Godzilla Heritage

Updated 06/28/2020: Gave more detail about the actors and the soundtrack.

• Godzilla Heritage was a Kickstarter project that was started by Greg Graves and his team at Perception Entertainment. However, due to not being able to get the project fully funded and having to compromise with the lawyers of Godzilla's parent studio, TOHO Co. ltd., the project was at a stand still.

• The project would have used a large roster of monsters with Godzilla, Anguirus, Varan, Kumonga, Rodan, Mothra, Kamacuras, and a new monster called Ryujin.

Review:

Following in his grandfather's footsteps, United World News reporter Jack Martin finds himself in the middle of an attack by a family of super fauna known as Anguirus. Unknown to him, Jack is about to witness a fight between Anguirus and his grandfather's greatest nightmare and perhaps humanity's only hope, Godzilla.

First off, I want to say thank you to the developers of this fan film on their hard work. When this film project was first announced in 2013, Godzilla Heritage showed a lot of promise and I will never regret backing this project. Usually most developers would have given up on their projects by this point, but you guys stuck to the bitter end just so you can deliver something to your backers. For that, I give you guys kudos on delivering.

Before the movie began, director and producer Greg Graves and actor Tim Schiefer gave some insight on how they came up with the idea for Godzilla Heritage. It was an idea that was tossed around in 2009 as a short film on how they wanted to see the fight between Godzilla and Anguirus, but the concept grew into being a full length film. What was delivered was test footage of what the final film would look like. This short would've been used to garner more funds for the film until TOHO's lawyers in America stepped in. Despite being given the go-ahead from TOHO on the project, there were guidelines such as not having "Godzilla" in the title, the film can only be 50 minutes at max, and they were not allowed to crowdfund the project. So in the end, the test footage that would have helped fund Godzilla Heritage became the final film.

With that said, Godzilla Heritage leaves a lot to be desired and Greg and Tim did admit that the final film is not as polished as they would've liked. It is very telling that there are pieces of the movie's story that is missing and that cliffhanger ending really wanted me to know more about what happens next. It left me with more questions than answers. What motivates Jack to document the monster attack? Is the news station that he works for going under or does he have an obsession of being like his grandfather, Steve Martin? Why is the family of Anguirus attacking Batavia Island in the first place? Did Godzilla drive them there? And what is Godzilla's relation to Anguirus? Are they friends, enemies, frenemies? It just leaves me wanting more.

In terms of acting, I think most of the actors did just fine. Tim Schiefer, I think, did the best job acting with his scenes in the whole movie because he is the only one I found conveying some emotion even though his character is always either getting annoyed or upset at the main character, Jack Martin. I do have to say, after just watching it again Tim's character reminds me a lot like T.J. Miller's character, Hud, from Cloverfield. Always seems to have some idea what is going on and you can just catch what Tim's character is thinking when he confronts Jack at the end of the film. I know that he knows Jack is obsessed when he yells, "Enough," and he is trying to make Jack let go of his obsession, which is a great scene and is the scene that stands out to me the most. It makes me want to know more about Jack and what drives him to do what he does. Again, you just know that something is up in that scene.