http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBwsUD7jYCI
Release date: May 16, 2014
Director: Gareth Edwards (Monsters)
This is the first trailer I saw, and it’s still my favorite one. The skydiving scene that opens is amazing. The silence as they drop, and the destruction they see as they break through the clouds. The flashes of anguished faces (Bryan Cranston and Elizabeth Olsen cry faces!) mixed with fire and crumbling buildings.
I ended up tracking this trailer down on YouTube, but I can only imagine the thrill I would have felt at the reveal of Godzilla at the end, screeching through the dust. I knew it was a trailer for Godzilla and I still got chills from that reveal. If I didn’t know it was a Godzilla trailer, I probably would have peed my pants, making me the Miles Davis of everyone around me.
Subsequent trailers haven’t filled me with the same level of excitement. They made it look like Bryan Cranston Yelling: The Movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love Cranston, but those trailers kind of grated on me a bit. I know he’s good, and I know he won’t be screaming for the entire movie, so I realize this is a bit of an overreaction. I’m still excited, just not as much as I was after the first one hit.
As listed above, this film is directed by Gareth Edwards. He has one other major(ish?) movie to his directing credit: 2010’s Monsters. I know it’s not an overly popular movie, but I really loved it. It was a slow movie, and not really what I was expecting, but the performances, direction and look of the movie really carried it for me. I loved it. It’s one of those that I keep meaning to go back and watch again, but just haven’t gotten around to it.
Monsters wasn’t super low-budget, but they certainly weren’t swimming in cash (it had a $4.2 million budget). Because of that, most of the tension revolved around the unseen threats. The monsters themselves aren’t seen until the very end. I loved the look of them, but I also loved the unseen entities rustling in the bushes for the majority of the movie. Obviously, these are different circumstances, and Edwards has been given $160 million to play with. Godzilla will not be an unseen threat. He will be front-and-center, wreaking havoc on everything in its path. This won’t be mumblecore with offscreen monsters: this will be a disaster movie.
Of course, the movie won’t just follow Godzilla. There are people involved. People we need to connect with to enjoy the film. With Monsters, Edwards has shown that he is capable of doing that. That skill will be crucial to this movie, and I have faith in Edwards to pull it off.
It has a great cast, a good director, and an iconic monster. I’m on board.
However, for most of the movie I will likely be thinking, “If they had a couple Jaegers, they could dispatch of this beast in a hurry.”