Split Gojira (1954) into its own set of tropes: Godzilla

I was visiting the Godzilla page recently on school-related matters, and it struck me that the page could benefit if the original film—Gojira—could be split off on its own.

My justification is that while it did spawn a huge series and cultural phenomenon, the original has such a different flavor than what came later that it's really operating on a unique set of tropes apart from the rest of the series. In my estimation, it would certainly help a reader to note the differences by at least giving Gojira its own subfolder of tropes.

If I'm way off base, I'll accept that. Just want to see if there's any consensus for this.

I say go for it.

Heck, if the kaiju fans wanted to write them up, we could split off every Godzilla film as a separate article.

Seems reasonable to me.

Work Pages Are A Free Launch

Go ahead, but remember to call it Godzilla (1954) since that's the official romanisation of ゴジラ.

It was rereleased on DVD and Blu-ray in the US as Gojira (here's an Amazon listing), apparently to distinguish it from the version that was edited for US theaters back in the 50s, which was titled Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

edited 12th Oct '11 8:49:10 AM by MetaFour

Yeah, as far as the articles I've read on it, Godzilla was a romanization based on an earlier system, and the name sort of stuck. The Gojira variant is the one I see consistently for the '54 original.

Huh. I was basing my statment on this poster◊, which does use GODZILLA for ゴジラ, but I guess I was wrong about the 1954 movie.

There's really no reason not to give every movie its own page, save for the fact that there are so many of them that it's a bit of a chore.

I tried something similar with El Santo, who also made a truckload of movies. I thought about just adding tropes similar to the current Godzilla page, but there's a ton of variation even in the handful of El Santo movies I've seen. For instance, vampires show up a lot, but are treated slightly differently across the series (much like, say, Human Aliens on the Godzilla page).

Neither series was ever very big on continuity between movies....

edited 16th Oct '11 8:01:12 AM by suedenim

If there are enough distinct tropes among works, splitting is preferable. If there aren't, then we tend to keep them lumped.

So split off any films with enough distinct tropes.

edited 16th Oct '11 9:43:47 AM by DragonQuestZ

Frankly all it takes is a single watch through of any film from an active-eyed troper to pic out some basic tropes unique to each film or at least important to it.

Hell, I did that earlier this week with Dinosaurus! and that movie...well, it's not as rich as most Godzilla films in terms of material, IMO.

Yes and yes, that's why I brought it here. I'm still not certain which direction is better, in terms of clarity: splitting or lumping tropes.

I'm of the opinion, now that I've had more time to let this question gestate, that big series like this could do well to have just one page with subfolders for each film and an additional subfolder for series-wide tropes. I know this is fairly common on other pages, so I don't see why it wouldn't work here. (Of course, I have a bias toward the folder system as opposed to pages that just list tropes at the bottom of the page, so take that as you will.)

EDIT: Another option would be to create folders for Gojira, the Showa, Heisei, and Millenium periods, and maybe one for the American remake (which is itself in the Film namespace, and I don't see how it merits the distinction to have that spot above any of the Japanese originals).

The only problem is that I certainly haven't seen all the Godzilla films, so I feel pretty limited to just contributing to any Gojira (1954) folder that would be made. I'm hoping there's other more hardcore fans that could help do the page justice.

edited 18th Oct '11 12:13:00 PM by ArtemisStrong

Perhaps we should do what we did on the Discworld series? Create a page for each film for tropes that are specific to one, but keep tropes common to all films on the main page?

Would that entail creating a Namespace.Godzilla? Would that fly?

Suppose we can extend this to making separate pages for the other Toho films? I made a Mothra page about a month ago that's in need of some Wiki Magic.

While we're at it, should we add pages for the games and comics as well?

The movies are definitely different enough to warrant individual trope pages. Especially with the Showa and Millenium serieses.

One minor issue to bear in mind: as discussed here, our general standard for titles is to use the official English-language title, assuming such a thing exists. This standard differs slightly from The Other Wiki and some other references.

For instance, we should really refer to The Return of Godzilla as Godzilla 1985.

And in the case of the original Godzilla film, the initial English-language release (which was significantly edited from the original Japanese version) was titled Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Then when the unedited Japanese version was released on DVD in the US in the mid-2000s, it was titled Gojira.

The first movie's a special case, I think. Gojira is different enough from Godzilla: King of the Monsters that it makes sense to treat them as two movies for our purposes.

Not too much though. I mean, could always be a split trope listing of the original version and the Burr edit.

You're right, I wasn't thinking. A soft split makes much more sense than separate work pages.

That's what I was suggesting originally. I think the folder option would be appropriate for the series, with one for Series-Wide tropes (like Kaiju.)

How is the split coming?

Bump. (Yeah, how is the split coming?)