Impromptu Cinema 2: Turok vs Godzilla and the Cloverfield monster

By Brendon Lindsey
Tags: Cloverfield, dinosaurs, Godzilla, Native Americans, our bad, Turok, whoops

This Impromptu Cinema is going to be a little different than the rules I established in the Elephant Stomping Dystopian Future edition last week. Why? Partly because I already had this written up for another site, and at the last minute the assignment got pulled. Rather than have it go to waste, I’m using it here.

I’m not entirely sure what Turok’s story and history is in the comics, as I’ve never read them. I do know, however, his background in the various Turok videogames. (At least the extremely limited amount of information you can gather without the instruction booklet.) To make a long story short, he’s apparently some sort of time traveler who goes back in time (or forward?) and to various locales, only to always end up fighting or finding dinosaurs and other dudes/things. Maybe it’s a curse. It’s never “Turok vs. the bears!” or “Turok vs. knights!”; always dinosaurs.

After watching the new animated Turok movie and playing a few limited parts of the new Turok game (the demo and a level or so), I couldn’t help but shake my head at how big some of these dinosaurs were. We’re talking a t-rex twice the size of a normal t-rex. That’s pretty big. Then I watched Cloverfield, and I got to thinking… What if Turok traveled through time to fight some of cinema’s biggest dinosaur-like monsters in a series of films/games, and they featured the good ol’ classic Turok corniness? They’d certainly make some awesome experiences. Don’t believe me? Then read these brief plot runthroughs for Turok 1 and 2.

Turok 1: Godzilla

Tokyo, 1954. A giant dinosaur-like beast rampages around the city, endangering the life of everyone around it. Nay, everyone on the planet; it turns out the beast is radioactive. The Japanese army can’t stop it. Neither can the other countries who come to help. With Jeff Goldblum yet to be born, there isn’t a scientist alive who can devise a plan to cease the beast’s silly-looking-but-deadly rampage.

Suddenly, while generals are discussing how best to nuke the entire city to stop Godzilla, a knife is thrown down into the map. Looming above them is a man dressed in strange clothing, and wielding a variety of high-tech and primitive weapons. He offers to take down the beast, and the generals all laugh at him. Picking up his knife, he leaves the room.

Fast forward a few hours. The scientist about to pull the trigger on the nuke is taken out by one of Godzilla’s radioactive blasts; the entire control room is now deadly to any human stepping inside of it. Panic ensues, as everyone flees the city by boat or whatever other floatable thing they can find. “Women and children first!” cries out one naval office in Japanese. Just as the boat is loaded with all the women and children of Tokyo (it’s a big boat), Godzilla turns his eyes on it and its nuclear-powered engine. He rears up, and is ready to deliver a massive blast, killing all those poor little children who are – for some reason or another – playing hop scotch on the deck of the ship.

Just then, a whizzing sound is heard, and Godzilla suddenly recoils. No one can see what happened, but someone managed to hit Godzilla in the eye with some sort of flying metal disc. Quickly, Godzilla is hit by several shots of what look to be a sort of laser-powered dart gun, and that strange dressed man jumps from on top of Tokyo’s largest tower, shooting at Godzilla his entire fall. Godzilla roars, and stomps the ground but the man dodges.

He reaches into his pack, and pulls out a strange looking gun which fires some sort of parasite at the beast. It misses, and ends up hitting a guy who was trying to rape someone in the middle of the panic, and his head suddenly explodes. The strange man jumps to the side, grabs a rope, and cuts it, hurling himself into the air and landing on top of the monstrous lizard’s snout. He stares him down for a second, then fires. The parasite flies through Godzilla’s eye, and Godzilla roars. Shot after shot is fired, until all 50 of these cerebral bores have found their way into Godzilla’s cerebellum. With a lengthy dying roar, Godzilla falls.

By the time the Japanese officials muster the courage to approach the fallen beast, the man is already gone. Lodged in Godzilla’s snout, however, is a knife. The same knife that the strange man threw into the table hours ago.

Turok 2: Cloverfield monster

It’s been over 50 years since Japan was devastated by the monstrous Godzilla. (Now, his remains were used to cure cancer and solve the energy crisis.) The world has deactivated all Anti Giant Dinosaur Like Monster Defense squads, believing the worst to be over. Nothing’s been detected in over 50 years, after all.

That’s when the USS Lost Lands detects a blip on sonar. “It’s just a whale, don’t worry about it” one technician tells the seaman who noticed it. But still, it’s awfully fast and agile for a whale…

That night, the USS Lost Lands went missing at sea, and no troops survived.

