I just ran down Guillermo Del Toro’s giant revelation of footage from the spectacularly huge Pacific Rim, but that was not the whole of Warner Brother’s big-assed day: a giant lizard crashed the party as well!
There wasn’t an elaborate panel for Gareth Edwards for Godzilla, but since the the appearance of the director and his footage was a total surprise, it still made a big impact. They first showed a teaser of sorts for the film, which focused on images of destruction and wreckage as the famous quote from J. Robert Oppenheimer about the creation of the Atom Bomb played over top…
The footage concluded with a shot of Godzilla in profile. The design is described in different places as “classic,” “terrifying,” and “epic.”
The footage was merely a test reel, but it did include a glimpse at what many are assuming is a second creature of some sort. It also came with our first poster for the film.
Edwards didn’t have a ton to say other than the film is not going to be a bombastic blockbuster.
“I’m just going to take it really seriously. I’d like to see this movie this way all my life, really…. There’s nothing sci-fi about this movie, it’s very grounded, realistic… What would it be like if this all really happened?”
Looks like we’re in story for a more dramatic monster movie, and one that has an eye on the human level experience and horror of such a story. Godzilla is definitely the right property to go back and dig into the gritty monster tone, as the cultural subtext embedded in this particular monster’s early films is a truly justified and frightening one. And while the world has become somewhat numb to the fear of apocalyptic destruction, the fact is we are more capable of systematically destroying ourselves than ever before. The time is still right for Godzilla to teach us to fear the destructive power we’ve created…
Feel free to catch up with more details (the few that there are) at Collider and Wired.