Production
Godzilla Vs. Megalon was originally planned as a non-Godzilla film, a solo vehicle for Jet Jaguar, which was the result of a contest Toho had for children in mid-to-late 1972. The winner of the contest was an elementary school student, who submitted the drawing of a robot called Red Arone, which superficially resembled both Ultraman and Mazinger Z. The robot was renamed Jet Jaguar and was set to star in Jet Jaguar vs. Megalon, which pitted him against Megalon. However, after doing some screen tests and storyboards, Toho figured Jet Jaguar would not be able to carry the film on his own, either in screen appearance or marketing value, so they shut the project down during pre-production. Nearly a month later, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka called in screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa to revise the script to add Godzilla and Gigan. To make up for lost production time, the film was shot in a hasty three weeks. The production time totaled at nearly six months, from planning to finish.
According to Teruyoshi Nakano, the Godzilla suit made for this film (known as the Megaro-Goji) was made in a week, the fastest featured Godzilla suit ever made to date. Godzilla was portrayed by stunt actor Shinji Takagi.
There are three notable deleted scenes. A scene towards the end of the film in which Antonio ponders aloud if sending Megalon to destroy the world above is really any different from what the people above are doing with atomic testing. Another is a roughly minute-long "conversation" between Gigan and Megalon that consists of quirky gestures and bodily movements. One that can be seen in the Japanese trailer has Jet Jaguar blinding Megalon with his flashlight eyes right before Megalon starts to kick at him while Gigan holds him down.
There are, interestingly, no major female characters in the movie, making this the only Godzilla film without a female lead.
Toho's popular kaiju character Anguirus appears in some stock footage from Destroy All Monsters and in two newly-filmed scenes on Monster Island. In the second new scene, Anguirus appears largely as he did in the previous film, Godzilla vs. Gigan. The first brief scene of Anguirus shows the monster without his fangs. This modification would carry over into his last appearance the next year in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.
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