When the news hit that Godzilla was going to be remade again, it felt like a mixed blessing.
The last American attempt at making Godzilla was dreadful, and I’ve always hoped the big green guy would one day have a big comeback in the States.
Then again, maybe Godzilla’s always supposed to be a cult phenomenon that only true fans will understand and enjoy.
And making a Godzilla movie isn’t exactly rocket science. It’s a guy in a suit stomping around stomping buildings and swatting airplanes. It’s supposed to be fun, and the wrong attitude could sink it.
When you look at the Japanese Godzillas, they’ve improved the FX and they clearly take their big green lizard very seriously as a cultural icon, but the movies are still a lot of fun, as they should be.
So now Giant Freakin’ Robot has published the first pre-production image (see above) that’s gotten out from the new model Godzilla, and he’s still making a big mess of things. This illustration is supposed to be what Godzilla has done to London. We’re obviously not going to see what the new model Godzilla looks like for a long time, that will be very tightly under wraps until it gets closer to the May 16, 2014 release date.
The site ComicBookMovie.com has also gathered that Godzilla will apparently be fighting another monster, and it may be a big centipede. The site reports that Toho, the Japanese company that’s always been the home of the big G, is involved in the making of the film, and they’ve always had a strong hand in guiding their #1 monster. (Although Emmerich and Devlin didn’t follow their advice well for their disastrous Godzilla remake).
For ComicBookMovie.com, this is also a good sign:
“With Toho on board, and the fact they’ll distribut it in Japan, that should be enough for people to trust in this project.”
Godzilla is supposed to start shooting in May. The cinematographer will be Seamus McGarvey, who also shot The Avengers, and last month he told Collider, “We still haven’t chosen the direction we’re going visually. I’m sort of testing, in fact, for that stuff.”
David Goyer, who has screenwriting and story credits on Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy and also penned Call of Duty Black Ops 2, is one of several screenwriters on the new Godzilla. Max Borenstein and Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3), also did work on the script. Gareth Edwards, who directed Monsters, is the director of Godzilla, and he told Filmofilia.com, “I really wanted to see another Godzilla film and jumped at the opportunity. My main idea was to imagine, ‘If this really happened, what would it be like?’ I want to take a grounded, realistic approach to a Godzilla film.”
As long as it’s got the right spirit, and Edwards sounds like he in for the right reasons, here’s hoping the next Godzilla will be grounded, realistic, but with the right attitude and not take itself TOO seriously.
