The world’s most revered monster is reborn as Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures unleashes the epic action adventure “Godzilla.” out now out on DVD.
From visionary new director Gareth Edwards (“Monsters”) comes a powerful story of human courage and reconciliation in the face of titanic forces of nature, when the awe-inspiring Godzilla rises to restore balance as humanity stands defenseless.
The film stars an international ensemble cast led by Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“Kick-Ass”), Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe (“The Last Samurai,” “Inception”), Elizabeth Olsen (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”), Oscar® winner Juliette Binoche (“The English Patient,” “Cosmopolis”), and Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins (“Blue Jasmine”), with Oscar® nominee David Strathairn (“Good Night, and Good Luck,” “The Bourne Legacy”) and Emmy® and Golden Globe Award winner Bryan Cranston (“Argo,” TV’s “Breaking Bad”).
Edwards directed “Godzilla” from a screenplay by Max Borenstein, story by David Callaham, based on the character “Godzilla” owned and created by TOHO CO., LTD. Thomas Tull produced the film, along with Jon Jashni, Mary Parent and Brian Rogers. Patricia Whitcher and Alex Garcia served as executive producers, alongside Yoshimitsu Banno and Kenji Okuhira.
The behind-the-scenes creative team includes Oscar-nominated director of photography Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC (“Anna Karenina,” “The Avengers”); production designer Owen Paterson (“The Matrix” trilogy); film editor Bob Ducsay (“Looper”); Oscar-nominated costume designer Sharen Davis (“Dreamgirls,” “Django Unchained”); and Oscar®-winning visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel ( “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy). Allen Maris is the visual effects producer. Dave Jordan was the music supervisor. The score was composed and conducted by Oscar-nominated composer Alexandre Desplat (“Argo,” “The King’s Speech”).
GODZILLA REBORN
In 1954, Japan’s Toho Co., Ltd., released Ishiro Honda’s groundbreaking monster movie “Godzilla” in a country still reeling from the devastation of World War II. The film became a massive hit in Japan, and, 60 years later, continues to resonate around the world for distilling the fears and horrors of the atomic age into an awe-inspiring force of nature…Godzilla.
“‘Godzilla’ is the benchmark of monster movies,” says Gareth Edwards, the British director at the helm of the epic new vision for Toho’s iconic creation. Edwards grew up on Japanese monster movies before discovering Honda’s 1954 masterpiece on DVD and was fascinated by its stark allegorical subtext and continuing relevance in contemporary times. “If you went around the world with the silhouette of a giant dinosaur looming over a city, everyone would know exactly who it is—whether they’ve seen a Godzilla movie or not. But what many people don’t realize is that the original Japanese ‘Godzilla’ is actually a very serious film. I think that’s the reason it was so embraced by Japanese culture—because not only is it a great monster movie, it was also very cathartic for people to see those images brought to life on screen in such a visceral and real way.”
Partially reshot, softening some of its metaphorical bite, and dubbed into multiple languages, the film was released abroad two years later and a legend was born. For the past six decades, the towering “King of the Monsters” has cut a swath through pop culture, spawning numerous sequels, an army of toys, and incarnations in everything from comic books to video games. A whole new genre of movies emerged—kaiju eiga—and Godzilla became one of the most beloved and recognizable movie heroes of the 20th and, now, 21st centuries.
Bryan Cranston, one of the stars of the new film, has vivid memories of being enthralled as he watched the monster rampage across his childhood TV screen. “Godzilla with his fiery breath…he just destroyed everything in his wake,” Cranston remembers. “It was actually a man in a suit stomping through a miniature Tokyo, but it was marvelous to a young kid. There’s a part of me that will always be that boy, but the whole sensibility of how to make a movie like this has matured; the audience has evolved. It’s not just about Godzilla smashing things up. People are still going to root for him, but you also want to be connected to what’s happening and root for the characters to make it through.”
Like Cranston, Legendary Pictures’ Thomas Tull grew up devouring monster movies, but the crown jewel of Toho’s legion always reigned supreme in his mind. “From his signature roar to the outline of those dorsal fins to the radioactive fire that he breathes, Godzilla is an absolute global icon,” he says. “Over the years, Toho has examined the character in different ways and pitted him against a whole menagerie of giant creatures, but my favorite will always be the Japanese original, which was at once a terrifying monster movie and a profound cautionary tale.”
Tull, who produced Edwards’ “Godzilla” along with Jon Jashni, President of Legendary Pictures, veteran producer Mary Parent and British filmmaker Brian Rogers, long harbored a passion to bring the titanic leviathan to the big screen in a summer spectacle with all the heart and human stakes of the original. “Our intention has always been to do justice to those essential elements that have allowed this character to remain relevant for as long as it has,” Tull explains. “Our plan was to produce the Godzilla that we, as fans, would want to see—a movie that didn’t feel like a thrill ride for its own sake, but to take it back to its roots and create a human story within the context of today’s world. I’ve been waiting for this film my whole life.”
Inherent in the challenge of reinventing such an iconic property was putting at its helm a director who could offer a fresh perspective and keen cinematic aesthetic while remaining true to Godzilla’s integrity and legacy. They found all those qualities in Gareth Edwards, an emerging filmmaker who took the independent film world by storm with his award-winning “Monsters.” Edwards not only wrote and directed the film, but designed and shot it as well as single-handedly creating all the visual effects on his laptop.
“From our very first conversation with Gareth, you got that sense that he was a passionate Godzilla fan,” Tull notes. “And after seeing ‘Monsters,’ which he made on an absolute shoestring budget, we came away with the feeling that if he had more resources and a bigger canvas, he could do something extraordinary.”
