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Ferran Adria has taken many strides in advancing and developing culinary techniques. It's as if the man is running a marathon with no finish line. The close of ElBulli Restaurant seemed like the end of a legacy. It turned out it isn't the end, but a continuation of what ElBulli is. Opening of the Foundation now looks like a metamorphosis of the restaurant into a new entity which existed already in an incumbent stage during the restaurant years. It is exciting to see this journey. Details are sparse, and only general ideas are shared with public thus far.Sharing culinary ideologies and working on food philosphy with professionals from chefs, designers, journalists to philosophers seems to suggest a quest for continuous rethinking of the bare idea of cuisine's identity and where it is to lead. The "open text" concept of publishing results and ideas via Internet and allowing the world to part take, is possibly intended to turn this into a global effort and remove the tag line of "Molecular Cuisine" by making ElBulli not a movement, but a constantly morphing hub of culinary creativity. This should churn ideas and drive creativity around the globe.Practically speaking, I think the center design by Enric Ruiz-Geli will have an impact to drive creation and innovation just by the proposed structures' look. Now I realize this is not exactly what one expects to drive creativity in cuisine, but I suspect Adria wants to raise new thought literally from the ground up. Building an avant-garde complex by cocooning the old restaurant sets precedent of what Foundation is to be, and what is expected from its participants. Practicum is tough to forecast as I think the ideas and concepts born there will result in yet unthought practices and methods. If ElBulli's past is to speak for its future, new culinary tools, presentation ware, table ware and additives will continue to work in hand with the culinary ideas. Eco friendliness and self sustainability takes priority in design of the new complex. I hope that in practice when at the institution, the same consideration will be taken toward use of ingredients which don't cause harm to the body. Defying the laws of cuisine sometimes introduced rather controversial ingredients to help in achieving the surreal at ElBulli. Usage of additives like methylcellulose can be harmful in consumption. In order to advance cuisine, bold steps must be taken, and new additives must be a part of this, I do realize. As long as inspiration and ambition don't distort the end result by making it harmful when consumed."Risk, freedom and creativity" as Adria put it, is the driving force behind Foundation. This being the mantra leaves much to ponder about Foundation's future. I wonder if in time the fundamentals of cuisine thus far, meaning even the knowledge Adria sought when in France; that is the classical French fundamentals - will be abandoned. The idea of cuisine deconstructed right back to it's origins, and rebuilt on a set of new fundamentals. Chefs are currently taught at culinary schools classical French techniques. They are encouraged to take these to new levels, but keeping the framework of classic fundamentals in tact. This isn't to say that chefs are limited to an end-all be-all mantra that French culinary techniques are the ten commandments and are not to be broken, but it still is lingua franca in kitchens. Seems limiting if taking into consideration what Adria already achieved. ElBulli Foundation has signs of the start of Bauhaus in Germany back in 1919. It was a deconstruction of art, implementation of scientific techniques when creating, re-shaping conventional language forms, and working with basic art elements from the beginning by eliminating millennia of social noise in art. Maybe ElBulli Foundation is a Bauhaus for cuisine, or maybe it is a continuation of Bauhaus ideologies translated into cuisine.

What non-sequel movies exist in shared universes, besides MCU films?Ethan Jackson’s answer[1] has some good examples, but I think a lot of people have forgotten one of the earliest shared universes in film history, predating the MCU by over half a century. Let’s take a look at this one.In the closing hours of World War II, a Japanese submarine carrying a secret cargo from Germany reaches its final destination, Hiroshima. Minutes later, the city is obliterated by an Allied atomic bomb.Nine years later, a series of horrific accidents strikes fishing ships in the south Pacific. The final transmissions from several ships mention a huge and terrible fireball, and the few survivors who wash up on nearby Odo Island are horrifically burned. None of these “survivors” live for long.The Japanese government dispatches an investigative team to the island, including the renowned paleontologist, Dr. Yamane. An American radio correspondent named Stephen Martin also accompanies the party. Shortly after their arrival, a freak storm strikes Odo Island, destroying the team’s helicopter, as well as several houses. Many islanders are killed, and the wailing of the storm almost takes on the cry of a massive living thing.The next day the survey team examines the wreckage. Much of the rubble is determined to be radioactive, and Dr. Kyohei Yamane recovers a living trilobite, an ancient and believed extinct animal known only from fossils. Immediately after his discovery, the island’s alarm bells begin to toll. The villagers flee to the hills, only to come face to face with a new and unspeakable horror.The survey team and select villagers are flown back to Tokyo, where a hurriedly convened board of experts and defense personnel tries to come up with a response to this new animal, named Gojira after a legend on Odo Island, anglicized as Godzilla by Martin’s broadcasts. The Maritime Self Defense Force sends out a task force to drop depth charges on the monster, but they are unsuccessful. Furious, Godzilla follows the ships back to Japan and comes ashore in Tokyo, carving a bloody swath of fiery destruction through the city over the course of two nights.All weapons in the arsenal of the Japanese Self Defense Forces are useless against the monster, and people are forced to flee as Godzilla rampages through their capital, until the monster is finally satisfied and returns to the ocean.A young Japanese inventor, Dr. Serizawa, comes forward with a new and deadly compound he claims will be enough to stop the monster. Out of options, the Japanese take Serizawa by boat to Godzilla’s last location, where the scientist and a JMSDF ensign approach the monster’s lair to set off the device. Serizawa, however, fearing his “Oxygen Destroyer” would be used against other people, chooses to sacrifice his life, dying alongside the monster on the ocean floor.Whatever peace Japan enjoyed in the wake of Godzilla’s destruction was short lived. Less than seven months