It’s the 29th
of March today, exactly four months until the premiere of Shin Gojira, the new Japanese
Godzilla film (since the release of Godzilla: Final Wars). Therefore, as a
Kaiju fan, I thought it would be a good idea to gather all the information about this
production in one place and slightly comment on the news as well.
1. Who’s going
to direct?
Godzilla
Resurgence is, in fact, co-directed by Shinji Higuchi (Attack on Titan) and
Hideaki Anno (Evagelion). What is more, the two filmmakers also took care of
other aspects of film production with Higuchi supervising visual effects and
Anno writing the script. To be honest, I haven’t seen (yet) anything from
Attack on Titan franchise, but after watching the trailer for Live-Action movie
and reading some reviews about it, I have mixed feelings about Higuchi. On the
other hand, Anno is the father of Evangelion franchise and an extremely successful
animator, but he rarely did something outside of anime genre (Love & Pop,
Ritual). Thus, I can understand Toho’s decision to turn the making of new
Godzilla into collaborative effort, with a director already familiarised with
visual effects and another one able to provide decent storytelling.
Pictures of
who to blame (Hideaki Anno & Shinji Higuchi ) if the movie turns out to be a flop.
2. What’s the
cast?
So far,
only the three leading actors were named by Toho and they are:
From left
to right: Yutaka Takenouchi, Hiroki Hasegawa and Satomi Ishihara
The names of the
characters the actors are going to portray on screen are, respectively: Hideki Akagi, Ladou Yaguchi, and Kayoko Ann Peterson.
Information
about these characters is very little. Allegedly, the character og Ladou
Yaguchi is going to be the main protagonist, whereas Kayoko Ann Peterson will
be some kind of an American agent (most probably sent by her superiors to
evaluate the King’s rampage in Japan).
3. Who’s the
composer?
The movie
will be scored by Shiro Sagisu, a composer who already worked with Higuchi on
Attack on Titan and Anno on Evangelion, so the choice of him by the directors
is understandable, but having in mind really mixed quality of Godzilla
soundtracks (through Heisei and Millennium series), I’m a bit worried. Did Toho
even try to get in touch with Mischiru Oshima? However, if Alexander Desplat
was able to brilliantly score Godzilla (2014), I just hope that Sagisu will also
deliver some great themes. 4. Teaser Trailer
Teaser
Trailer was released in December 2015, coinciding with the announcement of the
cast and the composer. The video from the youtube channel can be viewed here:
Personally,
I think that Legendary Pictures made more effort with their own Teaser Trailer
back in 2010,
following the announcement of their Godzilla film. What do we get here? People
running and screaming plus the King’s classic roar. I understand that they
didn’t want to show anything important, but it’s already the end of March and
there’s NO proper trailer!
Back in
December 2013, Legendary electrified the fandom with their leaked trailer
(nobody will convince me that this was not unintentional) and this happened six months
before the film’s premiere! Come on Toho!
Get a grip and give us some proper film footage already.
5. Godzilla’s
appearance
With regard
to the King’s appearance, of course, it’s obvious that it’ll be different from
Gareth Edwards’s flick and Godzilla: Final Wars. As visible on the poster, the
design is indeed quite rough, which is an interesting move, but the eyes are
quite disturbing (in a negative way). I don’t want the King to have eye
problems again as in the Showa series!
However,
some rumours surfaced in January 2016 via bloody-disgusting.com that the King will have three
separate looks in the film, with the final one being the most similar to the
classic appearance.
The supposedly
“leaked photos” below (as presented by Gomaru Island and August Ragone).
Yet, as
August Ragone claims, the rumour about the three appearances cannot be taken
seriously, since it may simply be a misinterpretation of his own story that the
King’s suit is "operated by three people").
Yet, what is definitely officially known is the King new height: 108metres/ 355 feet tall.
Oh please, height is not the most powerful feature of Godzilla. Stop making him
taller and taller, because soon his head will protrude from Earth’s atmosphere.
6. The Official Site
Nevertheless, it is extremely poor in content (poster,
trailer, cast info and news rss) when compared to still active Legendary’s official site of Godzilla
2014: http://www.legendary.com/film/godzilla/
7. Thoughts
On the whole, even though there are only four months left, I'm impatently looking forward to this movie. It seems that Toho is not confident enough about their picture in view of such a moderate marketing, but hopefully this will improve from May. Most probably the movie won't get a cinematic release in Poland, so I'll have to wait a few more months for Blu-Ray/DVD release... Anyways, it's Toho's new Godzilla, so not watching it would be a sin.
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