Capital G

Say hello to the latest incarnation of the one and only Godzilla, brought to you by Legendary Pictures and director Gareth Edwards. He's expected to stomp his way into the theaters in 2014, precisely ten years after Final Wars, his latest Japanese flick, in the year that marks the franchise's 60th birthday.

This reboot is going to be the second G-flick produced, shot (and probably set) in the United States, but it won't have much to do with Roland Emmerich's universally and somewhat unfairly penned incarnation from 1998. Director Gareth Edwards promises an ultra-realistic, pretty dark (knight) approach.

The pic above is a photo of the concept teaser Legendary showed to the audience at Comic-Con this year. The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, but if any further footage has been shot, it has yet to surface. Here's a report, while we're waiting:

The teaser (which was shown twice) is fairly brief, with the camera slowly moving through an utterly devastated urban landscape. There’s even a building that looks like a monster walked right through it, and we see the suggestion of a six-armed beast lying dead in rubble. Then the money shot: Godzilla, seen from behind, turning his head to the camera in profile before emitting the monster’s signature screech. 

The vision of Godzilla was more a suggestion than a detailed reveal, but the guy is HUGE, with a tail and spines up his back that are very clearly meant to evoke the classic creature design. The head is a bit more elongated than the first couple iterations of the beast, but not to the degree of the version seen in the Emmerich remake.
While director Gareth Edwards (Monsters) did come out on stage, where he proclaimed that he’s making a realistic film rather than a sci-fi picture, we don’t know how this teaser represents the film he plans to make. If any footage has been shot for the film (I don’t know that we’ve even had confirmation before this that it is greenlit) it has done so in total secrecy, so what we saw today might be more proof of concept than anything else. ~ slashfilm.com

I'm incredibly hyped about this project. While Godzilla is an icon of camp, cheesy special effects, and nonsense sci-fi stories, he could and has been much more than that. Way before the rubber suit wrestling and kid friendly crapfests from the 1960's and -70's, Ishiro Honda's original Gojira, harbinger of the whole kaiju eiga genre, offered something entirely different. In a surprisingly sad, brooding tale about the horror of the H-bomb and mankind's responsibility over destructive weapons, the monster itself was nothing more then an easy gimmick, politically correct sci-fi exploitation of a troubled nation's memories just a decade after Hiroshima. Sixty years old suit-motion effects or not, that flick got one hell of a mood, and If Gareth can summon something from that feel in today's setting, we're in for a treat.

So far what I really like is that although we're going to get a CGI Godzilla - judging from the pic, at least - they will stick to the classic idea of the creature's design, a bulky, fatass sarurian badass, walking erect and angry, but always taking his time. It may seem dated (especially compared to the Dean Devlin designed, Jurassic Park-influenced 1998 Zilla), but trust me, among today's collective modern idea of those pathetic anorexic dinosaurs, often depicted with feathers, an old-school lizard like the Japanese big guy will be a refreshing sight.

It's time to make the word prehistoric equal cool again. Wishing the best of luck to Mr. Edwards.