Godzilla 2014: Rumors, Pix and filming
- Thread starter Gojira
- Start date
I've been thinking about the line in the trailer implying that the '54 US nuclear tests in the Pacific weren't actually tests, but were intended to destroy something (i.e. Godzilla, probably). My first thought was that this was revisionist, even getting it backward, because the intent of the original film was that it was those American nuclear tests that drove Godzilla from his feeding grounds and led to his attack on Tokyo in the first place. The film was actually an allegorical protest for the damage that the radiation from those Marshall Islands tests inflicted on Japan -- lethally irradiating the crew of a fishing boat and contaminating Japanese soil and water with fallout. So the idea of turning around "the American nukes caused Godzilla" into "Godzilla caused the nukes" seemed troubling at first, like trying to dodge the original's critique of America. Not to mention that it would be inconsistent with the original film's continuity, which virtually all subsequent movies have more or less followed.
But then I realized it can still work. The original film said the American nuclear bombings drove Godzilla to Japan -- but that doesn't necessarily mean the Americans were unaware of Godzilla. Maybe what the film will reveal is that first the Americans discovered Godzilla, then they nuked him, and that then drove him to seek other feeding grounds in Japan as seen in the original film. If anything, that would make the American military even more complicit than the original implied, because they were aware of the creature and didn't warn Japan.
Would an American Godzilla film be bold enough to take that tack? We'll see...
But then I realized it can still work. The original film said the American nuclear bombings drove Godzilla to Japan -- but that doesn't necessarily mean the Americans were unaware of Godzilla. Maybe what the film will reveal is that first the Americans discovered Godzilla, then they nuked him, and that then drove him to seek other feeding grounds in Japan as seen in the original film. If anything, that would make the American military even more complicit than the original implied, because they were aware of the creature and didn't warn Japan.
Would an American Godzilla film be bold enough to take that tack? We'll see...
Apparently Godzilla is woken up by nuclear testing prior the 1950's and/or the bombs dropped on Japan at the end of the war, however all subsequent "tests" are meant to be them trying to destroy the monster. Either way, one of Toho's stipulations for this film was that Godzilla must have a nuclear origin, we'll just have to see which one it is.
I will now have that image in my head for days.
You've seen the commercial, right?
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkNeGDNhYZo[/yt]
In the original film, Godzilla wasn't "woken up," but his species had just been living in the deep trenches of the Pacific all along, a "living fossil" like the coelacanth. The nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands in 1954 just displaced him from his feeding grounds and drove him in search of new food sources, which happened to be in Japan. And irradiated him so that his breath became radioactive. Actually they did this to two Godzillas, because a second one emerged in 1955 after the first was killed. It was in the second film, Godzilla Raids Again, that the idea of the nuclear tests "awakening" the Godzillas and Anguirus was first broached.
The '90s films retconned things so that Godzilla was mutated from a land-dwelling carnosaur, but still, that "Godzillasaurus" was already active on the island of Lagos before the bombs mutated/supersized it. So again it was more of a Lost World/Valley of Gwangi type of scenario where a dinosaur species had avoided extinction in an isolated part of the world and was already active before the bomb tests.
A number of American monster movies in the '50s also took the tack that the giant creatures had existed all along in uncharted environs, with atomic weapons simply causing them to come into contact with humans for the first time. In It Came from Beneath the Sea in '55, the giant octopus was a naturally occurring denizen of the Pacific but had been irradiated by the Marshall Islands tests so that its prey, fish that could sense radiation, detected its approach and were able to flee. So it was forced to hunt prey that couldn't sense it coming, such as humans. Then there's The Monster That Challenged the World, in which experimental Naval depth charges (or something) in the Salton Sea in Southern California released a species of giant prehistoric mollusk that had been in dehydrated suspension beneath the sea bed for millions of years. I think the first movie to actually show radiation creating giant monsters through mutation was Them! -- although that was over several generations of ant mutation in the nine years since the Alamogordo atomic tests, rather than happening to a single individual as in the '90s Godzilla films. One of the first films to show an individual creature growing giant was Jack Arnold's Tarantula in '55, but that was due to a super growth hormone with a little radioactive seasoning to make it more potent.
