapons he has to face. So there's a trade off, there isn't much in his size ratio that can touch him, but he's dealing with stronger foes.
More important, for the current chapter, I needed sufficient masses of enemies to engage Big G with. I didn't want to bring out the chicken walkers though, I wanted appropriate escalation. So I dug into the files of Star Wars weapons and dug out some tanks and artillery pieces I could use. It was worth it because it offered me the chance to showcase some less well known Star Wars weaponry.
The scene with Chopper was supposed to go a bit differently at first. I was going to have Godzilla's tail near smack him on the way back up to the Phantom. I removed that cause it didn't really make logistical sense. Was Godzilla's tail going to be long enough to reach that far up, especially while he was currently trapped in a canyon? So I just scrapped the idea, for now. I may find another way to implement it later.
Because this chapter uses a few EU vehicles from some video games in them, maybe I should explain a bit more on my attitude towards that whole... erasing thing Disney did. To be accurate, it was more Lucasfilm doing it than Disney. I don't really think they care one way or another how Star Wars is told, so long as they get their money returns from the toys and box office receipts. I think this sort of thing has been in the works for awhile, Disney buying them just gave Lucasfilm the opportunity to implement it. Not to say Disney played no role at all, I think they prefer the idea of everything residing within the same canonical universe. It's worked well with Marvel's Cinematic Universe, so why not Star Wars? I don't think they're losing sleep over the death of Canon Levels, to be frank. Let's be honest with ourselves, that old system was rather confusing. Things were canon, but not really, others were more canon than others, it was confusing.
Not to mention there were tons of contradictions. You can't have Clones who know about Order 66 in Battlefront and also not know about it in the Clone Wars series. You can't have a Grievous who, as a non-force sensitive cyborg, can take out a bunch of Jedi Masters with barely a scratch in one series and have another where he's still powerful but not Matrix level Agent Smith. (Let's be honest with ourselves, that original mini series was done by the same guy as Samurai Jack. Grievous was so overpowered because of that aesthetic it wasn't even funny.) You have zombie Stormtroopers, you have very confusing depictions of the Clone Wars from the Thrawn books, you got Bariss Offee dying on the same planet as Aayla Secura after she betrays the Jedi, you got Jedi not being able to marry, Luke getting married to Mara Jade... yeah things got messy once Lucas decided he wanted to make those prequels. Lets just leave it at that.
Now of course, everyone tried to fix this thing up as is. They did their damndest, and I applaud them for trying. But when you're dealing with something this big and there are so many stories that just seem to run over one another at various points, it's kinda like rolling a stone boulder up a very steep hill. You can accomplish a bit, but it's very daunting. So at the same time, its probably easier to just start fresh and slowly return elements that work within that new framework to the world of canon. I get some people wanted the Thrawn trilogy to be their episode 7, but that idea went out the window when all the principal actors in that story went past the age of forty. So it was either advance so far into the future that there are no old characters or people the audience will care about starring in the picture, or force the directors to follow a story they can't follow anymore. It's a bit unreasonable to behold directors, actors and writers in general to something and keep them from actually telling the story they want to tell.
Now of course there are some folks who are still pissed about how the stories that were still being told in the now legends line weren't finished. Well, when is any Star Wars story ever finished? It's like comic books guys, there never is an end. There's always the next story, the next evolution. So really, they were never going to be finished anyway. You may ask why we can't just have a separate continuing universe like Ultimate Marvel. Well, that's not in line with Disney's plans. Everything going forward is part of one singular vision and universe. You decide to draw a line between "This is Canon" and "This isn't Canon but is for something else" then we're getting back into the same problem as before with different levels of canon. That and any alternate universe take on Star Wars in this vein wouldn't be different enough from the Canon Star Wars of the current era. It's not like Ultimate because you still consider the same six movies that the other main universe considers canon as canon. Do you see how this is getting iffy?
Now I'll be clear, I love a lot of the EU. I picked up quite a few of the books from the former EU recently. Audiobooks anyway, I like the production values of a good old fashioned radio play. And they're all really good... except for the Karen Traviss one I bought that was a let down. I don't think a story not being canon is cause for it being discredited as good. Especially when we're talking about a fictional universe. The books aren't ruined because they no longer inform background or events within the universe. All that matters is that they're good stories. If we really cared that much about keeping things canon we would not have fanfiction in the first place. None of that is canon, this story isn't canon, does that make it not matter? Does that make it suck? I'd like to think if you think Force of Nature sucks you think it's because it's not good on its own merits, not because it doesn't count. The books are still there guys, no one is taking them away from you. As long as you love them, who cares if they're not canon?
And before you suggest the authors were insulted or spat on by this change, Timothy Zahn doesn't care. He really doesn't. This is the fact of life for authors working in a universe that isn't their own. It's going to change, it's going to be altered and their stories may no longer be canon. Do you think any of the comic writers over at DC cared when their own stories were made non-canon? No, because even if officially it doesn't count, it counts to them. No writer is insulted, none. They don't care, because it doesn't affect them. Their stories are still canon to them when they write anything in that universe. That's just how it is.
I suppose that's enough Star Wars talk for now, especially on a controversial subject. Next time I'll talk about how the Ewoks rule in more depth and really piss off some people. How about we switch gears back to Godzilla to close out?
If there's one thing about the King that should always be understood, its that he is not a dumb animal. He is not an ordinary creature. He is sentient to a degree. That part in King Kong vs. Godzilla, the American version, where they say Godzilla is a stupid reptile is insulting to me because he clearly isn't. G-Unit didn't become master of the kaiju by just punching them to death. He has strategy, he thinks on his feet, he's not stupid. In Godzilla 2000, he realized that the only way to kill Orga was to burn him alive from the inside. He teamed up with Gorosaurus in Destroy all Monsters to lay the smackdown on King Ghidorah in a two pronged attack. He did the same with Rodan, Jet Jaguar and King Ceaser in other movies. He friggin deduced how to take out an electric net that was shocking the crap out of him! In the recent movie he actually seems to actively avoid smashing into a US Naval Carrier and tries his best to move around a city without destroying buildings! When does a dumb animal try to avoid collateral damage in its rampage?
Godzilla isn't just an animal, no Kaiju is. They represent something more, could be a country, philosophy, or just some element of nature. Godzilla more or less, in most Japanese Films anyway, he represents the natural disaster or an allegory for nuclear power. You can't really fight that. So try as they might, the Empire gets a harsh lesson here that you can't expect your big guns to save you. Not when the threat is practically a walking living hurricane/atomic bomb. Doesn't mean you can't hurt him, Godzilla is still alive. It's just that hurting him is probably a bad idea in the long run. All you're doing is just adding more fuel to the fire. Hell, the only thing seemingly capable of killing Godzilla, besides a ridiculous super weapon that doesn't really make sense when you think about it, is himself. Because he literally melted down all China Syndrome in the 90s.
Godzilla isn't invulnerable, as we saw here and will see in other chapters. The Empire can't look totally ineffective or we're just watching them constantly fail. They have to score some kind of hit, something to make Godzilla take pause and reconsider things. And in future additions to the story we may discover that the King needs a little help from forces outside of his regular arsenal. The point is, Godzilla needs to be a credible threat and the Empire a credible adversary for him. Otherwise, this story is going to get boring real fast until we finally have the Zillo-Beast put into play.
Well, that's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this little chapter of mine and that I didn't bore you too much with my personal thoughts on matters both Kaiju and Star Wars. See you next time.
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