Godzilla 2014: Gareth Edwards Shows Clips At SXSW, Audience Goes “Bananas”

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At SXSW in Austin on Tuesday, Godzilla 2014 clips were shown after a special screening of a re-fashioned and un-dubbed version of the original 1954 Godzilla. According to a number of accounts, the audience on hand went “bananas” over what they saw, with Complex using the words “holy crap” to fill the bill.

This blogger was not in attendance, but perhaps the most entertaining and detailed description of what was shown comes from Complex:

Presented without any context of set-up from Edwards, the nighttime sequence opens on a above-ground train cart. On the train are Aaron Taylor-Johnson and a little Japanese boy he’s traveling with. The train comes to a sudden halt, and the panic transfers over to a military ocean liner where actor Ken Watanabe is surrounded by dozens of soldiers holding guns. Watanabe looks out into the ocean and sees the water rising up—rather, being pushed up by something enormous. Things then shift to a beach in Hawaii, where a dog is tied up to a tree and barking ferociously at the water. Violent, humongous waves form and start cascading onto the beach, prompting the pooch to haul ass towards the street, its leash ripping off. The dog runs down a street as the waves come hurdling towards it, eventually running into a crowd of fleeing people who get swept up by the water

Next, a gang of smart folks stand on rooftops and watch Army guys fire red flares into the night’s sky; on their way downward, the flares pass what’s clearly Godzilla’s end zone-sized thigh.

Back on the stopped train, Taylor-Johnson’s character noticed something out into the distance—a giant, insect-looking creature that’s not dissimilar to the Cloverfield antagonist, with numerous long, spindly legs, but with a flattened head. One of its legs strikes the cart, slicing it in half and sending many of its riders tumbling down to their deaths. Johnson’s holding onto a pole, and when the little boy shoots towards him, Johnson snatches him up and saves his life.

Outside the ravaged cart, the Cloverfield-ish monster is withstanding aerial bullet-spray when, with a gargantuan stomp, Godzilla’s ridiculously big leg comes into the camera’s frame. And then the camera pulls backward to show all of Godzilla, and…just, whoa. Burly and standing with its shoulders puffed up like Jersey Shore meathead ready to fight, it’s like the 1954 Godzilla if it’d eaten nothing but ‘roids, spinach, and protein shakes.

Just as diesel ‘zilla let out his ear-piercing new roar, the scene ended. Whether the God and that other monster are about to scrap Rampage style or tag-team the train cart is anyone’s guess.

If that doesn’t get you and me excited, we’re not human.

But we are!

I then took to locating the various interviews with Godzilla Director Gareth Edwards, and put them together here, below. But I think it’s important for you to see my 2010 interview with Godzilla Producer Brian Rogers, and because in it, he really got the ball rolling, and laid out the template for the movie before a director was secured: that it would be shot in 3D, and have more than one monster in it:

Now, here’s Gareth Edwards being interviewed by Bryan Bishop of Verge at SXSW:


And here’s Mr. Edwards talking to a man representing HitFix at SXSW:

One item of information that was featured was that WETA was responsible for the design of Godzilla. There was early speculation that this would be the case, as far back as 2010.

And as I spot more video content, I’ll install it here in updates.

Stay tuned.

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