Jon Jashni adds that the young director struck the perfect balance between invention and human truth. “Just because you can throw a ton of digital resources at the screen doesn’t mean you should, as that doesn’t really aid audience immersion in the world you’re trying to create,” says the producer. “On ‘Monsters,’ Gareth had to suggest a lot more than he could afford to show. He came from a character-based perspective, grounded in the real world, and then layered otherworldly elements into that world. ‘Monsters’ was microcosmic of what we hoped to create with our new Godzilla movie: something real and true.”
Producer Mary Parent was also impressed with Edwards’ indie hit, noting that both his storytelling sensibilities and filmmaking background inspired confidence in everyone that Godzilla would be in good hands. “We knew that Gareth would channel all his vision as an artist and storyteller, along with his command of visual effects technology, into making a film that’s worthy of putting this character on screen in the way that he deserves and hasn’t been seen before,” Parent says. “But we also knew that he could create characters that we can relate to and care about, and take the audience into the experience of ‘Godzilla’ through the eyes of the people living through it.”
Godzilla has always had a mystery and duality about him—a being of pure instinct that moves not in concert with humanity, but towering over it as he rises implacably from the sea. “Monsters have always been metaphors for something else,” Edwards notes. “They represent the darker aspects of our nature and our fears of what we can’t control. In a way, Godzilla almost embodies a kind of ‘wrath of God’—not in a religious sense, but rather nature coming back to punish us for what we have done to the world. In our film, we are definitely tapping into those ideas.”
THE STORY AND CHARACTERS
“Godzilla” unfolds across multiple continents and spans several decades, tracing the impact of a series of mysterious and catastrophic events through the eyes of a handful of people caught at the epicenter. “Our film doesn’t tell this story from an omnipotent perspective,” Tull explains. “In the midst of this crisis are people whose lives are irrevocably changed by it. These aren’t super heroes, but regular human beings caught in extreme circumstances, which made casting such a vital component of our film.”
In this spirit, Edwards wanted to populate the film with actors who could deliver a level of performance that brought truth to the characters’ extraordinary journeys. “In a film like this, you get one buy, which is that there are giant monsters in the world,” he says. “The rest has to be as believable as possible, which is one reason I feel incredibly lucky with this cast. They were able to take what was on the page, bring it to life, and create an emotional reality that helps you believe everything else.”
For the cast, the combination of a cinematic icon and Edwards’ vision for his epic rebirth made “Godzilla” an irresistible prospect. “When Gareth and I first talked about the film, he told me to forget that it was a big monster movie,” recalls Aaron Taylor-Johnson. “I loved what Godzilla meant to him, and that he wanted to bring him to the screen in a big disaster spectacle, but to tell the story with a high level of artistry and emotion. That’s what made me want to do this project, and Gareth made the experience incredibly special.”
The actor takes on the central role of Ford Brody, a Naval officer specializing in disarming bombs, who has just reunited with his wife and young son in San Francisco when he is called away to help his troubled father in Japan.
“Ford is the hero of our film and sees a lot of action,” Edwards comments. “And because so much of the storytelling is visual, it was critical that we understand what he’s thinking and feeling, so we needed an actor capable of communicating a lot in a single look. I’d seen ‘Nowhere Boy,’ in which Aaron played John Lennon, and it was such a soulful performance. There was so much intensity and emotion behind his eyes. I knew from that moment we’d found the guy.”
Ford carries with him the weight of an incident from his childhood that tore his family apart 15 years earlier, when he lived with his parents in Japan. But the events leading up to that fateful day in 1999 originate farther south, in the Philippines, where the film begins.
A remote mine in a Philippine jungle collapses, revealing beneath it the fossilized, highly radioactive remains of something very big and very old. A pair of scientists from a secretive government organization, Dr. Ishiro Serizawa and Dr. Vivienne Graham, arrive on site to examine the bizarre relic.
Watanabe responded to Edwards’ desire to draw upon the thematic threads of the original within the context of the contemporary world. “I feel that Japan and, really, the entire world, are facing similar challenges today as we were at the time the first film was made,” Watanabe reflects. “Godzilla cannot be separated from the nuclear element, and serves as an urgent reminder that we have to look to the future and think about what kind of world we want to have. So, when I read the script, I was impressed that Gareth’s film maintains Godzilla’s connection to the consequences of trying to harness forces we barely understand.”
BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO A 60-YEAR-OLD LEGEND
For the filmmakers overseeing such a complex operation, there was perhaps nothing more challenging or exhilarating than the creation of its main event. “Toho had given us their blessing to re-envision the character, but it was equally important to us as well as Toho that Godzilla look like Godzilla,” Tull says. “We wanted to bring him into contemporary reality while not steering too far from the classic silhouette that so many of us grew up with, and Gareth and the entire team walked that line with passion and inspiration.”
The effort to make Godzilla live onscreen with as much detail and realism as possible engendered a broad coalition of creative minds, incorporating the talents of lead creature and concept designer Matt Allsopp, and Weta Workshop, Ltd.’s creature designers Andrew Baker, Christian Pearce and Greg Broadmore, as well as storyboard illustrators, keyframe animation and texture artists at Moving Picture Company (MPC), and specialists in sound, movement and performance, all unified through Edwards’ vision for the character.
“Everybody chipped in,” the director remembers. “What we were trying to find was what Godzilla would look like if you actually saw him in the real world. One of the conversations we’d have quite often was asking, ‘If this was a person, who would it be?’ And after thinking about it for a while, what we came up with was the idea that he was like the last Samurai—a lone, ancient warrior that would prefer to not be part of the world if he could, but events force him to resurface. We did lots of illustrations and concepts, and it took us over a year to really get it right.”