Well there was some talk of both Godzilla and these MUTO creatures already existing. It could be that Godzilla's kind were already somehow naturally radioactive, and that makes them susceptible to being "mutated" by modern nuclear testing, resulting in Godzilla becoming larger and more powerful over the decades from 1954 to 2014.
Well, it depends. Toho alone has featured seven distinct Godzilla universes that have reinvented the rules of the universe and the nature of Godzilla several times. The original assumption was that he was simply a living fossil displaced and made radioactive by atomic testing, not unlike the octopus in It Came From Beneath the Sea. The second film introduced the idea that he'd been awakened from suspended animation -- not unlike the title creature in the movie that inspired Godzilla and the whole giant-monster genre in the first place, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (which was freed from the Arctic ice by American atomic tests). The two most recent Toho universes to date are variants of this original continuity.
The first continuity reboot in 1984 introduced the idea that Godzilla was actually nuclear-powered himself and fed on radiation. The third film in that "Heisei" continuity (named for the era in the Japanese calendar when most of it was produced) added the retcon of the Godzillasaurus that was mutated to giant size by nuclear testing, and we saw other creatures similarly gigantized by radiation including Rodan and Baby Godzilla aka Godzilla Junior. In this continuity, Godzilla had grown from 50 to 80 meters by the time he returned in '84, and the time-travel attempt in the third movie to prevent his creation actually backfired and resulted in an altered Godzilla who was a full 100 meters tall.
Then the next slate of movies beginning in 1999 introduced the idea that Godzilla possessed a Wolverine-like regenerative ability enabling him to come back even from near-total destruction. The three films from 1999 to 2001 were all in different continuities, but they all used this regenerative capability; in the second of the three, a character mentioned that they'd have to destroy Godzilla completely "this time" to make sure he didn't regenerate, and in the third... well, I don't want to spoil the ending. But what these three continuties seem to have in common (although the first is quite vague where its whole backstory is concerned) is that their versions of Godzilla are all the original 1954 model, regenerated after near-total destruction by the Oxygen Destroyer in the original film, and growing somewhat larger as a result of his regeneration. In the other four continuities, it's overt or implicit that the original was killed but a second one -- a larger one in the Heisei case, at least -- emerged. (Actually the early Heisei films implied their Godzilla was the original, but the final film in the sequence established him unambiguously as the second Godzilla. I tend to assume the occupants of the Heisei universe originally assumed the 1984-model Godzilla was the original returned, but later figured out it was a second member of the species.)
So there's nothing that's absolutely consistent among all the Godzilla universes except that they include some version of the events of the 1954 film. The details and the nature of Godzilla vary from reality to reality, though. So I'm not expecting this film to be completely consistent with any of the prior realities any more than they are with each other (or within themselves, in the case of the two long-running ones). I just hope it maintains the tradition of assuming that the broad outlines of the original film did occur.
Christopher, I've got to commend your Big-G knowledge base. Wow.
I'm really curious about how they're going to explain/show his breath weapon and ability to shrug off conventional weapons. I always thought some sort of biologically-maintained kinetic dampening field would work for the latter, combined with crazy healing ability for what damage does get through.
The breath weapon, though... how will they make that believable? 'Cause, you know, Godzilla has to have a breath weapon, doesn't he?
Peace
Worfmonger
I'm really curious about how they're going to explain/show his breath weapon and ability to shrug off conventional weapons. I always thought some sort of biologically-maintained kinetic dampening field would work for the latter, combined with crazy healing ability for what damage does get through.
The breath weapon, though... how will they make that believable? 'Cause, you know, Godzilla has to have a breath weapon, doesn't he?
Peace
Worfmonger
If Godzilla were believable, he'd be completely immobilized by his own weight the moment he came out of the water and would die on the shore like a beached whale. He's a fantasy creature, pure and simple. He breathes atomic fire because he's an atomic dragon.
Let me start by saying that I deeply respect your knowledge, and when I correct you here, it is probably more to do with my need to show off my own knowledge than you actually failing here. Overall, you are absolutely right.
