Godzilla

 

Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Bryan Cranston
Director: Gareth Edwards
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Synopsis: An epic rebirth to Toho's iconic Godzilla, this spectacular adventure, from Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures, pits the world's most famous monster against malevolent creatures who, bolstered by humanity's scientific arrogance, threaten our very existence.

Godzilla
Release Date: May 15th, 2014

 

 

About The Production

The Legacy Of Godzilla

'The arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control,
and not the other way around." - Dr. Serizawa

In 1954, Japan's Toho Co., Ltd., released Ishiro Honda's groundbreaking monster movie 'Godzilla" in a country still reeling from the devastation of World War II. The film became a massive hit in Japan, and, 60 years later, continues to resonate around the world for distilling the fears and horrors of the atomic age into an awe-inspiring force of nature...Godzilla.

'-Godzilla' is the benchmark of monster movies," says Gareth Edwards, the British director at the helm of the epic new vision for Toho's iconic creation. Edwards grew up on Japanese monster movies before discovering Honda's 1954 masterpiece on DVD and was fascinated by its stark allegorical subtext and continuing relevance in contemporary times. 'If you went around the world with the silhouette of a giant dinosaur looming over a city, everyone would know exactly who it is"whether they've seen a Godzilla movie or not. But what many people don't realise is that the original Japanese -Godzilla' is actually a very serious film. I think that's the reason it was so embraced by Japanese culture"because not only is it a great monster movie, it was also very cathartic for people to see those images brought to life on screen in such a visceral and real way."

Partially reshot, softening some of its metaphorical bite, and dubbed into multiple languages, the film was released abroad two years later and a legend was born. For the past six decades, the towering 'King of the Monsters" has cut a swath through pop culture, spawning numerous sequels, an army of toys, and incarnations in everything from comic books to video games. A whole new genre of movies emerged"kaiju eiga"and Godzilla became one of the most beloved and recognisable movie heroes of the 20th and, now, 21st centuries.

Bryan Cranston, one of the stars of the new film, has vivid memories of being enthralled as he watched the monster rampage across his childhood TV screen. 'Godzilla with his fiery breath...he just destroyed everything in his wake," Bryan Cranston remembers. 'It was actually a man in a suit stomping through a miniature Tokyo, but it was marvellous to a young kid. There's a part of me that will always be that boy, but the whole sensibility of how to make a movie like this has matured; the audience has evolved. It's not just about Godzilla smashing things up. People are still going to root for him, but you also want to be connected to what's happening and root for the characters to make it through."

Like Byran Cranston, Legendary Pictures' Thomas Tull grew up devouring monster movies, but the crown jewel of Toho's legion always reigned supreme in his mind. 'From his signature roar to the outline of those dorsal fins to the radioactive fire that he breathes, Godzilla is an absolute global icon," he says. 'Over the years, Toho has examined the character in different ways and pitted him against a whole menagerie of giant creatures, but my favorite will always be the Japanese original, which was at once a terrifying monster movie and a profound cautionary tale."

Thomas Tull, who produced Gareth Edwards' 'Godzilla" along with Jon Jashni, President of Legendary Pictures, veteran producer Mary Parent and British filmmaker Brian Rogers, long harbored a passion to bring the titanic leviathan to the big screen in a summer spectacle with all the heart and human stakes of the original. 'Our intention has always been to do justice to those essential elements that have allowed this character to remain relevant for as long as it has," Thomas Tull explains. 'Our plan was to produce the Godzilla that we, as fans, would want to see"a movie that didn't feel like a thrill ride for its own sake, but to take it back to its roots and create a human story within the context of today's world. I've been waiting for this film my whole life."

Inherent in the challenge of reinventing such an iconic property was putting at its helm a director who could offer a fresh perspective and keen cinematic aesthetic while remaining true to Godzilla's integrity and legacy. They found all those qualities in Gareth Edwards, an emerging filmmaker who took the independent film world by storm with his award-winning 'Monsters." Gareth Edwards not only wrote and directed the film, but designed and shot it as well as singlehandedly creating all the visual effects on his laptop. 'From our very first conversation with Gareth Edwards, you got that sense that he was a passionate Godzilla fan," Thomas Tull notes. 'And after seeing -Monsters,' which he made on an absolute shoestring budget, we came away with the feeling that if he had more resources and a bigger canvas, he could do something extraordinary."

Jon Jashni adds that the young director struck the perfect balance between invention and human truth. 'Just because you can throw a ton of digital resources at the screen doesn't mean you should, as that doesn't really aid audience immersion in the world you're trying to create," says the producer. 'On -Monsters,' Gareth Edwards had to suggest a lot more than he could afford to show. He came from a character-based perspective, grounded in the real world, and then layered otherworldly elements into that world. -Monsters' was microcosmic of what we hoped to create with our new Godzilla movie: something real and true."

