Godzilla Has Been Revealed! (And He Is Marvelous)
This article is more than 2 years old
This. Is. Godzilla! There’s a pretty good chance that Legendary Pictures may bring down the mighty studio ax on us for posting the above picture, seeing as how they’ve already asked other sites to pull it. But like the child who keeps splashing in the bathtub long after the parents have demanded cessation, we’re slamming a big giant lizard foot down in the water. This is too good, my friends. We are finally back to having an American version of the mighty beast that doesn’t look like someone’s memory of a Godzilla toy he or she may or may not have once seen in a store as a child. This looks like the real deal, and speaks to director Gareth Evans’ previous claims that his monster would actually look like Godzilla. He wasn’t kidding! Can anyone tell I’m dancing around while I’m typing this?
The above image was taken from Bleeding Cool, where they agree that this look is in line with the footage seen at Comic-Con this past summer. The poster shown is currently up at the Licensing Expo in Sao Paolo, Brazil, where I’m assuming the public is being asked not to take pictures, seeing as how the Kaijucast Twitter account was the first to release it online, and the first to get the request from Legendary to remove it from their site. More on that in a bit.
Looking at Godzilla’s angry-yet-personable visage, I’m reminded of the old My Fair Lady song “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” only with the proper pronoun. I love the scaled ridges on the neck. I love the gill-looking things. I love the brow that looks like an overbite, which gives him the ability to look angry. I’m not sure how I feel about the seemingly arbitrary layout of the teeth inside of his mouth, but that’s probably because I’m afraid of getting bitten by them.
Okay, so we understand why Legendary might not want the general public to know what their creature looks like just yet, given the film is still a solid nine months away, and we all know how ridiculous this marketing campaign is going to get by the time it comes out. Still, I think they’d rather gain the good graces of fanboys early on instead of allowing people to imagine the potential for a repeat of Roland Emmerich’s 1998 hullabaloo.
In fact, Kaijucast has posted a finely worded letter they’ve sent to Legendary’s legal team, asking that the image be allowed to re-enter the public sphere, where its already been downloaded a zillion times anyway.
As a fan of the kaiju genre, I feel that I can speak for a majority of the fan-base in this statement: Legendary Pictures has stated they they’re going to ‘do this right’, but keeping the titular character’s design a secret reminds fans of Tristar’s missteps in their Godzilla design.
I was at San Diego Comic Con and saw both the teaser and the ‘mood piece’ and I loved what I saw. I am quite certain that by sharing this with the fan-base, Legendary’s Godzilla will meet an overwhelming amount of grassroots support from the very people who already support both the film genre and character.
Trying to shut down the information shared via social media platforms negates the success of these networks. Share the creature design. Post the teaser from Comic Con… the fans are dying for something significant and official
Most studios would be bragging about nailing the look of the character. We’ll see what they have to say about it all. More importantly, what do you guys think?
