| Monster Planet of Godzilla | ||
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Location: SanRio Puroland - Tokyo | |
| Venue: Theatre-style (3-D 70mm) | ||
| Motion Base: Mitsubishi 3-DOF row seats | ||
| Programming Software: Triad | ||
| Film Production: Toho Studios | ||
| Godzilla meets Hello Kitty. I am not making this up. | ||
Some four years after Time Machine of Dreams
opened, it was retired and replaced with this film. This project
represents two "firsts" for me - the first time I'd ever done
a second ride at the same location, and the first ridefilm I've
programmed that broke the supposedly sacred "continuous
point-of-view" rule. Monster Planet of Godzilla has cuts -
and lots of them.
To my surprise, it worked. I believe the fact that this is a theatre-style show helped - it's not really a motion simulator, but more of an enhanced movie.
Revisiting Puroland after a four-year absence was interesting - most
everything was still working. Even Professor Dream-On was still gamely
twitching away. (Dream-On's role in the new show was reduced
significantly - he has no lines at all now, so we just converted his
original random button-pushing program into a continuous loop.)
The original Time Machine of Dreams didn't have anything to do
with Hello Kitty, the mascot of Puroland, but Monster Planet of
Godzilla corrects this unfortunate oversight. Hello Kitty (in
costume character form) appears in the preshow video, scampering around
a futuristic control room, pointing to monitors and exclaiming "Gojira!".
Worth the price of admission right there, if you ask me.
The new film also required the scent system to be fitted with all-new smells. One was simply called the "green" smell - the smell of some kind of fruit which gets dropped on Godzilla to make him stop eating Tokyo.
Several other scents were considered, then dropped. All the sample
scents of gunfire and explosions were rejected on the grounds that their
sulphurous nature was nauseating. A proposed scent for Godzilla himself
was also vetoed. (Insider note: Godzilla apparently has a rather musky
odor - slap a Polo logo on it and I think it would sell.)
Watch for: control cables trailing from Godzilla's foot in several overhead views.
Trivia: Supposedly this film marks a breakthrough - for the first time, Godzilla's head moves up and down independently of his neck. It's not a LOT of movement, mind you, but technological advances usually come in fine increments.
Monster Planet of Godzilla also represents another milestone - it's the first time in years that Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan have all appeared in the same film.
Mothra sprinkles killer moth dust
and Godzilla and Rodan share a laugh between takes
Godzilla also spends a lot of time destroying the historic Tokyo Station building - where one of SanRio's competitors happen to have their offices.
Links:
Saiko Genso let us borrow some of these pictures from his great Monster Planet of Godzilla page at his Goji-World website. (He's been on the ride five times!)