The Heisei series has always been my favorite of the eras of Godzilla. I love the stories and continuity, I love the aesthetic and kaiju designs, I love the music, the special effects were some of the most impressive the franchise has ever shown, and it easily has the most iconic and quintessential portrayal of Godzilla (at least its easily my personal favorite). Biollante, King Ghidorah, MGII, and Destoroyah are my all time favorite kaiju movies. However, the series still isn’t flawless. Not all of the effects have aged well, the foreign acting (especially in Biollante and King Ghidorah) is laughably bad and extraordinarily cringe, the first entry (The Return of Godzilla) is in my opinion an absolute stale bore that puts me to sleep whenever I decide to put myself through the chore of sitting through it, and other things. But I’d like to fix these.
Here is a link to a Google doc where I have compiled my ideas for all six movies. None of these are completely finalized (in fact the lists for the last 3 Heisei films are more like bullet points then a specific list, but more details will be added as I go on) so feel free to suggest things: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VClStpc09q0TfAV-_dHSzY6ZfJzaUww_HcdXoGWkk6k/edit?usp=sharing
Changes made to all films
-All films are given a completely new color grade, adjusted to my liking. Most of which are saturation and brightening effects to make them even more colorful. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II especially, as the Japanese Blu-Ray looks very dull and washed out, worse than the Japanese DVD (proving it’s not a problem with the film itself, but the Blu-Ray transfer). The film seems to have a grey filter applied to the whole thing. In fact I’d even say both TriStar transfers are better, even the DVD one. The whole film now looks much brighter and more appealing.
-Brand new subtitles for all Japanese dialogue. I know this may cause controversy, but my goal here was not to create the most accurate translation, rather have the dialogue be as good as possible. I use lines from the fandubs included with Gorizard’s uploads of the Japanese versions on archive.org and lines from the dubtitles interchangeably to my liking, and sometimes I even change the line entirely myself simply to make it better. I apologize if this offends anyone who thinks it’s offensive to straight up make up dialogue, but I thought it would really benefit these edits to take complete advantage of the situation and have free reign to adjust the dialogue in any way I please, to make it all good (not that the dialogue was particularly bad in the Heisei series overall or anything, but this does still give me free reign to do things like explain the time travel plot in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah better and fix any clunkers, especially one’s present in Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla).
-All English in the film is replaced with the English dubbed version. The dubs just generally have better performances when it comes to the non-Japanese speaking roles throughout the films, look no further then Dr. Asimov from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II. Honestly I think the guy who did the dub for him did a really good job. Mileage does vary depending on the instance but in any case the dub is still better.
-Any instance in which a monster has its mouth open but there’s no roar sound effect to accompany it is either chopped, trimmed, or has a sound effect added to it. This actually happens a LOT in every Toho Godzilla movie. This gives me a nice opportunity to add some awesome Millennium Godzilla grunt and growl sound effects, which I think would still fit and make him sound even more ferocious. I also plan on adding later Heisei roars to earlier Heisei films (the ones that sound more like the classic Showa roars) as well as adding early Heisei roars to the later Heisei films. This makes it so Godzilla doesn’t randomly just change his roars in the middle of the series, rather he always has both.
-I’d like to edit the Return of Godzilla / Godzilla vs. Biollante hybrid and Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah so Godzilla has the fiery yellow-red “Sith” eyes the entire series, as I love that design choice in the later Heisei films. Not confirmed, though.
Suggestions are more then welcome.