Producer Mary Parent was also impressed with Gareth Edwards' indie hit, noting that both his storytelling sensibilities and filmmaking background inspired confidence in everyone that Godzilla would be in good hands. 'We knew that Gareth Edwards would channel all his vision as an artist and storyteller, along with his command of visual effects technology, into making a film that's worthy of putting this character on screen in the way that he deserves and hasn't been seen before," Mary Parent says. 'But we also knew that he could create characters that we can relate to and care about, and take the audience into the experience of -Godzilla' through the eyes of the people living through it."

Knowing he was being handed the reins to a legend, Gareth Edwards turned for inspiration"as Ishiro Honda had before him"to the world he saw around him. 'I know it sounds impossible, but imagine for a moment the arrival of a great creature that mankind can't even communicate with, much less control...what would that be like to live through?" he posits. 'How would the world react? We've all seen or experienced incomprehensible disasters, natural or otherwise, that would seem like a scenario from a movie if they didn't actually happen. So the challenge of making the ultimate Godzilla movie was to reflect that reality, which gets back to the heart of what Godzilla is really about."

Thomas Tull says, 'One thing we wanted to do with the film, which was a goal shared by our partners at Toho, was to set part of the story in Japan and maintain Godzilla's connection to nuclear energy, but to also do so with respect and sensitivity in light of current events."

Producer Brian Rogers adds, 'The parallels that existed in the 1954 film, dealing with the balance between man and nature, and all the potential ways it could be pushed over the edge, is still as relevant today as it was back then"maybe even more so in this day and age."

Working out of London, Gareth Edwards embarked on marathon Skype sessions with the film's Los Angeles-based screenwriter, Max Borenstein, to shape a story that would both hint at Godzilla's origins and unravel the mysterious events that herald his emergence in the context of the today's world.

Though cast-member Ken Watanabe grew up in Japan, he did not see the 1954 film until recently, and appreciated Edwards' meticulous care to honor it. 'The original -Godzilla' weighs the provocative question that Japanese society was grappling with at the time"nine years after the bombs"when the emotional and physical scars were still very present," the actor reflects. 'Gareth Edwards has a deep understanding of that film, and I responded to his courage in reviving those ideas again."

Max Borenstein wrote the screenplay, from a story by David Callaham, after immersing himself in research, which included taking in all 28 'Godzilla" movies produced by Toho Co., Ltd., encompassing the Showa, Heisei and Millennium series. 'Our ambition was to treat this story as if this was a terrifying, real incident happening today, with all the gravity of a real disaster, while still making a big, spectacular monster movie that's fun to watch," Max Borenstein details. 'The original film is an amazing tale of humanity's insignificance in the face of nature, but with the human strength and resilience to rise and survive a disaster of that magnitude."

Before a single frame of 'Godzilla" had been shot, the director and producers created a 90-second teaser to express the mood they wanted to bring to the film, which they debuted at the annual Comic-Con International before nearly 7,000 screaming fans. The grainy footage revealed a city reduced to rubble, with the great creature materializing through the smoke and dust, and issuing his deafening roar. Over the imagery, Edwards played the haunting words of Robert Oppenheimer, 'father" of the atomic bombs that reduced the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki to radioactive ash, quoting the Hindu scriptures to describe the incomprehensible Pandora's Box they'd opened: 'Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Godzilla has always had a mystery and duality about him"a being of pure instinct that moves not in concert with humanity, but towering over it as he rises implacably from the sea. 'Monsters have always been metaphors for something else," Gareth Edwards notes. 'They represent the darker aspects of our nature and our fears of what we can't control. In a way, Godzilla almost embodies a kind of -wrath of God'"not in a religious sense, but rather nature coming back to punish us for what we have done to the world. In our film, we are definitely tapping into those ideas."
The Story And Characters

'Godzilla" unfolds across multiple continents and spans several decades, tracing the impact of a series of mysterious and catastrophic events through the eyes of a handful of people caught at the epicenter. 'Our film doesn't tell this story from an omnipotent perspective," Thomas Tull explains. 'In the midst of this crisis are people whose lives are irrevocably changed by it. These aren't super heroes, but regular human beings caught in extreme circumstances, which made casting such a vital component of our film."

In this spirit, Gareth Edwards wanted to populate the film with actors who could deliver a level of performance that brought truth to the characters' extraordinary journeys. 'In a film like this, you get one buy, which is that there are giant monsters in the world," he says. 'The rest has to be as believable as possible, which is one reason I feel incredibly lucky with this cast. They were able to take what was on the page, bring it to life, and create an emotional reality that helps you believe everything else."

For the cast, the combination of a cinematic icon and Gareth Edwards' vision for his epic rebirth made 'Godzilla" an irresistible prospect. 'When Gareth Edwards and I first talked about the film, he told me to forget that it was a big monster movie," recalls Aaron Taylor-Johnson. 'I loved what Godzilla meant to him, and that he wanted to bring him to the screen in a big disaster spectacle, but to tell the story with a high level of artistry and emotion. That's what made me want to do this project, and Gareth Edwards made the experience incredibly special."