later, another Godzilla was discovered on a remote island in the north seas by pilots working for a Japanese fishing company. The pilots witnessed Godzilla doing battle with another monster, a strange quadruped with a spiky shell.Returning to their home base in Osaka, the two pilots meet Dr. Yamane the world’s foremost expert on Godzilla. He speculates that this new monster is another member of the same species, while its opponent belongs to another species known as Anguirus, peaceful monsters that lived millions of years ago, who waged war on the aggressive Godzilla. He further suggests the JASDF use flares to lure both Godzilla and Anguirus away from the mainland, speculating the monsters will identify the lights with memories of the hydrogen bomb tests which likely awoke them in the first place.The Japanese government enforces a strict blackout in all coastal cities, but a prison break leads to a massive explosion in a refinery outside Osaka, drawing both Godzilla and his rival, Anguirus, to the city, where the two monsters fight.After a fierce battle, Godzilla manages to kill Anguirus in the ruins of Osaka Castle, before returning to the sea. Planes belonging to the JASDF follow him, though, and when Godzilla takes shelter in his mountain lair, the planes bomb the slopes, triggering a rockslide and hopefully burying the monster for good.A year later, a series of horrific murders around a mine in rural Japan leads to the discovery a previously unknown cave system. Deep in the tunnels are remnants of a prehistorical world: giant, centipede-like larva known as Meganulon. The Meganulon run riot over the nearby villages, only to be consumed by two newly hatched pteranadons identified as Rodan, yet another species of extinct giant monsters.The Rodan leave their mountain home and ravage the countryside, eating an entire herd of cattle. The force of their flight is enough to destroy the city of Fukuoka, and the JASDF are once again unable to stop them. Soon the Rodan return to their lair atop Mount Aso, though, and, using a strategy similar to what had worked against the last Godzilla, the JSDF bombs the mountain slopes, causing a volcanic eruption and burying the two monsters alive.The next year, another giant monster, named Varan after a local legend, rises out of a salt lake, and rampages through the countryside. Varan is a tri-phibian monster, capable of moving on land, swimming, and short bursts of flight. This monster also rampages through Tokyo, but after three years of onslaughts by giant monsters, the JSDF are prepared, and manage to kill the beast by tricking it into eating explosives.Three relatively uneventful years pass without any giant monsters ravaging Japan. Then, unscrupulous businessman from the Soviet-bloc nation Rolisica kidnap a pair of supposed fairies from Infant Island in the south Pacific. They bring the twins to Japan, where they plan to exhibit the twin Shobijin for profit. The twin girls cry out to the god of their island, and a thousand miles away, something stirs.Soon a giant silk worm arrives in Tokyo, once again laying waste to the city as she looks for the twin girls. The monster, Mothra, is once again impervious to everything the JSDF throws at her, until she seemingly ends her rampage and cocoons herself around the remains of Tokyo Tower. The JGSDF attempt to employ a new thermal canon against the cocoon, only for it to open and reveal the adult Mothra, who has now metamorphosed into a giant butterfly.Mothra pursues the Shobijin to Rolisica, where their captors are killed by the police. With the help of another kaiju specialist, Dr. Shin'ichi Chujo, the girls are reunited with their guardian, who returns to Infant Island in peace.The next year, explorers on remote Faro Island discover a giant ape, named Kong by the island’s natives. The Pacific Pharmaceutical Company, eager to use the monster in a publicity stunt, funds an expedition to bring the monster to Japan. Meanwhile, an American submarine, the USS Kittyhawk, is lost with all hands in the north seas. Her last transmission contains only one word:Godzilla.The JMSDF intercept Kong’s ship and order it to return to Faro Island, just as news reaches them of Godzilla’s landfall in Hokkaido. Kong, who had been drugged most of his journey, suddenly wakes up and breaks free, swimming ashore and making a beeline for Godzilla. The two fight, but Godzilla’s atomic breath is too much for the King of the Apes, and Kong is forced to retreat.Using berries taken from Faro Island, the JSDF is able to drug Kong, then airdrop him on Godzilla, currently razing the forests around Mt. Fuji, in the hopes the monsters will kill each other, as all other attempts at stopping Godzilla have failed.Godzilla initially has the upper hand, but Kong is able to gain an edge, and after a second, desperate struggle, manages to kill the second Godzilla in the Pacific Ocean. The JSDF opt to let the other monster escape, recognizing that he’s no longer a threat.A brief war the following year breaks out with the US and Japan against the newly rediscovered underwater Mu Empire. Taking the fight to the enemy, the Japanese warship Atragon destroys the Mu capital, and does battle with another megalasaur, the dragon-like Manda, but the machine is able to drive the monster off and escape, with the war ending shortly thereafter.The next year, 1964, a strange egg washes ashore after a fierce hurricane. The real estate company Happy Enterprises buys the egg and constructs a giant incubator around it, hoping to hatch the egg. When the Shobijin arrive in Japan to claim the egg as Mothra’s, The CEO of Happy Enterprises tries to kidnap the girls instead, but they manage to escape.Meanwhile, another Godzilla rises out of the rubble. The JSDF and US Navy engage the monster, but are unable to halt his rampage, and Godzilla sacks Nagoya, making his way to the egg.Before he can consume it, though, Mothra arrives to defend her unborn child. The two fight, and Mothra appears to gain the upper hand, but Mothra is now old, and doesn’t have the strength to finish off Godzilla, who mortally wounds her.As Mothra dies, the egg hatches, revealing two larva. Although outmatched, the twins manage to outsmart the new Godzilla, cocooning it and dumping it in the ocean, where it suffocates. Their mother avenged, the two baby Mothra return to Infant Island with the Shobijin, pledging to continue to protect the world should Godzilla or any other monster threaten it again.Not all monsters are of terrestrial origin, though.A few months later, in August, a series of satellites are destroyed in orbit. The culprit soon reveals itself to be a giant, single-celled organism dubbed Dogora, which feeds on carbon. Dogora devastates the Japanese coal and diamond industries, before a weakness to wasp venom is discovered, which is used to drive the monster back into space.Another series of