Godzilla 2014: Rumors, Pix and filming

[Christopher]

I think Godzilla should have a human quality to an extent. It's that sense of humanity that makes him an identifiable character that audiences connect with, even when he's the villain of the piece. In the films, he's not just a rampaging animal, but has intelligence, cunning, and determination that let him prevail over all obstacles.

 

[Gojira]

I think Godzilla should have a human quality to an extent. It's that sense of humanity that makes him an identifiable character that audiences connect with, even when he's the villain of the piece. In the films, he's not just a rampaging animal, but has intelligence, cunning, and determination that let him prevail over all obstacles.

I agree with what you're saying. I hope that is conveyed in the movie. How far upright fo you think he should be?

 

[lurok]

I think Godzilla should have a human quality to an extent. It's that sense of humanity that makes him an identifiable character that audiences connect with, even when he's the villain of the piece. In the films, he's not just a rampaging animal, but has intelligence, cunning, and determination that let him prevail over all obstacles.

Absolutely. Don't want another dumb CGI monster. Boring. I hope Edwards gets the humour as well. Some of the Godzilla films have some great lol moments . Especially when he (?) is weighing up tactics.

 

[Gojira]

Absolutely. Don't want another dumb CGI monster. Boring. I hope Edwards gets the humour as well. Some of the Godzilla films have some great lol moments . Especially when he (?) is weighing up tactics.

From what I understand is were are going to get a serious "as if this is happening in the real world" type of movie. So whatever humor is there will probably be natural to the characters.

 

[Christopher]

How far upright fo you think he should be?

I'm not thinking about it in such precise terms. Just something that captures the essence of Godzilla.

And for the record, I quite like the design of the creature in the 1998 film. As long as you accept that it was a different daikaiju that was just mistaken for Godzilla (as a line in GMK suggested), it works fine.

 

[Gojira]

How far upright fo you think he should be?

I'm not thinking about it in such precise terms. Just something that captures the essence of Godzilla.

And for the record, I quite like the design of the creature in the 1998 film. As long as you accept that it was a different daikaiju that was just mistaken for Godzilla (as a line in GMK suggested), it works fine.

Agreed again. I really do like the design of the 1998 monster...I also enjoy the movie...but I have a difficult time seeing him as Godzilla.

 

[Christopher]

The '98 movie really fits perfectly with GMK, and I think that was intentional on the part of GMK's makers. In the '98 movie, some Japanese characters, upon seeing the reptilian daikaiju in the film, think that it's Gojira/Godzilla -- which pretty clearly implies that an earlier creature called Gojira did previously exist in that film's continuity. In GMK's timeline, the real Godzilla hasn't been seen since 1954 (except for an unconfirmed, possibly mistaken sighting in New York a few years earlier), and the government suppressed a lot of the specifics about the incident to avoid making the Self-Defense Force look bad, so the Japanese public has forgotten a lot about Godzilla, and because of that ignorance, there are characters who, upon seeing Baragon, mistake it for Godzilla.

The only problem with that theory is that the animated Godzilla: The Series, a direct sequel to the '98 film which was much better than the film, doesn't fit in the GMK timeline. Because the events of the show would've had to take place between the '98 movie and GMK, but the SDF commander at the start of GMK said that there had been virtually no kaiju sightings since '54 other than the New York incident, whereas in G:TS, there were kaiju cropping up weekly all over the world.

 

[Gojira]

The '98 movie really fits perfectly with GMK, and I think that was intentional on the part of GMK's makers. In the '98 movie, some Japanese characters, upon seeing the reptilian daikaiju in the film, think that it's Gojira/Godzilla -- which pretty clearly implies that an earlier creature called Gojira did previously exist in that film's continuity. In GMK's timeline, the real Godzilla hasn't been seen since 1954 (except for an unconfirmed, possibly mistaken sighting in New York a few years earlier), and the government suppressed a lot of the specifics about the incident to avoid making the Self-Defense Force look bad, so the Japanese public has forgotten a lot about Godzilla, and because of that ignorance, there are characters who, upon seeing Baragon, mistake it for Godzilla.

The only problem with that theory is that the animated Godzilla: The Series, a direct sequel to the '98 film which was much better than the film, doesn't fit in the GMK timeline. Because the events of the show would've had to take place between the '98 movie and GMK, but the SDF commander at the start of GMK said that there had been virtually no kaiju sightings since '54 other than the New York incident, whereas in G:TS, there were kaiju cropping up weekly all over the world.

Like TAS it isn't considered canon in Star Trek I can ignore the animated Godzilla series. I do like thinking that Godzilla 98 fits in with the continuity of GMK. That way the 98 creature was merely mislabeled as Godzilla.

 

[Christopher]

Like TAS it isn't considered canon in Star Trek...

That hasn't been true since Gene Roddenberry died 22 years ago. TAS has been repeatedly referenced in canon since then (particularly "Yesteryear," which was referenced in TNG: "Unification" and inspired the young-Spock scenes in the 2009 film), the novels and comics have been free to use its characters and ideas, and the "canon-only" websites Startrek.com and Memory Alpha include it right alongside the other shows.

I can ignore the animated Godzilla series.

Well, considering that the Toho Godzilla franchise already has, like, seven different continuities, there's no need to ignore or de-canonize anything -- just treat them as parallel realities. In my blog article reviewing the franchise a while back, when I made a list of all the continuities, I included one that comprised the '54 film, the '98 film, and GMK, and another that included the '54 film, the '98 film, and G:TS.

 

[Mike Farley]

Where does the Hanna-Barbera Godzilla fit in?

 

[Christopher]

Where does the Hanna-Barbera Godzilla fit in?

