For a long time, fans have been clamoring for remakes and cross over movies that sounds like a fan's dream come true, but can't necessarily work. With Legendary Pictures working on Godzilla, Kong, and Pacific Rim you would think there would be room for other monsters to join like Gamera, the friend of all children and guardian of the universe. I remember reading this article a long time ago about this idea that was brought up to the table once when Daiei, the company that originally owned Gamera before it went bankrupt, was still around. Daiei approached TOHO of the idea of doing a cross-over movie and TOHO turned them down out of respect that Godzilla and Gamera should remain in their own series. I have even seen this happening when Pacific Rim came out when fans were asking for a Godzilla cross-over. Basically, any new monster film that comes out fans for some reason want to see Godzilla fight the damn thing, whether it's Gamera, the monsters from Pacific Rim, or the Cloverfield monster. I have even see people comment why there isn't an American remake of Gamera. To be honest, this is the side of the Godzilla fan base that I do not like very much. It is nice to dream of cross overs and remakes, but it's not going to happen and here are the reasons why.
First reason is that for any Godzilla cross over to happen TOHO needs to make their own movie. If you go back to my Kong-athon reviews you will find that TOHO made their own Kong movie called King Kong Escapes. That is why King Kong vs Godzilla was able to happen. If TOHO did their own Gamera, Pacific Rim, or Cloverfield movie, then that would be a different story.
The second reason is that these monster movies are not as popular contrary to what the fans may think. Pacific Rim was #2 in the box office on its first weekend being beaten by Grown Ups 2, a comedy movie with Adam Sandler and Chris Rock. Cloverfield was #1 when it came out, but in total it made $80,048,433. That is less than how much Godzilla (2014) made and less than how much Kong: Skull Island has currently made. Sure it got a sequel, but it took them eight years to do a sequel and it did poorly! Why does this matter? Well, if you look at Box Office Mojo10 Cloverfield Lane was #2 in the box office on opening weekend and quickly dropped to #4 the second weekend. The total amount the movie made is, wait for it... $72,082,998! That is $7,965,435 less than the first movie! This clearly shows that the Cloverfield franchise is not very popular.
My third reason is a remake of an unpopular franchise will not sell. I am talking about Gamera mostly because as I said before there are fans that want to see an American remake of it. We have seen other remakes from other franchises happen. A lot of movies coming out have just seem to be comic book movies, sequels to classics that is not needed, and remakes! Well, what about Gamera? Nobody outside of the fan base really knows who Gamera is. If they made Gamera and there were posters most people would ask, "Who in the world is Gamera?" But let's say somebody did pick up the rights for Gamera. The only company that I see it really happening is with Disney if they play on Gamera's child friendly personality. If Disney could sell Marvel movies, their live action movies of the classics like Beauty and the Beast, then they are the only ones that I can see them profiting off of Gamera. That is it! You may argue, "Well, the 90's Gamera movies were good," but then I would just say that they were good in your eyes yet the majority are not going to see them the same way as you do. Gamera is a really tough sell and even more tough than Mothra. Gamera had a movie in 2005 and it was not well received and it was suppose to have another movie after that and never happened. Gamera is just not a good sell over all.
My last reason are popularity of multiverse movies. Multiverse movies are a big thing now thanks to Marvel's The Avengers movies. Even DC is just now getting their Justice League movie out of post-production and getting ready to be released in November. Their last movie, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, bombed because they had all these plans ready for a two part movie and decided to cram all of it into one movie just to save time. So what does that really mean for cross over movies? It means cross overs have to be carefully planned and executed the right way. You can't just throw any idea around and hope that it would stick. The same goes for Legendary's Monsterverse. There needs to be a very convincing story as to why the two franchises are crossing over. There has to be a build up to it. Marvel, for example, first released Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America before going on to making The Avengers. That is what Godzilla and Kong are currently doing right now. If you just throw in random characters and plot like in Batman V Superman, then you would get this jumbled mess of ideas. So imagine all of a sudden that Godzilla is teleported into the world of Pacific Rim. You would get a whole lot of action out of it, but what would his main purpose be in the film? Characters need to have some sort of purpose to be in the film other than being there to look cool.
Those are my reasons as to why certain crossovers and remakes would not work. Thank you all for reading. I am still working on my book reviews for Project Nemesis and the rest of the series so stay tuned for more reviews and discussions.