The actor takes on the central role of Ford Brody, a Naval officer specialising in disarming bombs, who has just reunited with his wife and young son in San Francisco when he is called away to help his troubled father in Japan.

'Ford is the hero of our film and sees a lot of action," Gareth Edwards comments. 'And because so much of the storytelling is visual, it was critical that we understand what he's thinking and feeling, so we needed an actor capable of communicating a lot in a single look. I'd seen -Nowhere Boy,' in which Aaron Taylor-Johnson played John Lennon, and it was such a soulful performance. There was so much intensity and emotion behind his eyes. I knew from that moment we'd found the guy."

Ford's expertise at disarming bombs draws him to the frontlines of humanity's united defense against the greatest threat it has ever faced, but he's torn between duty and the need to find and protect his young family. 'He's the kind of specialist the military needs and it's all hands on deck," Aaron Taylor-Johnson explains. 'At the same time, his mission is to get back to his family, and his work in the military becomes the only way he can maneuver himself closer to San Francisco. But it's heartbreaking because he knows he might not make it home at all."

Trapped in the city when Godzilla zeroes in on San Francisco is Ford's wife, Elle Brody, played by Elizabeth Olsen. A nurse at a busy hospital, Elle is forced to make tough choices to both cope with the human toll of the disaster and to protect their four-year-old son, Sam, played by newcomer Carson Bolde. 'Elle's story is heroic in that she has a job to do, but she is also desperate to protect her own child," Elizabeth Olsen details, adding, 'Their story and Ford's journey to try to get back to them is part of what I love about this film"how the value of family is at its core, and how moments of crisis bring out the courage and heroism that lies within everyone."

For Gareth Edwards, her feel for the emotional material made her riveting to watch in the role. "Elizabeth Olsen has this documentary style to her performance"It just doesn't feel like acting at all. With her, it was like doing some serious drama that just happened to have giant monsters in it."

Elizabeth Olsen got her first taste of the level of realism Gareth Edwards wanted to bring to the film when she first saw the evocative teaser piece he'd made. 'Gareth Edwards's approach to it is what hooked me, and how it reflected some of the imagery of disasters we've seen around the world," she notes. 'What Elle deals with in this film taps into what it's like for the people caught in these kinds of events, and the lengths you'd go to in order to save the ones you love."

This same impulse drives Ford throughout his journey, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson admits that even amid the film's tremendous action, the physical demands of the role were trumped by the emotional challenges his character faces. 'Ford is really put through the ringer over the course of the film, both internally and externally," he says. 'When we meet him, he's a husband, father and son, and is trying to do all those things correctly under the weight of some serious emotional baggage. He has unresolved issues with his father, and his efforts to try to mend their relationship places him far from home when his family most needs him."

Ford carries with him the weight of an incident from his childhood that tore his family apart 15 years earlier, when he lived with his parents in Japan. But the events leading up to that fateful day in 1999 originate farther south, in the Philippines, where the film begins.

A remote mine in a Philippine jungle collapses, revealing beneath it the fossilized, highly radioactive remains of something very big and very old. A pair of scientists from a secretive government organization, Dr. Ishiro Serizawa and Dr. Vivienne Graham, arrive on site to examine the bizarre relic.

Ken Watanabe plays Serizawa, a Japanese scientist who has devoted his life to the search for Godzilla and hopes to find in the cave evidence of the mythical creature's existence. 'His quest goes deeper than scientific curiosity," Ken Watanabe describes. 'He is concerned about the kinds of terror that could exist in the world, and has his own theories about what he calls the -Alpha Predator' and the role it plays on the planet."

In the film, Godzilla's origins are linked to an alternate take on recent history, a dark legacy that haunts Serizawa, who is both named for and inspired by a key character in the original Japanese film. 'Dr. Serizawa is the scientist with the deepest insight into the creature, and Ken brought so much complexity and depth of feeling to this character," Edwards says. 'We used to joke when we were filming that no one's got more different looks than Ken. He is such a fascinating actor to watch because you can see all of his internal thoughts on his face. When we were shooting, he would always do another look or take a breath or go to leave the room and you're saying, 'Oh no, don't stop, don't stop.' The takes would just go on and on because you'd never want to yell 'cut.'"

Ken Watanabe responded to Gareth Edwards' desire to draw upon the thematic threads of the original within the context of the contemporary world. 'I feel that Japan and, really, the entire world, are facing similar challenges today as we were at the time the first film was made," Ken Watanabe reflects. 'Godzilla cannot be separated from the nuclear element, and serves as an urgent reminder that we have to look to the future and think about what kind of world we want to have. So, when I read the script, I was impressed that Gareth Edwards's film maintains Godzilla's connection to the consequences of trying to harness forces we barely understand."