calamities strikes Japan in December of the same year, beginning with the apparent assassination of a visiting head of state. Shortly thereafter, a woman bearing a striking resemblance to the dead princess appears in Tokyo, claiming to be a fortune teller from Venus. She predicts the discovery of a new Rodan at Mt. Aso, and the discovery of another Godzilla in the Pacific. Most of Japanese society is skeptical, but the Shobijin believe her, and heed her warning about an even greater threat than the rampaging Godzilla and Rodan, a wandering space demon called Ghidorah, which destroyed Venusian civilization, and is on its way back to Earth.Soon this prediction too comes true, as Ghidorah emerges from a newly landed meteorite, and begins to ravage Japan as well. Mothra makes landfall and attempts to persuade Godzilla and Rodan to put aside their own squabbles and help her fight the space demon, but both refuse. Determined, but knowing she’s hopelessly outmatched, Mothra attacks Ghidorah alone, but is easily beaten. Before Ghidorah can kill her, though, Godzilla intevenes, and the three Earth monsters join forces against the invader.The battle is brutal, but eventually the Earth monsters are able to beat Ghidorah badly enough that it retreats back into space. The Earth monsters return to their homes, ready to act should Ghidorah return.Meanwhile, in Hiroshima, a strange homeless boy is encountered feeding on wild animals. Dr. James Bowen, an American kaiju specialist, begins to track the boy, eventually discovering him in a cave the next year. Bowen hypothesizes the boy was exposed to massive radiation during the American atomic bombing twenty years earlier. Much to their surprise, however, the American and his colleagues discover the boy is instead immune to radiation. Intrigued, they bring him back to Hiroshima to study him.Meanwhile, former Imperial Navy officer Kawai, who’d survived the destruction of his submarine at Hiroshima, is now working at an oil refinery. A freak earthquake strikes the facility, and while everyone else flees, Kawai catches a glimpse of a strange glowing light in the shifting earth. Later, he learns of the strange boy from Hiroshima, and connects his discovery with his last ship’s secret cargo: the disembodied heart of Frankenstein’s monster, given to Japan by the Nazis to keep it out of the hands of the Soviets. Kawai points Bowen at the research of the aged German scientist Riesendorf, who theorized Frankenstein’s monster had fantastic regenerative properties. One of Bowen’s aides wants to test this theory, but before he can amputate one of the rapidly growing monster’s limbs, the creature, now dubbed Frankenstein, escapes into the countryside.A serious of brutal murders in the countryside is quickly blamed on the monster, but Kawai speculates the culprit may be the same thing which had caused the earthquake at his refinery. The JGSDF are unimpressed though, and with the assistance of Bowen’s assistant, Kawaji, begin to hunt Frankenstein in the forest. Instead of their friendly monster, though, Bowen and Kawaji discover the true source of the murders: a subterranean megalasaur called Baragon. Baragon attacks the scientists, only to be interrupted by Frankenstein.Frankenstein and the fire-breathing Baragon fight, but before their battle can conclude, Baragon’s tunnels begin to collapse under their weight, burying both monsters, seemingly forever.The following year, a joint American/Japanese spaceflight is sent to explore a newly discovered planet, popularly dubbed Planet-X. On the planet’s surface, the astronauts meet the planet’s inhabitants, called Xiliens. Their leader, the Controller, explains how, following his defeat at the hands of Godzilla, Mothra, and Rodan in 1964, Ghidorah has taken refuge on their planet, making the surface uninhabitable to them. In exchange for a cure for cancer, the Controller asks for the UN’s permission to borrow Godzilla and Rodan, who the Xiliens plan to pit against Ghidorah one final time.The UN agrees, and the Xiliens bring the two Earth monsters to Planet X, where they again force Ghidorah to retreat. When the astronauts return to Earth, however, they discover the supposed cure is actually a ransom note: the Xiliens were actually controlling Ghidorah, and threaten to return the space demon, along with Godzilla and Rodan (now also under their power) to Earth, to wreck human civilization. When their demands are not met, Ghidorah is set loose on the American Midwest, while Rodan and Godzilla return to their old stomping grounds of Japan.Human scientists are eventually able to jam the Xiliens’ communications, breaking Godzilla and Rodan free, who immediately turn on their former masters. The Xiliens recall Ghidorah, but Godzilla and Rodan defeat him a second time, before wiping out most of the Xilien invasion fleet, once again saving the planet.The following summer, a Japanese fishing boat is lost off the coast. Its sole survivor tells of how his vessel was attacked by a giant octopus, before another monster, this one in the form of a great wooly man he calls a Gargantua drove the monster off, before attacking the the ship himself, and eating his fellow crew members. The media focuses attention on another American expert, Dr. Paul Stewart, who had studied a similar creature which he named Sanda, but Dr. Stewart remains unconvinced this is the same monster, though he speculates both Gargantua may be related to the Frankenstein monster destroyed in Hiroshima two years earlier.Rumors of a massive “big foot” in the Japanese Alps draws the scientists there, where they discover evidence of something in the forests. Meanwhile, a green-furred monster dubbed Gaira attacks an airport, eating several people, before the overcast sky clears, and the monster retreats. The JGSDF, now long practiced in dealing with monsters, mobilizes, but their armored forces are unable to keep up with the sprinting Gargantua. However, a new type of weapon, the maser tank (developed based on prototypes employed against the Xiliens the previous year, and descendants of the thermal weapons used against the original Mothra) is proven to be effective, driving Gaira into a river. Before the Gargantua can be finished off, Sanda arrives and helps the other monster to safety, causing Dr. Stewart to realize the two monsters are siblings.Sanda loves his brother, but is disgusted by his habit of eating human beings, and the two fight. Gaira escapes and makes his way into Tokyo, the JGSDF and Sanda in pursuit. Stewart convinces the military to only use their maser tanks, as, just like their genetic forebear, the “sons” of Frankenstein can regenerate completely from severed tissue, and any other weapon risks creating an entire army of Gargantua. He also stresses that only Gaira is to blame for the recent murders, and the military, by now used to the concept of benign monsters (thanks