Godzilla's Darkest Enemy Needs A MonsterVerse Revival Now
From the humble beginnings of the MonsterVerse — a Godzilla flick here, a King Kong one there — to today, Legendary Pictures has genuinely achieved that rarest of Hollywood things: a successful cinematic universe. With four movies under its belt, the Apple TV+ series "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" now beaming into home TVs, and the big-screen reunion of the franchise's two biggest names in "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" currently slated for 2024, it seems that the sky is the limit for city-destroying kaiju.
Despite all this, trouble may loom on the horizon. The problem the MonsterVerse needs to face, before too long, is that it's already fielded most of its franchise players. "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" alone is a veritable Toho all-stars reunion, with Godzilla and King Ghidorah accompanied by strong aerial support turns from Mothra and Rodan. Another big name, Mechagodzilla, got blown to pieces in "Godzilla vs. Kong." Now that the audience has seen them, what next? Do we bring in Godzilla's bestie, Anguirus? Keep inventing completely original creatures, like much of that new ape in "The New Empire?"
The thing is, Toho's A-list kaiju pool was never all that deep, and while it might make an interesting diversion to see Godzilla and Anguirus just chilling out on an island somewhere, it probably wouldn't make for particularly riveting cinema. Fortunately, the B-team is far more robust. There are dozens of low-profile yet amazing kaiju characters we'd love to see in the MonsterVerse, from the robot Jet Jaguar to the pollution monster Hedorah.
Before them all, though, one particular kaiju simply has to make a MonsterVerse appearance: Biollante, Godzilla's darkest enemy.
The Godzilla villain Biollante is a dead child transformed into a gigantic plant monster
When a franchise has already explicitly compared King Ghidorah to the devil, it might seem like a tall order to label Biollante as Godzilla's scariest opponent — but it's true.
Based on powers and look alone, Biollante is already an uncommonly gruesome kaiju — it is a plant monster, one that makes its sole film appearance in the 1989 Toho movie "Godzilla Vs. Biollante" — but big, gruesome foes are pretty common in Godzilla movies. However, in this case, what makes Biollante so terrifying isn't how it moves, its powerset (though more on that later), or its cruelty, but instead, the creature's disturbing origin story.
As depicted in "Godzilla Vs. Biollante," this beast is the result of a scientist fusing Godzilla's genetic material into a rose. Not just any old rose, though — this one is already occupied, as it contains genes from Dr. Genichiro Shiragami's (Koji Takahashi) deceased daughter, Erika (Yasuko Sawaguchi). The result of this highly unethical scientific experiment is more than just the sort of plant Godzilla monstrosity you'd expect, because Biollante also contains Erika's consciousness — which makes it essentially a big, nasty kaiju with a dead young girl's mind locked inside.
Biollante's powers would be a great fit in the MonsterVerse
With the occasional exception, the vast majority of MonsterVerse kaiju have been fairly run-of-the-mill creatures who smash and bite. Biollante would fix this issue in one fell swoop — or rather several, seeing as the plant monster has a truly unique powerset that could potentially even overshadow King Ghidorah.
For one, Biollante evolves into multiple forms. The first one is a creepy rose-headed flower creature that looks like a cross between the Demogorgon from "Stranger Things" and Aubrey the killer flower from "Little Shop of Horrors." While plenty creepy on its own, this is just a light warm-up for Biollante's second form, the Plant Beast. This colossal form is far larger than Godzilla and features a huge, tooth-filled maw that could almost swallow the King of the Monsters whole. If this wasn't bad enough, Biollante has numerous tentacles that all end in giant, sharp-toothed mouths, and that can function at least semi-autonomously. Fighting this kaiju, in other words, is like fighting at least half a dozen giant beasts all at once. And that's before Biollante starts spitting radioactive acid ... which its blood is also made of, so good luck biting into its hide.
While Biollante shows a weakness to Godzilla's atomic breath, the plant creature is very difficult to corner. It can escape sticky situations by tunneling into the ground or just disintegrating into a giant mass of spores, to effectively teleport away from the battle. Combine this with the creature's childlike nature (because it is, again, a dead human child on the inside) and it makes for a truly horrifying opponent unlike anything in the MonsterVerse today.
Biollante could be the new Big Bad of the MonsterVerse
Much of Biollante's backstory and power set fits the way the MonsterVerse handles its kaiju. In this film series, the gigantic monsters are Earth's defense system, and while Biollante is lab-created, it embodies the concept better than any other member of its kind. It's not just a kaiju that can rejuvenate nature — it's the kaiju that is nature.
Moreover, since the Monsterverse seems to operate on "kaiju are enforcers of nature" rules, Biollante has just what it takes to become a longtime antagonist — the MonsterVerse's own Sauron or Palpatine, if you will. It has proven that it can evolve. What prevents it from becoming, say, an entire rainforest lined with those mouthy tentacles, just waiting for someone stupid enough to attack? It has the power of turning into spores. What if those spores could influence other kaiju and bring them under its will? What prevents it from abusing the kaiju rules the Monsterverse has so painstakingly set up, and trying to take over the entire world to save it from mankind?
There could easily be a full trilogy with Biollante as the main antagonist that no one can defeat, while it uses its spores to make lesser kaiju — either new creations or existing classics — into its mind-controlled slaves. The endgame would be a human character — or perhaps Kong? — figuring out the whole "soul of a little girl" thing and connecting to Biollante's human side.
There's already precedent for Biollante influencing other kaiju, as its spores created the dangerous Godzilla clone SpaceGodzilla . Potentially, every possible kaiju creature could feature in a Biollante-centric story — and the MonsterVerse would certainly benefit from added continuity, courtesy of an overarching antagonist with a surprisingly tragic origin.
Biollante's backstory is similar to a tragic anime arc, and the MonsterVerse can take notes
If you're still unconvinced about Biollante's complex "flower cells and Godzilla cells and human girl spliced together" origin — and that origin's horrific potential – there's actually a pretty good precedent for this kind of thing. Indeed, if you ask 1,000 fans about the worst scene in all anime, there's a decent chance that many of them will name the fate of Nina Tucker as one of the most horrifying things Japanese animation has produced.
"Fullmetal Alchemist" cleverly (and cruelly) takes its time to unfold the story of Nina and her dog, Alexander, and how they're forcefully combined into a tragic chimera creature. The heroes Edward and Alphonse Elric spend plenty of time making friends with the lonely girl and her seemingly benevolent father, struggling State Alchemist Shou Tucker. Everything is set up as an uplifting story ... until it turns out that Shou is a deranged man looking to make chimera creatures capable of human speech by any means necessary, and has already sacrificed Nina's mother to the cause. The moment Shou unveils his latest chimera — and a creeping realization dawns upon Edward and the viewer — doesn't involve any blood, gore, or even particularly gruesome imagery, but it's still absolutely awful.
There are, of course, differences between the Tucker story and Biollante's creation, but the MonsterVerse version of the kaiju should be given a similar treatment: as a sympathetic, tormented creature that might be fearsome, but is ultimately a victim in the grand scheme of things. This would give Biollante's story the sort of complexity that's hitherto unseen in the MonsterVerse ... as well as underline just how creepy it is to splice your daughter's genes with a flower and a kaiju.