Luke Owen gives his thoughts on the first trailer for Gareth Edward’s Godzilla….
Having grown up a fan of kaiju cinema, the wait for the Godzilla trailer has been almost excruciating. While other movies coming out in 2014 were flaunting their bright and bombastic trailers and announcements of sequels, the Godzilla camp over at Legendary Pictures has been rather quiet. So, with 156 days left to go until the film’s release (not that anyone is counting), we finally got our first look at Gareth Edward’s Godzilla.
In a word, wow.
2013 has been a big year for the word “kaiju” with production kicking off on Godzilla and the subsequent viral marketing as well as Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim pleasing (some) audiences around the world. But this trailer has shown that 2014 might be even bigger. Pacific Rim was not the runaway hit Warner Bros. might have hoped for, but it pleased a lot of movie fans and is a lot better than a some people give it credit for – even if that credit was just, “it was dumb fun”. However, that “fun” that Del Toro and Travis Beacham were aiming for with Pacific Rim is not evident here. This trailer for Godzilla has a much more serious tone to it – a very dark tone, a sinister tone, a tone that will that haunt you – just as the original 1954 movie did.
A lot of people seem to forget that Gojira was an extremely dark movie. When most people think of Godzilla, they think of the smiley monster who dances on Planet X or does a flying dropkick while the cast of MST3K laugh on. And while it’s true that the character became a pop culture icon who glad hands his friends on Monster Island, his first incarnation was a force of nature that destroyed Tokyo. His violent attack lasts for a huge chunk of the movie and the scenes in the hospital (not to mention the family cowering from his atomic breath) are truly disturbing. That vibe carries over into this trailer.
In a recent interview, Gareth Edwards said that a real-life Godzilla attack would be a 9/11 level disaster. While a pretty bleak statement, it’s one that is correct. Should a giant monster attack a city, it would leave a devastating trail which would then lead to the military taking on huge measures like nuclear attacks or aerial assaults (although not sure what they were trying to accomplish there). Edwards conveys that in this trailer with his shots of destroyed buildings, subway trains being crushed and a train-wreck surrounded by dead bodies which really makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Let’s put it this way folks, this is not the Godzilla who used his atomic breath to fly in Godzilla vs. Hedorah.
One of the most impressive things about the trailer however is Edward’s ability to show us just how big Godzilla really is. From the opening dive out of the plane with the briefest view of the creature to that superbly crafted pan upwards to half-reveal him through the smoke, you get the impression that this is a Godzilla the likes of which we haven’t seen before. Credit to Edwards, this was something that all of the Japanese movies failed to do (the 1954 original notwithstanding) and this sense of scope just makes the trailer feel all the more epic.
Lastly, this is the first trailer released in some time that really defines the word “teaser”. In most cases, a “teaser trailer” will be 3 minutes long and will show you a large portion of the movie, giving you details about plot and character etc. This trailer for Godzilla reveals nothing while at the same time giving us something. We don’t know who or what these characters are, what they are doing, who they are working for, what they working towards or what their eventual goal will be. Instead it teases us with shots of the main cast to create interest to those who haven’t paid attention to the cast list as well as giving us a small taste of the level of destruction we can expect. In essence, this is the perfect teaser trailer. Future trailers might show a little bit more, but perhaps this is where Edwards and co. should take a leaf from the Roland Emmerich playbook and not give us anymore than they have so we’re left with plenty of surprises for the actual movie. So long as that’s the only move they take from his playbook.
So there we have it – and it’s been worth the wait. Godzilla is coming and he’s coming back in a big and epic way.
What did you think of the trailer for Godzilla?
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published December 10, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.