To quote my blog post: "I’m not counting the Hanna-Barbera Godzilla cartoon in this listing since its version of Godzilla is too different from the original, breathing actual fire instead of an atomic ray and having Superman-like heat vision, as well as being quite different in appearance. It also has no sense of a backstory and no evident connection to the original film, so there’s really nothing to discuss."

 

[DWF]

I think Godzilla should have a human quality to an extent. It's that sense of humanity that makes him an identifiable character that audiences connect with, even when he's the villain of the piece. In the films, he's not just a rampaging animal, but has intelligence, cunning, and determination that let him prevail over all obstacles.

Godzilla was originally meant as a force of nature like an earthquake, in the end humanity was the real villain. The major fault of the '98 movie was that Godzilla was seen a creature trying to reproduce instead of the nuclear horror it was IMO meant to be.

 

[JD]

I love the guys-in-suits Kaiju of the Japanese movies, to me that's half the fun of the movies.
But on the other hand, I am very much aware that something like that won't work in a big budget Hollywood movie, so I am perfectly happy that we're getting another CG monster.
I really don't mind the '98 Godzilla movie's design, as long as we don't consider it the same creature as we see in the Japanese movie.

 

[Mike Farley]

I wasn't a big fan of the 98 design, but I wouldn't have minded it so much if it had at least ACTED like Godzilla. Godzilla doesn't run from Helicopters and hide in tunnels under the city. Godzilla reduces the city to rubble then wades back into the sea.

 

[Christopher]

I wasn't a big fan of the 98 design, but I wouldn't have minded it so much if it had at least ACTED like Godzilla. Godzilla doesn't run from Helicopters and hide in tunnels under the city. Godzilla reduces the city to rubble then wades back into the sea.

Which, again, is why the movie works best if you accept that it's a different kaiju that was simply mistaken for Godzilla because the characters didn't know any better. Once you get past that, it's a decent monster movie.

 

[Tiberius]

I wasn't a big fan of the 98 design, but I wouldn't have minded it so much if it had at least ACTED like Godzilla. Godzilla doesn't run from Helicopters and hide in tunnels under the city. Godzilla reduces the city to rubble then wades back into the sea.

Which, again, is why the movie works best if you accept that it's a different kaiju that was simply mistaken for Godzilla because the characters didn't know any better. Once you get past that, it's a decent monster movie.

Didn't they say this exact thing in that movie?

 

[Christopher]

Which, again, is why the movie works best if you accept that it's a different kaiju that was simply mistaken for Godzilla because the characters didn't know any better. Once you get past that, it's a decent monster movie.

Didn't they say this exact thing in that movie?

In Godzilla '98? No. Why would they call the movie Godzilla and then say outright that it wasn't about Godzilla? But it was suggested in Japan's GMK in 2001.

 

[Tiberius]

Which, again, is why the movie works best if you accept that it's a different kaiju that was simply mistaken for Godzilla because the characters didn't know any better. Once you get past that, it's a decent monster movie.

Didn't they say this exact thing in that movie?

In Godzilla '98? No. Why would they call the movie Godzilla and then say outright that it wasn't about Godzilla? But it was suggested in Japan's GMK in 2001.

AH, well it's been quite a while since I've seen it. Might have to go rent the DVD today...

 

[Christopher]

^Maybe what you're remembering is the part where Harry Shearer's reporter character hears the Japanese eyewitness call the creature "Gojira" and mispronounces it as "Godzilla" -- and later, when he says it that way on the air, a roomful of Japanese tourists calls out "Gojira!" to correct him.

Although that's not really a mispronunciation. The second consonant can sound something like a "dz" in some contexts or dialects, and the final consonant is as close to L as it is to R. So "Godzilla" is technically as valid a transliteration as "Gojira," although to English-speaking eyes it suggests an incorrect pronunciation of the vowels (the first syllable should be more like "go" and the middle isn't stressed). Then again, the name is derived from the Japanese words for "gorilla" (gorira) and "whale" (kujira), so stressing its syllables like "gorilla" is arguably not a mistake at all. (And given the character's spiritual component, the "God" part isn't inappropriate either.) Indeed, in the Japanese films, the name was in fact spelled "Godzilla" in English signage and pronounced by English-speaking characters the same way Americans pronounce it, as "Gahd-zil-la." So that's the official English spelling and pronunciation even by Japanese standards, so it's a bit off for the '98 movie to treat it as a mistake by Shearer's character.

 

[Tiberius]

That's why I never liked the look of Godfilla in the Japanese movies. That upright posture just screams IT'S A FAKE!

And the fact that it's projected on a movie screen doesn't? Or the fact that everything about it is physically impossible? There's no way any living thing could get that large, there was never any dinosaur like that in the fossil record, and heck, plenty of the movies contain blatantly supernatural elements. Of course it's fake. It's all imaginary. A lot of it is allegorical. It's not trying to be realistic in any way.

Would you rather that Kermit the Frog be a CGI creature designed to look exactly like a real frog? Or that Roadrunner cartoons be about a realistically rendered coyote and roadrunner behaving in scientifically accurate ways? (In which case it would be a short and grisly series, since coyotes can actually run more than twice as fast as roadrunners.) Lots of things are supposed to look unrealistic. Kaiju battles are essentially a form of puppet theater, an art form that has a long history in Japan and elsewhere.

That said, some of the later Godzilla movies made considerable improvements in the special effects. There are some impressive ones in the films of the '90s and early 2000s.

Woah, relax.

I'm fully aware that it's all fake.

I'm just saying that they should try to make it look like what it would really be like if it was real.