Sally Hawkins, who plays Serizawa's colleague, Dr. Graham, adds that Gareth Edwards' passion for the project illuminated every creative decision on set. 'He had so much else to contend with, but really showed care towards the actors and the story, always emphasising the need to keep the heart and truth in it."
With all her scenes done in partnership with Ken Watanabe, the two formed an immediate connection. 'Graham and Serizawa are on this journey together because it is both their life's work," Sally Hawkins shares. 'When we meet them, you see that they're almost telepathic in how they communicate. And I think Ken Watanabe's brilliant. He's got such a presence, and working with him to convey their relationship was a real pleasure." As Graham and Serizawa move deeper through the mountain, they discover that the entire cave system once encased the carcass of a giant creature, but that it also held something else. And at its end, they are shocked to discover that the mountain has been blown out from within, giving way to a pulverized trench etched through the forest, leading straight to the ocean.

North through the East China Sea, a series of tremors rock the Janjira Nuclear Power Plant near the Tokyo district where Ford, played as a youth by CJ Adams, lives with his parents Sandra and Joe Brody, played by Juliette Binoche and Bryan Cranston. In 1999, both are scientists at the power plant, and the morning after tremors hit, his father is the first to raise alarm bells. Byran Cranston details, 'Joe is a nuclear engineer and very good at his job. He has detected anomalous sound patterns in these tremors that others are trying to write off as mere earthquakes, but his data doesn't support that. He knows there's something more here and wants the nuclear plant shut down, but nobody listens. And when they finally do, it's too late. He's a whistleblower in all the good ways that one can be, and that troublemaker streak follows him into the present."

Though Byran Cranston is best known for bringing to life the thrilling, tragic arc of Walter White on TV's 'Breaking Bad," Gareth Edwards remembered him as the father in the series 'Malcolm in the Middle" and envisioned him as Joe from the start. 'I was an avid fan of that show. I think it's often harder to be a good comedic actor than it is to be a good dramatic actor, and Bryan Cranston can nail the joke every time, but he's also able to convey so much emotion in everything he does. So the whole time we were writing this part, Bryan Cranston was always Joe in my mind, and, fortunately, he said -yes.'"

For his part, Bryan Cranston, in spite of his stated affection for Godzilla movies, never imagined that he'd be in one. 'But, as Gareth Edwards said to me, this film is different," the actor relates. 'It's steeped in character, which makes the fantastic elements of the story more fulfilling because, as you follow these people through this adventure, you see good and bad decisions being made and relationships being pulled apart and brought together. All the elements of any good drama are here, wrapped up in big, epic monster movie." Juliette Binoche agrees, noting, 'Monsters have an enormous power for catharsis. These stories help us to understand something about ourselves and to see our emotions on a big scale, and Gareth Edwards as a storyteller understands that instinctually. He's a great talent, and I was thrilled to work with him on this film."

Juliette Binoche's character Sandra Brody is, like her husband Joe, also a dedicated scientist, but on the morning of the accident, Sandra's instincts as a mother override all other considerations. 'When the situation at the plant escalates into a crisis, she has to make a choice," Juliette Binoche relates. 'These situations can often be moments of total truth, and in that moment, her actions are driven by her love for her son and her husband."

Fifteen years later, when Ford travels to Japan for his uneasy reunion with his father, he finds Joe still consumed with the accident that destroyed the plant and shattered his family. Byran Cranston comments, 'Joe has spent his life trying to unravel the mystery of what happened that day, but the greatest casualty of his obsession is his relationship with his son."

Even as his son arrives to take him home, Joe is on the cusp of proving that the powerful forces that destroyed the Janjira Power Plant in 1999 are happening again, and that reports of leaking radiation are lies the government has concocted to hide the truth. With one last plea, he persuades Ford to venture back to their ruined home to retrieve evidence that the disaster was anything but natural. But after being ambushed by security forces, what they discover inside the quarantine zone is much worse.

Within the hollowed-out relic of Janjira itself, they are confronted with the enormity of the government's secret: something has been feeding on the plant's nuclear reactors, and after 15 years, it's finally awake. Mary Parent remarks, 'In our film, we introduce a destructive force that is, in some ways, a consequence of humanity's hubris in the face of nature. And how that conflicts with Godzilla's agenda is what draws us into a massive conflict that plays out against our planet."

In the terrifying events that follow, Ford and Joe are swept away with Dr. Serizawa and Dr. Graham to the Navy vessel that will serve as a command center for the rapidly escalating crisis. Heading the multi-force tactical operation formed to defend the planet in the face of a terrifying new paradigm is Admiral Stenz, who tracks Godzilla across the Pacific toward the continental U.S.

Acclaimed actor David Strathairn, who plays Admiral William Stenz, offers, 'No one on Earth has encountered anything of this magnitude before, so Stenz is a little out of his depth in postulating ways to deal with it. You can't take down monsters with normal munitions, so what do you resort to? A nuclear device? That's the military's last resort, but it ups the ante dramatically, and as the officer in charge of the joint task force, Stenz is strategically at odds with Serizawa."

