Synopsis:

A number of years ago I stumbled upon a Godzilla fan edit called, “Godzilla and the Cradle of Eternity”.   Can’t remember where I found or downloaded from, and in trying to find the editor I came up empty in my online searches.   This edit combined (from the 2000s movie series) Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Godzilla Tokyo SOS into one movie.   This worked well as they were the only two in the Millennium series that were directly connected.  However the edit had its issues with some odd cuts, jumps in the music score or sound FX, and other aspects here and there.  So, I decided to try and do my own version of the edit, titled “Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla: Battle for Eternity” (I liked the Eternity subtitle from the original fan edit, and adding “Battle for…” felt a bit classic Toho title).

Intentions:

My goal was to keep all the actual Godzilla action from the films, and cut down unnecessary elements and even characters where possible.   As I went through this edit, I was surprised on how I able was to cut even more out of it than I first thought.   For example, in the first film the lead scientist has a small daughter… and he also has some awkward love interest with the main female Mecha-G pilot.   The daughter, in part thanks to the dubbing (yes I kept the English dub), had some absolutely cringe-worthy lines.  (all in my own opinion of course)   And the supposed love interest was also awkward and with its fare share of cringe worthy moments.    As I moved through the edit, I realized I could completely remove the daughter character and it impacted the story in no way what so ever!    (she does appear now as a random child in a couple quick crowd shots)     Also removed the love interest, which turns out was absolutely unnecessary in the movie.  Now in this edit, instead of there being a year gap between movies, it is one continuous story.    While the lead character of the first movie does not remain for the second, they thankfully gave a reason in Godzilla Tokyo SOS for her departure.    I also took elements from SOS and moved them to earlier locations in the first film so we get introduced to Mothra and the characters that will carry out the remainder of the film.   For the special effects I had the idea to go in and try to “enhance” them a bit.   But when I tried to add things like explosions over the original footage, it just did not mesh well.   I did add a bit more atmospheric elements to the shots, just to try and add a little more depth or scale.   It is subtle and hopefully goes unnoticed.  The final edit, with credits, runs about 2 hours and 10 minutes.   The goal was to make a Godzilla movie with an epic feel, and try to keep it more on the serious side.   Well, as serious as a giant fighting Godzilla robot can be.   I personally enjoyed these two films (and thus combining them into this edit) because they at least seemed to try and keep a serious tone about them… and not go into the campy direction of some.  If anyone knows anything about the original Godzilla and the Cradle of Eternity edit, please let me know.   Would love to let the editor know how I appreciate his/her work, and spur me to take on my own version.

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