GODZILLA RESURGENCE (aka TRUE GODZILLA) trailer

[JasonPratt]

I was already on board with a poster released earlier last year showing the bottom of Godzilla's foot in its gritty glory -- which I can't find at the moment, but there's a thread somewhere below I made with it.

Toho's return to Godzilla isn't guaranteed to be great, and I'm sad about the inhumanly tiny (and probably CGI) arms which will make any fighting difficult or extra-implausible. But the footage so far looks good. At least he looks like Godzilla and not like a mopey cow that sometimes roars like a T-Rex.

Although I watched the Legendary Godzilla again for the first time since theatrical last week, and felt slightly better about it with my expectations adjusted; my problems with its plot and execution still remain. I actually prefer the good-intentioned-but-clumsy Godzilla of the late Showa era (the "first" movie series), and I hope Toho will get there again, but I'm also okay with him being a threat in his first film of a series. How well the movie holds up, who knows yet.

[JasonPratt]

Some minor updates: it's a man-in-suit (with some CGI I guess, especially for the tail?), but the suit is about 10 feet tall (twice as tall as an average man), allowing for more alien body proportions.

There were some rumors Godzilla's form will change over the course of the movie, so those withered arms perhaps will grow out to something better for fighting -- reportedly he starts out a scarred and withered mess before filling out through three modes. However, it's possible this rumor grew from a set report about how it takes three "operators" to make the whole giant suit work.

[JasonPratt]

More early leaked set pix of the suit at Birth.Movies.Death. http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/01/04/new-pics-tohos-new-godzilla-is-one-ugly-piece-of-work

(Note that the awesome thumbnail shot they use for the title of the article comes from a previous film, I think Godzilla: Final Wars. That film had a boatload of problems, but the suit sure wasn't one of them.)

[Staggerwing]

Godzilla looks like a cross between Iron Maiden's 'Eddie' and a giant fried zombie squirrel in that clip.

[JasonPratt]

The freaky looking eyes seem to be based on the eyes of the hand-puppet used in some close up head shots in 54G.

[JasonPratt]

With a little less than a month to go until the Japanese release of the film, I've been both impressed and worried about how... effective?... the "Shin Gojira" is going to be up on the screen.

On one hand, the design choices are both bold and also deeply respectful of the original 54 Godzilla, not only in 54's final look(s) (both in the suit and for the close-up head-puppet), but in subtle little details. Shin Godzilla has no tongue, for example! -- an interesting point of divergence considering that 54 seems to have had one in its design, and yet so much of the new design hearkens back to pre-film designs from 54 where they wanted the monster to look more alien and angular. The creepy thin useless arms held upward as though clutching in agony? Part of the 54 final design, and a detail often forgotten. The gangly thin upper body and neck? Part of the concept art for 54. Why does Godzilla have 4 toes or 3 sometimes? Obviously a budget cut in the design, but he has 5 toes on this suit -- the 5th is just deformed and twisted small. (And has a trilobyte embedded in it! -- one fell out of the 54's foot into a footprint in an early scene.) Neither this design nor 54 had eyelids, those having been burned away, leaving him staring insanely forever from dark sunken pools of charred flesh, but this design is a little more obvious about it.

On the other hand, the design often looks goofy as hell, the fake eyes being a good example: so far in all production shots, when I can see them at all, they never look like anything more or other than styrofoam or ping pong balls with holes cut in them where the pupil is supposed to be! The impotent arms were the least impressive thing about the original 54 suit, and seeing them come back while impressive as a stylistic acknowledgement, just makes him look less powerful. People have wondered about the odd spike on his chest; I think that's only his rib cage with the flesh burned away, most especially from the neck up, which while again a bold design choice makes him look less scary-threatening and more pitiable, like he's going to collapse at any moment from wounds too great to endure.

The 'suffering' Godzilla design from the final Heisei Era (2nd series) film, Godzilla vs. the Destroyer, also kept him looking like in constant pain, but he still looked bullked and dangerous (even if he also looked too heavy to really move). Here he kind of seems to be staggering along with his last steps wherever he goes.

The mutated blob of amalgamated skeletons on the tip of his tail is suggestive and weird, but I'm starting to wonder if that's less suggestive of plot and more of random gooeyness.

This all makes it hard for me to accept that this Godzilla can stand up to any amount of modern firepower at all -- the first shot from anything should shatter him like a full metal jacket 5.52 mm shell through ice.

Still, the design is different and not something we've seen a hundred times before while also being definitely Godzilla -- indeed in many ways much closer to the 'original' Godzilla than anything we've seen since 54. Even 6 months later, for Godzilla's Counterattack, the new suit made the arms better capable of doing things, such as fighting Anguirus. But I get the impression sometimes that the new design is based less on hearking back to the original or true Godzilla (the Shin Godzilla) and more on production snapshots taken at moments where the original suit wasn't working as well as it should!  ::)

A video of two promotional statues released in recent months.

[JasonPratt]

Second major trailer with about a week to go.

Toho has announced a definite distribution deal in Europe and North America; unsure if that means a theatrical run.

[Sir Slash]

Godzilla should run for Prime Minister of Japan. Then after he wins, disband the armed forces. Who'd need them?

[JasonPratt]

Godzilla should run for Prime Minister of Japan. Then after he wins, disband the armed forces. Who'd need them?

In my headcanon version of the sloppy time travel plot for the 2nd series G VS KING GHIDORA, the (American) time travelers are responsible for altering the original Showa continuity into the Heisei continuity because they wanted to attack the megacorporate power of Japan but couldn't thanks to its now-benevolent protector Godzilla. (Which is pretty close to what passes for the actual plot.)

[Sir Slash]

I'll buy a ticket. I want to see Godzilla do some fancy new Bruce Lee moves.  O0

[Staggerwing]

So the new Godzilla movie opens on the same day that the free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends...

Coincidence...? I think not!

[Barthheart]

So the new Godzilla movie opens on the same day that the free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends...

Coincidence...? I think not!

Stagger.... you have to come to Origins one year so we can go drinking and try and figure out where we were separated at birth.  ;D

[Staggerwing]

So the new Godzilla movie opens on the same day that the free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends...

Coincidence...? I think not!

Stagger.... you have to come to Origins one year so we can go drinking and try and figure out where we were separated at birth.  ;D

Did one of your grand-dads serve in any of the Canadian units that liberated the Netherlands at the end of WW2? If so, then I have a related theory...  :))

[Barthheart]

So the new Godzilla movie opens on the same day that the free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends...

Coincidence...? I think not!

Stagger.... you have to come to Origins one year so we can go drinking and try and figure out where we were separated at birth.  ;D

Did one of your grand-dads serve in any of the Canadian units that liberated the Netherlands at the end of WW2? If so, then I have a related theory...  :))

Nope... closest I've got is one uncle who was at Vimy Ridge in the The Big One, and another who was a pathfinder bombidier over Germany in a Lanc.
Damn.

[mirth]

So the new Godzilla movie opens on the same day that the free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends...

Coincidence...? I think not!

Windows 10. The one foe Godzilla cannot possibly defeat.