David Strathairn relished exploring this philosophical conflict with Ken Watanabe. 'Serizawa is a very passionate and deeply committed scientist; he also carries deep sadness and fear about our arrogance as a species in the face of nature," Strathairn observes. 'Stenz has some very crucial decisions to make, which conflict with Serizawa's ideas of how to resolve the situation, and Ken Watanabe brought such grace to these very intense moments between them. Serizawa is the heart of this story's compassion."

Like his fellow cast members, Strathairn was impressed with Gareth Edwards' acuity for capturing the human dimensions of the Godzilla story. 'I feel that this film is basically about how we, as a fragile, too often environmentally irresponsible creature, respond to the symbol of Godzilla, a metaphorical construct for so many things that we are still working on as a species. Gareth Edwards had a monstrous task with this film, so to speak, and I'm really impressed by the way he's held this franchise, this dinosaur, in his hands while still respecting and honoring the human aspect."

After witnessing Godzilla's earth-shattering entrance at the Honolulu Airport, Ford joins up with a military unit headed for the mainland, following a colossal wake of destruction through towns and cities that have been leveled by forces of unimaginable power and menace. Seizing his only chance to secure his family, Ford volunteers himself for what may end up being a suicide mission to plunge into the heart of a besieged San Francisco in a desperate bid to save the city from imminent nuclear annihilation.

With its skyscrapers shattered like broken toys, and its underground shelters overflowing with terrified refugees, the fragile human city has become a monster-sized arena where the Alpha Predator closes in on his malevolent prey, unleashing the full weight of his fury in an epic battle for dominance, with the future of humanity hanging in the balance. 'We made a choice about how to reveal Godzilla to the world in this film," says Gareth Edwards. 'It was a difficult choice, but it has to do with the question of whether Godzilla is good or bad. I think he represents something entirely different. It's like asking if a hurricane is good or bad. Godzilla is a force of nature, but its more violent, unpredictable side. What he's up against in our film very much represents our abuse of nature, so when Godzilla rises, it's to set things right."

Breathing New Life Into A 60-Year-Old Legend

For the filmmakers overseeing such a complex operation, there was perhaps nothing more challenging or exhilarating than the creation of its main event. 'Toho had given us their blessing to re-envision the character, but it was equally important to us as well as Toho that Godzilla look like Godzilla," Thomas Tull says. 'We wanted to bring him into contemporary reality while not steering too far from the classic silhouette that so many of us grew up with, and Gareth and the entire team walked that line with passion and inspiration."

The effort to make Godzilla live onscreen with as much detail and realism as possible engendered a broad coalition of creative minds, incorporating the talents of lead creature and concept designer Matt Allsopp, and Weta Workshop, Ltd.'s creature designers Andrew Baker, Christian Pearce and Greg Broadmore, as well as storyboard illustrators, keyframe animation and texture artists at Moving Picture Company (MPC), and specialists in sound, movement and performance, all unified through Edwards' vision for the character.

'Everybody chipped in," the director remembers. 'What we were trying to find was what Godzilla would look like if you actually saw him in the real world. One of the conversations we'd have quite often was asking, -If this was a person, who would it be?' And after thinking about it for a while, what we came up with was the idea that he was like the last Samurai"a lone, ancient warrior that would prefer to not be part of the world if he could, but events force him to resurface. We did lots of illustrations and concepts, and it took us over a year to really get it right."

Standing 355-feet-tall"the largest of any big screen incarnation"Godzilla was conceived from the start as an entirely digital creation that would maintain the character's classic form and identity. A bipedal, amphibious, radioactive leviathan with armored dorsal fins spiking menacingly all the way down to his long, sweeping tail, Godzilla belongs to the imagined species Godzillasaurus, which paleontologists have jokingly linked with the Tyrannosaurus Rex or Ceratosaurus families, only much larger.

The filmmakers' efforts to capture the essence of Godzilla ultimately took them back to 1954"to the iconic latex suit designed by Toho's Teizo Toshimitsu, which he built with Eizo Kaimai, Kanju Yagi and Yasue Yagi. Worn to great effect by actor Haruo Nakajima, the inspired costume was transformed through Ishiro Honda's lens into a nuclear disaster made flesh, breathing a visible atomic blast upon a decimated Tokyo.

Though these early effects were groundbreaking for their time, the filmmakers knew that 60 years later they had the tools to make Godzilla truly live.

'It was incredibly exciting to take inspiration from those early movies, but Gareth Edwards's edict from the beginning was that everything we were creating had to look absolutely real," confirms visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel. 'You want to believe that there's this 355-foot beast crashing through the streets of San Francisco."

Early in production, Jim Rygiel screened for the filmmakers the first complete tests of the creature in motion. 'You heard this gasp go through the room," Thomas Tull recalls. 'Gareth Edwards and the visual effects team did an amazing job giving the character a level of detail and natural movement that wasn't possible even five years ago. It felt almost like you were seeing Godzilla in the flesh for the first time."

