Gareth Edwards’ GODZILLA has been dangled and teased before us for a couple of years now. At Comic-Con 2012, Edwards presented a mood piece featuring some CGI-heavy footage, mainly featuring the battered remains of a nameless city with massive holes in buildings, debris everywhere, and a shadow of a seemingly dark creature behind a clouded misty haze. The footage was not screened anywhere else, but had the crowds in that exhibition hall, on that particular hot summer’s day in southern California, literally jumping for joy with the expectation of something magnificent. Then, a year later in the very same hall, to probably, the very same audience at the same event in San Diego, we caught glimpse of a lot more; Edwards a little more comforatble, and now smiling and teasing us again with actually footage from a film that was nearing wrap on a lengthy shooting schedule. It was coming together, and it was starting to look glorious, and Edwards bloody knew it.
Since then we’ve had two trailers, a couple of stills, and a magazine cover or two, but GODZILLA has been the quiet little mouse in the corner in terms of publicity, dwarfed by the in your face promo-tactics of Marvel, Fox, Disney, Sony and many more, with their ‘more is more’ philosophy when it comes to film promotion, compared to Warner’s ‘softly, softly’ approach with their big 2014 monster movie.
This afternoon, The Hollywood News is sitting in a plush Mayfair screening room in the heart of London, a massive screen ahead of us with the now famous GODZILLA logo plastered across the face of it. Gareth Edwards has headed to his homeland to present to his countrymen and members of the press from around Europe, five scenes from his forthcoming movie, plus give us a little more insight as to what we can expect come 16th May. It’s time to unleash the beast.
The project, and Edwards, has gathered itself quite the cast. Since that day in San Diego two years ago, the likes of Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, Aaron Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olson have joined the movie, all recruited from the strength of a script by Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham, plus that fantastic Comic-Con mood reel, which was apparently sent to each potential candidate when offered their respective parts. It’s the 28th of February, and the release of this tentpole movie is just under three months away. As Edwards takes to the stage, a massive grin on his face as he looks back at that massive GODZILLA banner, he clearly still cannot believe that he’s on the home straight directing a massive-budget monster movie for a major Hollywood studio.
“This kind of stuff is not once in a lifetime… it’s once in multiple lifetimes,” he says. Smug bugger, though Edwards is everything but, still in complete astonishment that he was offered such a lucrative film.
It’s true, although the last Hollywood attempt at a GODZILLA movie was only brought back to our screens back in the summer of 1998, albeit very badly, Edwards knows he’s treading on hallowed turf, and a very lucky boy to be in the driving seat of such a big Warner Brothers vehicle.
** MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD **
Edwards is in town to show us some footage, which he wastes no time in setting up. We’re being treated to five separate scenes in all, and we kick off with one that we’ve kind of already witnessed in the last trailer released by the studio this past week. Bryan Cranston’s character, Joe Brody, is in a nuclear reactor and something is clearly very wrong. Alarms are ringing, both in his head, and audibly in the building in which he stands. Something bad is clearly about to happen/ is in the process of happening. Something really bad. The building is to be evacuated, and everyone is actually doing just that… bar Brody, as first, he has to locate his wife, Sandra (played by the amazing Juliette Binoche), who is deep in the doldrums of the reactor trying to investigate said issue. We see Brody running against the waves of people in the building trying to get to the section of the building which houses his wife, and get her, and him the hell out.
I will stop there. You see, we were presented with this scene first, and cold. No build-up, no context, no emotional attachment with the characters; so why is it that I’m on the edge of my seat, gripping my colleague Emma, eyes heavy from the amount of water that is building up in my eyes. You may expect to hear me say that Bryan Cranston is exceptional, and yes, he bloody well is. In this one scene alone, somehow this fantastic character actor has managed to engage us with this movie and his character and really feel for what he’s going through. He’s a marvel to watch, and you feel the pain as he stands alone at the end of a long tunnel, waiting for his wife to reach safety. Does she make it? Well, I’m not willing to reveal here, but I can honestly say that this will, no doubt, be one of the most gripping and emotionally tense moments in the film; and there’s not a 350ft tall radioactive monster in sight.
Next we see the aftermath of that scene and Cranston’s Brody being questioned in an interrogation room, Ken Watanabe’s Daisuke Serizawa is looking on, holding a clipboard, looking very important. Again, during this scene we bear witness to is more Cranston gold, and going against Edwards’ plans for some elaborate camera moves during the scene, the camera simply tracks in to Cranston’s face as he recalls the events leading up to that moment. It’s all it needs. Cranston is superb; he’s Walter White fantastic in this, and we’ve only seen two scenes. In a little tidbit later, Edwards revealed that he didn;t cast Cranston due to the exceptional work he did on the applauded Breaking Bad. Nope. “The real reason I wanted to work with Bryan was Malcolm In The Middle and an episode of Airwolf from 1986,” he says, cueing audience laughter.
Next is the obligatory monster scene we’ve been promised, and we get our first proper glimpse at GODZILLA. We’ve been told not to reveal too much about a certain aspect of this scene, and because of that, it’s difficult to say anything at all. Basically, we’ve seen the pivotal attack on Honolulu as GODZILLA creates a massive tidal wave as he enters land. The scene involves Watanabe, Aaron Taylor Johnson’s Ford, son to Cranston and Binoche’s characters, and it involves a lot of the city, including the airport. It is glorious; a spectacle to watch, intense, air-punchingly fantastic and everything else you expect from an attack on an American city. There’s hints of the classic GODZILLA movies in there, and even a touch of Spielberg too. My guess is that this is going to be the scene where we first see GODZILLA in the finished film, and boy, what a sight it is when he roars…
The last two scenes we saw were a little less intense, but still full of foreboding threat like we witnessed in the previous scenes. Basically we saw some bit and pieces that included crossing a dodgy bridge, and the ‘Halo’ dive, which again was featured in the trailer, which we’re told is near to the end of the movie. Both scenes involve Johnson’s character, who seems to nail it as our hero, Ford.
Lastly, we get the trailer in full 3D, one of the first theatrical airings of the thing since its debut this week. Again, the 3D is top notch, and after previous Warner Bros. Effort GRAVITY, and next week’s 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE, it seems we’ve really turned a corner with the technology. I think that this film will totally embrace 3D, and benefit from the use from it.
GODZILLA, to put it simply, looks and sounds fantastic. There’s a real human-element to the story which Edwards and co. have really honed in on. The man vs. nature element is also there as we witnessed in the last couple of scenes. There are some HUGE surprises in there too, some of which we saw today, and we are now expected big things from this massive summer release. Warner Brothers, and Mr. Edwards, you may have held back up until now, but boy, you haven’t let us down.
As GODZILLA is, this film will be massive.
GODZILLA is released in cinemas around the world in 2D and 3D from May 16th. The line starts here.
Catch up on Luke Baldocks superb GODZILLA Countdown which features a Godzilla movie fom yesteryear all of the way up to release. Check back here for a full review of GODZILLA nearer the time of release.