first to Anguirus and Mothra, and now Godzilla and Rodan) agree to concentrate their fire on Gaira.The JGSDF are unable to finish off Gaira though, who flees into the ocean, Sanda close behind. Their battle causes an undersea thermal vent to open up, sucking both monsters into the mantle, where they suffer the presumed same fate as their “father.”The following years see a rapid uptick in new megolasaur discoveries.In 1966, Godzilla and Mothra destroy a terrorist cell known as the RED BAMBOO, who’d been using slave labor from Infant Island to create nuclear weapons. Mothra frees her people, while Godzilla battles the terrorists’ guardians, a giant condor, and a hideously mutated shrimp known as Ebirah.Godzilla kills the condor, Ookondoru, and and horribly maims Ebirah, before he and Mothra escape the island as its nuclear reactors detonate.In 1967, a juvenille Godzilla, dubbed Minilla is discovered on a remote Pacific island, along with a species of mutated praying mantises called Kamakura. Godzilla arrives to protect the baby, and does battle with the island’s alpha predator, a giant spider called Kumonga.In 1970, a strange pecies of space amoeba infects several megalasaurs living on a remote Pacific island, dubbed Kamoebas, Gezora, and Ganimes. The parasitically controlled monsters terrorize the inhabitants of Selgio Island, until the humans are able to confuse the amoebas and cause the monsters to attack each other.The parasites are destroyed when the island’s volcano erupts, but one strain of ameoba survived, making its way to the waters off the coast of Tokyo, were the heavily polluted waters caused it to further mutate. By the following year, the monster, now called Hedorah, began to destroy ships in Tokyo Bay and feed on their contents, poisoning the water in the process. Hedorah began to rapidly evolve, and soon it developed an intermediate stage, which allowed it to attack the city itself.Godzilla confronts Hedorah during its first nighttime raid, seemingly destroying the creature, but Hedorah is an aggregate of the rapidly reproducing amoeba, some of which retreat back into Tokyo Bay, where they begin to reform.Japanese authorities speculate Hedorah will only come ashore at night or during overcast days, only to have this supposition badly proven wrong when Hedorah attacks the city again in broad daylight, now with a saucer-like flying form, which spews noxious, corrosive fumes in its wake. Thousands take ill or die, and the JSDF are unable to formulate a plan to stop the monster, which ravages the Japanese coast at will. It soon becomes evident that, unless Hedorah is finally destroyed, it will be able to destroy all life on Earth.Hedorah evolves into a towering, final form, and makes its way inland, where it is confronted by Godzilla, who makes a last stand at Mt. Fuji against the monster. The JGSDF realizes the monster can only be killed by dehydration, and with the assistance of Godzilla, manage to dry the monster out, allowing Godzilla to destroy the creature’s body, and obliterate the now calcified amoebas within, finally putting an end to the space parasites.By now it has become apparent Earth has powerful monsters of its own to defend against invasion, and any successful strategy for taking over the planet will involve killing the human friendly megalasaurs, who have mostly migrated to the Ogasawara Islands in the Pacific. When the alien body snatchers of Space Nebula Hunter invade, their plan involves luring Godzilla into a trap, before destroying the newly formed Monster Island and any chance of humanity resisting.The Nebulans summon Ghidorah, who they’ve made their puppet, to Earth, alongside a monster of their own creation, the horrible cyborg Gigan. The Nebulans lure Godzilla and Anguirus, now the best of friends, to Tokyo, where the four monsters clash, the fate of their friends on Monster Island in the balance.With the assistance of human allies, who wipe out the Nebulans, the computers controlling the monsters are destroyed. Gigan abandons his ally, leaving Ghidorah to suffer another beating, this time at the hands of Godzilla and Anguirus, before he too flees into space.Despite having already seen the fate suffered by Mu when it declared war on humanity, the nearby underwater empire of Seatopia sets out to destroy the surface world as well, first by causing a series of earthquakes across the globe, which separate Godzilla and Anguirus. The next phase of their plane involves stealing a human machine, Jet Jaguar, which they use to guide their god-monster, the megalasaur Megalon to the surface. Once there, Megalon joins forces with Gigan, loaned to Seatopia by the Nebulans.The humans regain control of Jet Jaguar and use him to summon Godzilla, now back on Monster Island. A four way battle erupts, with Gigan once again abandoning his ally, who is then summarily dumped back down a Seatopian mine by the human monsters. Unbeknownst to anyone else, before Gigan could return home, he was hijacked by the invading Goroga, for use in their own conquest of Earth.The Goroga are opposed in their war by Zone Fighter, a refugee alien living on Earth. Zone battles dozens of so-called Terror-Beasts, including the Goroga’s most deadly creation, Ghidorah. Impressed by the alien’s fighting skills, Godzilla joins forces with Zone Fighter in his battle with the Garoga.Their combined might is enough to wipe out the Garoga and their monsters, including the stolen Gigan, who finally meets his end at the hands of Zone. With the Garoga menace finally ended, Zone retires, leaving Earth’s defense once again in the hands of the monsters.Having seen what happened to previous invaders, another group of alien refugees, the Simeons, launch their own plan of conquest in 1974, twenty years after the first Godzilla appeared. The Simeons, desperate for a new world as their home solar system was destroyed by a black hole, had arrived on Earth and studied its culture and nations for decades, going back to before the Second World War. With the appearance of Godzilla and other megalasaurs, they recognized they’d need a monster of their own, and since their planets didn’t have any native to them, the Simeons contrived to build one.A strange Godzilla with a high pitched shriek and red-tinted breath begins to rampage across the Japanese countryside, attracting the attention of Anguirus, who intervenes and attacks the other monster, only to be viciously maimed and forced to retreat.Enraged by the attack on his friend, Godzilla confronts his doppleganger at a refinery, but an explosion reveals the second monster for what it really is; a mechanical copy, called Mechagodzilla. Their ruse broken, the Simeons unleash Mechagodzilla on it biological double, seemingly killing the monster.The Japanese track Mechagodzilla back to a Simeon base on Okinawa. In a last ditch effort, they awaken an ancient Okinawan megalasaur, called