But beneath the skin, what has always set Godzilla apart is his unique persona and presence. 'He has an amazing effect on people in that you're both terrified and drawn to him, which is part of the reason the character has endured for so long," says Mary Parent. 'Godzilla is clearly a badass, but there's also an innocence and an integrity to him. On a primal level, you never quite know what he's going to do. At the same time, he's also got very heroic elements, and that dichotomy is what makes him so interesting and compelling."

Like his human co-stars, Godzilla's soul is etched in his face. While the new incarnation hews closely to the dimensions of his short, steep skull, broad snout and carnivore's mouth, to imbue it with a full range of expression in battle, the filmmakers studied the faces of dogs and bears, while also incorporating the nobility of an eagle.

To direct the character on the subtleties of performance, Gareth Edwards had a powerful assist from Jim Rygiel's 'The Lord of the Rings" collaborator, performance capture pioneer Andy Serkis, who has brought his unique art form to digital characters like Gollum, Caesar and King Kong, and helped shape the title character's emotional arc.

'At the start of the process, I felt that in some way we could decide and control who Godzilla was," Gareth Edwards reflects, 'but, as we went along, we started to realise that Godzilla was going to tell us who he was, just like actors who have their own take on their characters. We couldn't totally dictate what it was going to be; it was more about just trying different ideas and permutations. And, slowly, he revealed himself to us." The final element in the alchemy of Godzilla is not his look but his sound. Akira Ifukube, who composed the haunting score that accompanied Godzilla's 1954 introduction to movie screens, had an idea to create the famous roar by taking a resin-covered leather glove and dragging it along the loosened strings of a double bass instrument, with the final effect being achieved by sound and musical effects designer Ichiro Minawa, using playback speed to personalise each utterance.

'Godzilla's roar is not something you can fake or shortchange," says Thomas Tull. 'There is only one sound, and it is nearly impossible to recreate, no matter what you try."

Long before production had even commenced, the filmmakers enlisted Oscar®-winning sound designers Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn ('Transformers") to experiment with different techniques with the ultimate goal of recreating Godzilla's chilling, heartrending roar, as well as a whole universe of sounds that would give the action a visceral, theatre-shaking feel. "If you imagined that Godzilla was real, then what we hear in the 1954 film is just what it sounds like on 1950s tapedecks," Gareth Edwards describes. 'We wanted to capture that live sound in its full power with all the fidelity we're capable of today."

The sound designers employed a variety of different techniques, even trying out a pine tar-coated leather glove on a double bass, to achieve the seemingly impossible. 'That roar is probably the most famous sound effect in film history and we wanted to pay homage to it while creating something new," Erik Aadahl says. 'We wound up recording hundreds of different sounds that had the same qualities and timbres as the original and finally stumbled upon the combination that gave us all goose bumps. Ultimately, we wanted for it to convey all of the power and ferocity of Godzilla as a force nature, for people to close their eyes, hear it and instantly know, 'That's Godzilla!'"

Breaking the original sound into three parts"a metallic shriek, followed by an earth-shattering wail and a bellowing finish"the sound designers conducted extensive experiments with a wide variety of sounds until they achieved a combination with all the texture and earth-shattering drama of Godzilla's original roar. Thomas Tull offers, 'What they produced will send chills up your spine. It was the huge, awe-inspiring roar that Godzilla has always deserved."

The film's plethora of otherworldly sound effects were recorded at a high resolution 192-kilohertz 192 kHz sample rate"beyond the range of human hearing"which they then slowed down to a range that's audible to the human ear. The "Godzilla" soundscape also encompassed realistic environments in which the story unfolds, and Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn traveled on location to record within tunnels and on aircraft carriers. "Gareth Edwards is a visionary and a perfectionist, and always pushed us to experiment and go farther," Ethan Van der Ryn remarks. "Working on -Godzilla' was a truly special adventure that we all took together, and one of the best experiences of our career."

One of their goals was to bring Godzilla's roar into the real world, so the sound designers set up a 12-foot-high, boulevard-wide sound system on a street on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. Blasting the roar through 100,000-watt speakers lined in an array, they recorded the reverberations from a number of angles, such as inside cars, behind store windows, in alleyways. It not only rattled pipes and rooftops but could be heard up to three miles away.

In the animal kingdom, a roar can express a spectrum of emotions, but is perhaps most effectively used as an assertion of dominance when the Alpha Predator is threatened, 'which definitely happens in our film," Gareth Edwards hints. 'In our story, Godzilla isn't the one trying to destroy the world. He is completely unaware of our presence; we're just like ants to him. But we do share a home, and our actions play a role in manifesting this enormous threat to the planet and to Godzilla himself. We wanted to build the ultimate nemesis for Godzilla, and hopefully, in the process, we've created something brand new for the audience."