Weeks later, it’s a quiet night in New York City. People are partying, some people have new jobs, and Officer Jones is one day away from retirement after a lifetimes service to the NYPD. He’d seen his share of disasters over the years, and saved his fair share of people. But still, the years of police work took a toll on the man, and he found it harder and harder to even get out of bed, let alone work the beat in the most dangerous neighborhood in the city: his own.

He’s out on one last patrol when suddenly he hears explosions and screaming from all over the city. Believing the terrorists to be back, Jones quickly calls his family and tells them to get home and lock the door. They say, “We love you daddy!” and hang up. Then Jones takes off running as fast as a 65 year old cop can run towards the noise. Suddenly, he feels rejuvenated.

That’s when things go to hell. This is no terrorist, he thinks. This is some sort of monster. The beast is huge, and attacking the city and its architecture for no reason. It’s almost like he hates the design of the buildings in Manhattan. “He should see the apartments in Queens!” Jones says to himself, as only a cop in an action movie situation could. Lost in his laughter, he doesn’t quite notice the giant tail bearing down on him.

A strong force hits him in the gut, and he goes rolling. Standing up, he looks over to where he was, trying to see who was brave enough to sacrifice himself to save an old geezer like him. What he sees shocks him: it’s a man dressed in Native American garb (it’s Turok, duh), and he isn’t dead. In fact, he’s holding up a bow, using it to shield himself from the impact of the tail. The bow begins to creak, and the man quickly fires a laser into the tail; the recoil of the beast gives him enough time to roll out of the way.

As he comes over to check on Jones, dozens of tiny monsters scramble towards the two. They bite one man in the neck, and the man screams until his chest explodes. Turok laughs, then pulls out a gun, shooting all 27 of the beasts within 20 seconds. They all stop, scream, and explode. “I’ve been doing this far longer than you have,” he tells one of the corpses while kicking it. He looks at Jones, and beckons him to follow.

The two race towards the center of Manhattan, where the monster is attacking whatever the biggest building in Manhattan is. It also happened to be hosting an event that day where the presidents of the US, Russia, and Mexico were all meeting with the prime minsters of Japan (poor guy) and Canada. Oh, and the Queen is there with the Pope, too.

“My god!” Jones yells as he realizes that the world’s most powerful leaders will all surely die. Turok quickly assesses the situation, then ties a rope to his bow. He shoots it towards the building hundreds of yards away, and manages to hit the end of a ladder on the 30^th floor, hooking it. He ties the other end of the rope off to a lightpost, and quickly beings his ascent as Jones looks on, terrified for his life. Being the good cop he is, Jones helps clear the area of innocent civilians and puppies.

Turok reaches the top of his rope, and hangs onto the ladder. He fires the cerebral bore at the monster, but nothing happens. It’s almost as if he doesn’t know enough information about this monster to even know if it has a brain. Frustrated, he reaches into a pouch on his belt, and pulls out what appears to be the same nuclear explosive they had planned to use on Godzilla years before, but heavily modified to look more futuristic. He lines up an angle with the monster, and throws it. It arcs right towards its mouth, but at the last second the monster bats it away with one of his tails (or feet or whatever it has). Turok curses in a strange language, and shoots a bow at the bottom of the rope, slicing it. He grabs on, and swings down towards the explosive. Grabbing it in mid swing, Turok launches himself into the air, and straight down the monsters gullet.

20 seconds pass, and the monster suddenly bloats up, and in an ironic moment his chest and gut explode, killing him instantly. Everyone cheers, the city and the world leaders are saved. Everyone but Jones, that is. Jones looks on, the only witness to the unselfish act of that strangely dressed man, and for the first time in his career he weeps.

The next day, Jones is at home. He’s bored in his retirement, but he knows it came at the right time. Still, he can’t shake the depression over being the only one to have known of the man’s sacrifice. He told everyone, but no one believed his story; they called him senile; the monster just couldn’t breathe air after all, scientists claimed. Once again, enough information wasn’t known about the monster so he couldn’t argue. He knew damn well what he saw, though, and he would be sure to tell his children, and his children’s children, and every generation of his children the story of the saintly man so his deed would always be remembered.

Still, he was an old man, and he needed to pee. Jones leaves the kitchen, putting his coffee down on the mantle, and goes to the restroom. Several minutes later, he comes back out and reaches for his coffee. It’s gone. Startled, he pulls his gun and creeps into the kitchen, where he can see the door was left ajar. There on the kitchen table is a note, pinned into the wood by an arrow. “Thank you for the cofee, and good work – T” it says. Jones clutches the note, smiles widely, and begins to laugh.

Want a completely original idea and three possible movies for it? Or do you just enjoy the idea of Death by Elephant Stomping becoming the new capital punishment craze in the US? Then check out last week’s Impromptu Cinema and find out why it became the number one result on Google for the keyword “elephant stomping”!

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