King Caesar, to fight Mechagodzilla. Caesar tries his best, but is no match for the alien machine, until Godzilla rises out of the ocean.Godzilla and Caesar join forces, and furious at the machine’s hubris, Godzilla rips Mechagodzilla’s head off, before obliterating it with his atomic breath, scattering the wreckage in the ocean.The Japanese government spends the next year scouring the water around Okinawa collecting pieces of Mechagodzilla, especially the machine’s head, which they plan to reverse engineer. Suddenly, the submarine Akatsuki is attacked by a strange, previously unknown megalasaur, managing only a brief SOS before vanishing.INTERPOL, having taken over the search, begins to investigate a disgraced and deceased scientist, Dr. Shinji Mafune. Mafune had claimed to have discovered a new species of dinosaur, far larger than any other, which he dubbed Titanosaurus, shortly after World War II. At the time, Mafune faced nothing but ridicule, and he died bitter and resentful, some years before the first Godzilla attacked Tokyo and proved the existence of megalasaurs. INTERPOL interviews a student of Mafune’s work, Ichinose, who leads them to Katsura Mafune, the late doctor’s daughter, but she turns out to have been a dead end, claiming to have destroyed her father’s papers at his spiteful request.Unbeknownst to anyone else, Mafune is actually alive and well, an agent of the Simeons on Earth, in repayment for them resurrecting Katsura, who’d been killed during one of his experiments. Mafune had been pioneering work on mind control, similar to what the Xiliens had used in the 60s on Godzilla and Rodan, which attracted the Simeons’ attention and caused them to arrange Katsura’s accident. Having rebuilt Katsura as a cyborg, the Simeons put Mafune’s theory to the test: that the original Mechagodzilla’s failure was due to being controlled by a computer, rather than an organic brain. Mafune remains convinced a human-controlled monster would’ve been enough to kill Godzilla and Caesar the previous year, a belief not shared by Mugal, the Simeon leader.INTERPOL dispatches another submarine to search for Titanosaurus; they are successful, but only barely manage to escape when Ichinose discombobulates the monster with the sub’s sonar. Ichinose shares this with Katsura, who he has become infatuated with, not realizing she’s an agent of the Simeons, or the one controlling the normally docile Titanosaurus. Katsura takes the attack on her monster personally, and the Simeons dispatch her to sabotage INTERPOL’s new sonic canon. She succeeds, but is mortally wounded in the process. The Simeons recover her body, further turning her into a machine, and installing controls for the newly constructed Mechagodzilla as well.At her father’s urging, Katsura releases Titanosaurus on Yokosuka, drawing Godzilla to the city just as the Simeons had hoped. They deploy Mechagodzilla, and the two monsters are easily able to overpower Godzilla, while the Simeons capture Ichinose, who tries but fails to convince Katsura to stop her attack.INTERPOL attacks the Simeon facility, causing Mafune to turn on the Simeons, dying on the side of humanity. Katsura, realizing what she’s unleashed on the world, commits suicide to destroy the Simeon controls, and dies in Ichinose’s arms. Godzilla is then able to turn the tides on his foes, destroying Mechagodzilla for good, before finishing off Titanosaurus, dumping the first megalasaur into the ocean. His job done, Godzilla returns to Monster Island, where he’d remain for the next twenty years.By 1999, all of Earth’s monsters have been confined to Monster Island by the UN, which keeps the monsters under observation and prevents them from escaping. An attack by unknown assailants on the island leads to the monsters vanishing, only to begin reappearing all over the globe.Mothra attacks Bejing.Rodan destroys Moscow.Manda attacks London.Baragon and Gorosaurus destroy Paris.Godzilla is unleashed against New York.Finally, four monsters, Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and Manda, are released on Tokyo.The culprits behind this series of attacks reveals themselves to be yet another alien race, the Kilaaks, who’ve perfected mind control of both humans and monsters. The Kilaaks threaten to hold human civilization hostage with their monsters, but the UN fights back, and after several battles, manages to free Earth’s monsters, who converge on Mt. Fuji, the last Kilaak stronghold.In their desperation, the Kilaaks deploy their final weapon, Ghidorah, and the final battle begins.As powerful as Ghidorah is, he proves no match for the combined might of all Earth’s monsters, and finally succumbs, his thirty year reign of terror ended. Godzilla destroys the Kilaak base, then returns with his fellow monsters home, their days of fighting finally over.So, the original Toho monster series, usually called the Showa Era by fans, is probably one of the first, and most fleshed out, attempts at a shared universe in film history. While the later films of the 70s became increasingly Godzilla-focused, the earlier films weren’t afraid to have more than one monster share top billing, and some integral films don’t feature Godzilla at all, but are still obviously part of the same universe. Godzilla, Godzilla Raids Again, Rodan, Varan, and Mothra all take place within a few years of each other, but only the two Godzilla films are directly connected prior to Godzilla vs. Mothra and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. Frankenstein Conquers the Earth introduces the Baragon species, and is also the setup film for War of the Gargantuas, which introduces the maser tanks the JGSDF would use throughout the rest of the franchise, including against Gigan in Godzilla vs Gigan. It wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest Dogora arrived on Earth because it was fleeing Ghidorah, or the Space Amoeba in Space Amoeba was the same one speculated to be behind Hedorah in Godzilla vs Hedorah. Not all these movies are directly linked, but all of them are connected in some way, a strategy the MCU has been using as well (even introducing a TV series drawing primarily on secondary characters, though Ghidorah and Godzilla are a lot bigger names than anyone who’s made appearances so far in the TVU).As you can see, there are definite parallels. Here’s hoping Godzilla’s proposed Japanese shared universe, set to kickoff after Godzilla vs Kong, is at least as successful.All images property of their respective owners.Footnotes[1] Ethan Jackson's answer to What non-sequel movies exist in shared universes, besides MCU films?