Capturing A Changed World

With a background in DIY filmmaking, Gareth Edwards plunged into the mammoth production with the same level of inspiration and resourcefulness he brought to his indie film 'Monsters." Gathering together artists whose work he's long admired, the director found a team of inspired collaborators that both shared and enhanced his vision. 'When you get to make a movie like this, you can write a wish list of the best people in the world whom you'd like to work with, and I've been really lucky in that I got everybody at the top of my list," he says. 'All our department heads have changed cinema in their own way, and were all committed to making a profound, emotional, epic cinematic experience in the tradition of the films we grew up with. Those films are the reasons that we got into filmmaking in the first place. Everyone has been brilliant and incredibly supportive. This is my first big movie, and I kept asking, -Is this normal?' It's just been fantastic."

Elizabeth Olsen notes that in spite of overseeing a huge cast, seven filming units and a 500-strong crew, Edwards never lost his cool. 'He was able to talk to the actors about story, and then, because of his background, really command the technical aspects of the production with his crew. I think it's a unique characteristic in a director who, on his first big film, was able to balance all of that and not get overwhelmed. His steady leadership and sense of calm really set a tone that helped everyone do their best work."

Guiding the director was a desire to treat 'Godzilla" as a story first. 'It was really important to all of us that the audience cares about what's going on and why, so I didn't want it to just be spectacle after spectacle," he explains. 'Instead, the idea was to use some restraint to draw out the tension and suspense and really build up to that moment when we finally reveal Godzilla in all his glory for the first time."

This approach informed every creative aspect of the film and helped carve out a visual language that brought verisimilitude to even its most jaw-dropping onscreen moments. 'I don't like putting a camera anywhere a camera can't go, so I didn't want to engineer any camera moves that would be impossible in real life," Gareth Edwards says. 'We shot some of the big monster scenes with the kinds of pans and effects you'd see in footage of a sporting event. Those cameramen aren't psychic, so the footage is never perfect. They set up cameras where they think they will capture the best footage and be ready, and that's the effect we were going for."

Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey had seen Gareth Edwards' first film when it played at the Edinburgh Film Festival, and was impressed at his eye for human interaction even amid extreme circumstances. 'With -Godzilla,' you're dealing with a mythical monster, and what's interesting visually is the juxtaposition of the tiny moments that people experience, and then pulling back to witness the scale of the great monster behind them," Seamus McGarvey relates. 'When you see a person against this 350-foot-tall creature, that clash of the micro and the mega, it draws your breath."

To orchestrate the broad integration of live action and CGI elements, the entire film was mapped out using previsualisation (previs), which helped guide editor Bob Ducsay in piecing together sequences, which often involved merging previs with completed shots. 'It's a very complicated movie, but it was great to watch it come together," Bob Ducsay remarks. 'Gareth Edwards shoots a tremendous amount of film, which gives us the opportunity to bring a lot of nuance to the most complex sequences."

The ever-evolving previs was also a vital tool for Gareth Edwards to communicate his vision to the entire filmmaking team. 'Even watching the previs was edge-of-your-seat tension, and that doesn't usually happen when you're looking at rough, blocky animations," Thomas Tull reveals. 'There was this sense of foreboding and mystery that made us all really excited to see the finished film."

Gareth Edwards also showed it to the actors prior to big sequences to guide their imaginations and help inform their choices when reacting to their absent mammoth co-star. And with cameras rolling, Gareth Edwards used a loudspeaker to narrate the action, like an announcer at a sporting event, often punctuated by an explosion rigged by special effects coordinator Joel Whist, or the roar they'd created for the full effect.

'I'd put the microphone against the iPod speaker, so all these roars would come out at the right times, and it was actually really effective," Gareth Edwards remembers. 'You can really tell the difference, I think, between the takes where there was no sound being played on set and the ones where we had Godzilla's roar blasting out, because there's something really primal about it, and I think you can't help but respond to that."

With extensive stunts in the midst of the chaos"orchestrated by stunt coordinators John Stoneham, Jr. and Jake Mervine and 2nd Unit Stunt Coordinator Layton Morrison"the process was exhilarating for the actors. Aaron Taylor-Johnson observes, 'Being in the midst of it, chaos is going on all around you, and the camera is right there in the middle of the action, so you have the same feeling watching it as you have experiencing it," he describes. 'The way Gareth Edwards is shooting this movie, you're actually inside that car or on the top of that building, and it's extraordinary to witness, even without special effects."

Engineering the film's alternately emotional, action-packed and haunting sequences using both available light sources and dark, atmospheric lighting design, McGarvey created another layer of visual contrasts by placing C Series anamorphic lenses from the 1970s on state-of-the-art Arri Alexa® digital cameras. 'We are at the cutting edge of visual effects and digital cinematography with this film, but the idea was to make the technique invisible so that it won't be heavy handed but have a vivid quality that will let an audience sense that what we're seeing is really happening," McGarvey shares. 'We're using older glass on modern cameras to replicate the classic flares and attributes that Gareth Edwards and I both love from the movies of the era. We consciously employed a lot of handheld in a very visceral way, almost as though the cameraman was witnessing these things live. At the same time, we're shooting in anamorphic and have huge monster moments in the film, so it's got the big CinemaScope feel you'd expect from a movie of this scale."