But I'd like to point out that, in the final Toho Godzilla film "Godzilla: Final Wars" from 2004, there was no indication of the Godzilla in this movie being a second one. The only mention of the events of the original movie is the age of the monsters beginning in 1954.
It may be, though, that there are differences in translations, as I know the German translation from the Splendid DVD, while you most likely know the English translation from the Sony DVD.
Also, Godzilla being about twice as big as in the original may be interpreted as this one being a second one.
Another thing, your post reminded me of an article from the G-Fan fanzine from the early 90s (I don't quite remember the exact issue number), in which the writer theorized about Godzilla having regenerative powers caused by ongoing mutation, which results also in his changing features. Just a bit of fan theorizing, but remarkable since it actually pre-dated the Millennium era films and their establishing of Godzilla's regenerative powers.
Pretty much, Edwards even said at the footage screening recently that a giant monster could never actually appear, but the destruction they cause on our environment is applicable to natural disasters that we see. It's in that aspect where the "realism" comes into play in this film, hence things like the tsunami that heralds Godzilla's arrival at Hawaii.
Admittedly, it's something of an extrapolation on my part. Final Wars is set in a continuity where not only the original film but several other Showa-era kaiju films like Mothra, Rodan, and Varan the Destroyer happened. It even features Minilla/Minya, the baby of Godzilla's species from the Showa continuity, as well as other returning Showa monsters. So it seems to be based on the Showa continuity but diverges from it in that the alien invasions that began in Invasion of the Astro Beast never occurred, and thus Godzilla never "reformed," never began fighting alongside humanity in defense of the Earth. So I tend to assume that all of the first four Godzilla films, the ones in which he was a villain, happened in the FW continuity. There's no proof for that, but it seems a reasonable conjecture.
I just find it convenient to be able to classify the various continuities into groups of "related" realities. There are some where it's clear that the original Godzilla died and was replaced by a second (e.g. the Showa continuity, the Heisei continuity going by Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, and the Millennium-era Mechagodzilla/Kiryu films), and there are a couple where it's clear that the original Godzilla regenerated and is still active (G vs. Megaguirus and GMK). That leaves two ambiguous ones, Millennium and Final Wars. Millennium is a frustrating case because it's the only continuity that never overtly mentions the '54 film at all, and indeed seems to imply that Godzilla hasn't been around nearly that long; but if we assume the '54 film did happen there as it happened in the other six continuities (with Godzilla perhaps being dormant much longer before his return), then the film's introduction of the "Organizer G1" regeneration capability would seem to put it in the same category as its successors Megaguirus and GMK, which give him the same regenerative power. And since Final Wars has so much in common with Showa, it seems to make sense to treat it as a Showa variant, in which case it follows that it stars the second Godzilla.
Well, given how unkillable Godzilla was, I think the idea of his regenerative ability was always implicitly there. Heck, even in the original film, it was clear that he was indestructible by any weapon short of the Oxygen Destroyer (and the fact that Dr. Serizawa took the secret of the OD to his grave explains why Godzilla II was never killed). But the Millennium films codified the idea and took it to an extreme. I think it's much the same as how Wolverine's healing ability was treated over time: at first it was just something that could aid his recovery from serious injuries, but eventually it was exaggerated to the point where it could bring him back to life if even a small part of him survived, i.e. nearly to Jack Harkness levels. (Convenient that sci-fi gives us such a wide spectrum of regenerative powers that we can use as analogies, isn't it?)
I've been aware of what it is since I was eight years old, I'm curious as to how they'll explain it.
I mean in the context of the film; obviously under our current understanding of biology on this planet Godzilla couldn't exist. He's certainly not a fantasy creature to the characters in the film, however, and I'm interested in if and how they'll explain his Godzilla-ness.
Peace
Worfmonger
I see that some of the Godzilla toys are starting to appear in shops; here's Godzilla's (and MUTO's) origin according to the back of one of the packages, spoilers obviously:
http://i.imgur.com/lr9dwW2.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/lr9dwW2.jpg