Absolutely.This strange calculation you see in the first graphic is a formulation which discusses the potential for life in the Universe as we estimate it could be. It also questions why there haven't been more opportunities to meet extraterrestrial life. Click on the image to see what each component of the formula means.Because before we can talk about the idea of alien life and its probability in the Universe, we need to address our understanding of what that means as best we can. For that: Let's address - The Fermi paradox.We have had quite a number of alien movies recently including the remake of the classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still with Keanu Reeves, or the strangely disturbing movie with Nicolas Cage, Knowing, which for more than half the movie, you are not aware that it is a movie about extra-terrestrials at all.Why do these movies and all of the others like them from ET the Extra-terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cocoon, and everyone’s favorite Independence Day with Will Smith, all seem to resonate, no matter what culture views these movies. Extra-terrestrials are always able to evince some kind of reaction from humans.Are we hard wired to consider the possibility that beings from beyond our world exist?Is it because mankind is awaiting a messiah or savior to bring that Age of Enlightenment?Are the religious ideals (pantheistic gods, angels or devas) or cultural phenomena (the lines in the Nazca plains) simply allegories for alien beings whose powers and abilities exceed our own?An alien species arriving on Earth earlier in our history would have technology that might have appeared as magic to primitive man.When the idea is posited that alien intelligence, different from our own, exists, it is met with skepticism and summarily dismissed without serious discourse, but if we were to consider thinking in a fashion alien to our own, how much about our universe could we surmise and perhaps discover by trying on an alien point of view?In the recent news, Stephen Hawkings proposed that rapacious aliens would welcome us indicating where we lived so they could come and take over the Earth, consume it, or enslave the human race. Fortunately for us, we have broadcast our existence successfully for less than 100 years, and most of that on primitive radio, HF and VHF bands unlikely to be used by intelligent life for serious communications in their civilization.I was asked what I thought would be the reaction of the human race when First Contact (the first time we are actually presented with undeniable physical evidence of extraterrestrial life) was established. Would it be a Star Trek kind of interaction, peaceful with aliens willing to share (in a limited fashion) their technology and ideas in a way that would be helpful for humanity?Or would the aliens have a sort of “Prime Directive” (a code of conduct that would not allow them to seriously intervene in the day to day existence of species considered more primitive)?Or would it be an Independence Day interaction, where the aliens simply want to take over or harvest our world for its abundant natural resources? Could we seriously expect to mount a defense against aliens who could cross the vast gulf of space to reach Earth in the first place?What if the aliens were limited by the same barriers to space travel as we are and could only communicate by some sort of radio or microwave transmission at the speed of light? Or maybe faster as in 1997's science fiction movie, Contact? Could we sustain a relationship (albeit a very slow one) and exchange information?3 Possible Choices of Alien InteractionWould humanity as a whole be allowed to even know about this communication or would it remain a state secret? Let's examine a few potential outcomes:PHYSICAL FIRST CONTACTFirst Contact will affect the modern world and humanity's relationship to their religions, science, technology, and cultures worldwide. In my opinion, if First Contact is a physical one, visible to the general public, and the aliens are not anthropomorphic (resembling humans in a bilateral symmetry, bipedal with a similar physical appearance), the human reaction will be directly related to what the human mind will associate the appearance of the aliens to creatures in our own environment.Humanity's innate fears and revulsion will likely prejudice their responses if the aliens appear too non-human. If they appear to resemble insects or some extremely divergent form of life, for example (as the aliens in District 9 appear to) humans may not be able to even consider them as intelligent or sentient.On Earth, natural selection seemed to favor insects; there are physically more insects on Earth than any other kind of animal combined. (Don’t think about it, you will only want to go out and buy more Raid.) It is not too hard to see insectoid intelligences being a possibility as an alien visitor.If they resembled terrestrial insects, they may also have a completely different outlook on life or individualism as a whole, since insects have more of a collective intelligence than an intelligence based on individual thought or action. Each acts as part of a greater whole. Would such a society value individualism? Would they consider us intelligent at all?A more human-looking alien would likely evince less psychological stress in the humans viewing them. This does not mean there would be none, but there would be more of a possibility of relating to the alien because it could potentially reinforce the idealized "God-image" of human-looking, bilaterally symmetrical creatures created in His own image.If the aliens have done a psychological profile of the human species before arriving, and their technology is sufficiently advanced, they may even modify and engineer their appearance to make themselves more palatable and approachable, at least at first (as done in the ABC television series, "V"). This of course, might go out the window if they did not have similar (or even understandable value systems) that humans could relate to.If they resembled us too much, or did not have access to significant technology, they might find themselves reduced to segregated communities, ghettos or shanty towns as the alien "Prawns" did in District 9 or suffering from racial discrimination as the "Newcomers" did in Alien Nation (released in 1988 - a well-crafted, if strange set of movies and later television series) discussing a disenfranchised alien race with issues of racial segregation similar to the issues between blacks and whites.I don’t believe aliens will look like us. We share our genetic heritage with every living thing on Earth and yet there are millions upon millions of different forms of life on the planet. There are 94% similarity of genetic material in an octopus as in a human. That 6% difference in genetic material gives us an octopus. 2% difference gives us a chimpanzee or other simian. 1% gave us Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, and most of the modern football players of today.What will a creature from another world, that may or may not use DNA look like to human eyes. It may be more terrible than we an even imagine. Our concepts of beauty are written into our DNA (our acceptance of the golden ratio, a natural evolutionary pattern of development used by plants and animals for leaf and branch development, nervous system density, and even the distance between our eyes, nose and mouth that we find pleasing to look upon,) so we may be repulsed by their appearance without even understanding why because their "golden ratio" may be different than our own.See Also: If intelligent aliens came to the Earth, would they be able to figure out which humans were considered good looking without us having to tell them?Even though the concept of “convergent evolution” is commonly used to explain why aliens in movies and television look like us, (as well as so that human actors can play the roles) and there is a possibility that a world similar to ours could possibly produce animals that could resemble us, my instincts tell me that their advanced technological profile might have them editing their bodies for performance improvements using cybernetic or genetic modifications or eventually just replacing their organic bodies altogether and transitioning to a more durable, silicon or machine-based structure.They may have learned what we are coming to learn, that intelligence may be more transferable than we think. We are still learning how our minds work; it may take us a while to understand how to make that leap from Homo Sapiens Sapiens to Homo Sapiens Mechanicus but it will likely happen.MICROWAVE IN A BOTTLEIf the alien's message is delivered from deep space, ala SETI, or some similar program, it is likely that the message would be automated and likely repeat itself or encoded in a multi-variable signal that could be received and translated. This would still take a significant amount of time and human effort because, we would first have to find and recognize the alien signal against the background noise of space, and then we would have to determine what kind of message could be sent and what information could be used as a Rosetta’s Stone to begin the translation.Once the signal was confirmed from a variety of sources, the information of the signals existence may not actually be allowed to enter into public awareness for fear of its destabilizing influences. Governments may keep this information private in order to determine what other data may be included in the data-stream. They may decide to see how much can be learned about the aliens, their technology, their information management, and what level of technological development the aliens have.If this tech can affect human development, human governments may not allow it to reach the open markets until the data has been extracted and/or sanitized of information bearing content. Perhaps human governments might be more enlightened and be willing to share their findings with the world, but my gut feeling tells me that they would only share what they thought least likely to be dangerous or least advantageous, keeping the best technology or technological ideas for their own.HOSTILE FIRST CONTACT: ALIEN INVASIONI do not believe in Alien Invasion as it has been portrayed in our media. Any creature able to cross the vast regions of space, creating ships that could withstand the incredible forces and stresses required to utilize energies beyond our current imaginations, would be proof against any technologies up to and including our primitive atomic weaponry.We would be no more threat to them than an ant hill might be to you; inconvenient, yes, annoying, yes, capable of being a real threat to them, no. Quoted from Independence Day "you just have to get past their technology" would be the words we would die by.A belligerent alien intelligence arriving on Earth would likely have the technological capabilities exhibited recently in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Their machines would be capable of disassembling and reassembling themselves using nanotechnology and the manipulation of electromagnetic fields.Technology, as it was displayed in the movie, would allow them to make their machines out of whatever they could find in the environment, absorbing mass from whatever was around them, converting that mass into energy, which they would then use to power the transformation and to provide power for the new device.They would have the ability to encode data signals or control signals within optical lasers as Reeves did when he was being chased by two helicopters. They would likely be able to render our television and radio transmissions completely ineffective without destroying anything unless they wanted to.Their computing technology would likely be so advanced it would allow them to overcome any machine system in their presence. And we will just skip over any weapons they could make because anything we can do, they can likely do better, in less space and with more energy. So I would expect their weaponry to be more destructive than anything we can muster that was not nuclear because of the availability of energy to power them.Their spacecraft would be technologically superior to anything we have ever made on Earth; likely as strange as anything conceived of by science-fiction writers. The ability to achieve the speed of light or able to bypass the light barrier, would make their ships capable of surviving incredible stresses, since as an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases.By our understanding, they should not be able to reach the speed of light, since an object approaching the speed of light eventually should become infinitely heavy before it reaches light speed (and thus, theoretically unable to have sufficient energy to move it).But perhaps they are reading the full rules on faster than light travel rather than Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity's cliff notes, they may have some loophole that allows them to break the light barrier, and thus their ships would have to be composed of materials even stronger than the strongest structures we can currently conceive of.With all of the forces their ships would need to be resistant to, as well as the material science they would likely command, their ships are capable of resisting all but the most powerful weapons we could muster (and I suspect that if we were to try and use nuclear weapons, they would simply render them inoperable with an electromagnetic pulse or a generous display of laser, plasma, or kinetic weaponry reducing them to dust in short order.)And this would assume that their technologies would be the same and progress along the same lines as ours could be extrapolated to be going. If their tech was significantly different, we might not even be able to affect them, see them, or even be aware of them, unless they wanted it.They may manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum, with the same ease with which we make fire with matches. This would give them abilities only described in fiction, including invisibility, the ability to control the flow of electricity, molecular manipulation (i.e. microwave weaponry - the power to boil you alive!) and a host of other powers we can scarcely imagine. Well, I could but I don't want to...ENLIGHTENMENT OR DAMNATIONI would like to think that Humanity would see the interactions with benign Alien Intelligences as an opportunity to see ourselves all grown up. Hopefully free from bigotry, intolerance and motivated by universal and collective altruism. The idea of sharing concepts, beliefs, reason, science, culture and technology would be the cornerstones of their ideology as they are moving through the universe.But assuming altruism from extra-terrestrials may be simply wishful thinking on our parts. David Brin, a world famous writer, wrote a paper: A Contrarian Perspective on Altruism: The Dangers of First Contact, and it is totally worth a read. He posits that perhaps humanity should not be so eager to make First Contact, there may be a reason we have not detected a signal at SETI yet.Considering that our own world has a relatively benign environment and we are as a whole relatively peaceful, our history is still peppered with a variety of conflicts causing mass casualties, as far back as recorded human history.If a species came from a world more biologically challenging (i.e. a death-world – a world whose biological fecundity bred a variety of very competitive, dangerous lifeforms and ecosystems) they might take that very competitive mindset with them to other worlds, the ultimate expression of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.”They might exterminate us, just to prove that they could because their value system might indicate that if we were fit to survive, then we would be able to effectively resist them. They might not even see this as wrong as their value system was formed under a completely different biome; hence the danger of believing that alien minds might not have alien value systems. They assuredly will.IN SUMMARYOn the other hand, even meeting benevolent aliens could fracture the delicate collective psyches of humanity. Instead of coming together, this could cause human minds to "fear the alien - fear the different" and make humans more reclusive as we recognize our own technological (and likely social and cultural) perceived inferiority. Such inferiority complexes could cause issues that would rebound onto the human populace since we would not likely be able to directly affect the Alien intelligences due to their technology superiority.What I think I worry the most about would not be that they would not share their technology with us, but that they would. Humanity is still not able to utilize the technologies that it currently has at its command effectively.Humanity has the capability but not the will to change the world for everyone living on it right now. But we don’t. We have the power and the capability to feed and get clean water to the entire human race. But we don’t. In the more technologically advanced cultures of the world, we still eat meat, even though it is factory-raised and we know that it is not good for us or the environment to do so at the scale that we do. And we do it anyway.We still create cities in the most environmentally destructive means possible, using enormous amounts of non organic, non-degradable, non-recyclable materials, rather than working with already existing designs that could make living in cities better for everyone, more cost effective, easier to build, mass transit focused, with vertical farming, and mostly solar-powered, but we don’t do it. The Venus Project says we can. We still spend billions on things we know are not good for us such as cigarettes and alcohol.We still drive cars and are making more of them every year even though we know they are bad for us, the environment and that in less than 100 years, there will be no fuel for 95% of all of those vehicles being made today. We still wage war and spend billions every year that I am sure we could find much better things to do with that money. 21% of all the taxes gathered in 2009 in America every year is spent in the Department of Defense (for the number conscious, that is $514 billion, not counting nuclear weapon maintenance, energy technologies and miscellaneous research budgets, so that number is a bit higher, but you get the idea.)We sell people medicines for things they would be better off without, or by teaching them how to live healthy would not need in the first place. We promote irrationality, racism, classism, fear-mongering, and good old fashioned hate as potential lifestyle choices under freedom of speech.As a species, we promote nationality, (an artificial boundary that determines a geographical social group to whom an allegiance is owed) even when today, the boundaries that separate us grow smaller because we can move faster than ever. We are connected via communication systems so that no corner of the globe can remain out of touch, if it really wants to be heard. Yet we barely know our neighbors who live down the street from us. We are so in touch and yet so alone.Now imagine an alien species comes to Earth and offers us technology without a profit motive. They do not seek to make a profit, and they make it impossible for any Earth-based company to make a profit, because the aliens give the technology to everyone. It is likely that they could, seeing how if they are sufficiently advanced, matter and energy are the same to them. Let’s say the technology allowed people a choice that they did not have before.Perhaps it offers them environmentally clean, free energy. Perhaps it allows the creation of clean water where there was once only salt water. Perhaps it allows them to grow food in inhospitable environments or to build durable, inexpensive, but beautiful housing.This liberation of people from the tyranny of governments or profit-driven corporations would not be welcome and I suspect we would soon hear from the houses of governments all over the planet directed to the well-meaning but differently-valued aliens: ET go home!Until we can figure out how to leverage all of the technologies at our current command, whether they are social, cultural, business, or conceptual technologies or technological paradigms, the last thing we need visiting us are well-meaning, generous, aliens.We have not learned to take care of ourselves yet. Perhaps that is why we have not heard from any of them. If they are sufficiently advanced, they can probably tell we are so not-ready. Maybe one day.Let's hope we never hear the mutter those famous words as we are being ushered into an alien spacecraft: "Tell them, the book To Serve Man is not about helping humanity. It's a cookbook!"See Also: What would a competent alien invasion force do differently from the normal Hollywood portrayals?