'Godzilla" unfolds across two primary time frames: 1999 in Tokyo and the Philippines, and the present day. Production designer Owen Paterson relished capturing the motifs of different locations and eras that ran the gamut from normal life to total devastation. 'We did a massive number of illustrations to concept out our environments, and then ultimately built and dressed nearly 100 sets"which is a lot for a single film"some of which were quite expansive. The idea was to make it both interesting visually and believable in terms of time and place."

Costume designer Sharen Davis likewise turned to the film's eras to create costumes that did not call attention to themselves but emerged naturally from the characters and their lives within the story. 'We have a major military presence in this film, which involved sourcing or creating everything from 1950s officer attire to late -90s Japanese security personnel to the modern U.S. Army and Navy, and it was important to get it all right," Sharen Davis confirms. 'But what was equally fascinating was tracing the evolution of these characters. For example, Joe Brody goes through quite a dramatic change over 15 years. Every look in the film was designed not to stand out but to be part of the fabric of everyday life, the kinds of clothes that you sometimes see in news footage of ordinary people who suddenly find themselves in the midst of extraordinary events."

Maintaining the illusion of the unimaginable pervading the everyday, Owen Paterson designed and built the film's diverse environments with an eye for what was most natural and real. 'Gareth Edwards is introducing a very interesting way of telling a story like this," he attests. 'I think he would like to make us feel like a nature documentarian standing in the long grass in Africa watching a Rhinoceros feed, when suddenly it comes charging at you ... except with huge monsters. He's a terrific storyteller, so it was great to try to create environments for him that felt true while also incorporating the existence of these rather exotic digital characters. He wanted to capture as much in-camera as possible, which translated into detailed sets with a foreground and a mid-ground that could then be extended or fused with visual effects to add scale and relevance."

The director, who honed his visual effects acumen during his early years in British television, relished collaborating with visual effects pioneer Jim Rygiel, who brought Middle-earth to life in 'The Lord of the Rings" films. He also got the opportunity to work on some additional visual effects with John Dykstra, whose legend in the industry goes all the back to 'Star Wars."

'Gareth Edwards knows how to create 3D monsters on his laptop, which made my job easier and a lot of fun," says Jim Rygiel. 'With other projects I might have thrown up green screen everywhere, but Gareth Edwards wanted to shoot entirely against black to better relate to Seamus' atmospheric cinematography. Visual effects people hate smoke and dust because we have to paint it all out and put it back in, but when you look at the finished shot, you feel the depth and layers, rather than seeing everything clearly in a brightly lit scene."

The film's visual effects demands were split among two effects houses, with the London-based Double Negative enhancing environments, and Canada's Moving Picture Company handling the creature work. The challenge lay in creating seamless, believable interaction among the digital elements and the real world. Jim Rygiel states, 'In our film, we have big monster battles, the destruction of cities, a tsunami, intense military operations, and many unusual elements, and each component had to be absolutely based in reality."

The final element was the film's score, which Gareth Edwards began conceptualising prior to enlisting Alexandre Desplat to compose it. 'When you work on a film like this, the most inspiring thing to draw on is music," Gareth Edwards says. 'The first thing I ever do is create a playlist on my phone with the soundtracks that I've loved that I think have the right tone and quality for this film, the haunting emotion of the movie, as well as the sinister horror and darkness that was going to come into play, and Alexandre Desplat definitely got a high score."

Having seen 'Monsters," Alexandre Desplat appreciated Gareth Edwards' focus on the emotional underpinnings of the characters amid the spectacle, a sensibility that ultimately informed his score for 'Godzilla." 'Even though there's danger, you only share the danger if you empathise with the characters," the composer states. 'With -Godzilla,' what was important to me was emphasizing the great sense of loss surrounding Ford and Joe from the beginning of the film, and that we still feel the trembling of that moment as we follow these broken souls into the present."

With the great force of Godzilla propelling the action, Alexandre Desplat also relished the opportunity to make a big sonic impact with the music as he recorded the final score with the Hollywood Studio Orchestra. 'I've never done a monster movie before, so coming to this with more than a hundred musicians"double brass, double horns" allowed me to open the frame of my imagination to another territory, and that's very exciting," Alexandre Desplat describes. 'Gareth Edwards is very sensitive to music and that was fantastic for me. When I played back music for him in my studio, I could see him watching the images and listening at the same time. I tried to always keep the tension high, but the trick was knowing when to release the pressure. For example, a scene of people in the streets can be very mundane. Nothing is happening, but instead of letting the tension slip away, you keep it going. That structure is something I tailored with Gareth Edwards as the movie and the score were taking shape, so there's a great sense of continuity between what you're seeing and hearing."

The director marvels, 'Alexandre Desplat is a bit of a hero of mine musically, and the score he created for this film is just stunning. I'm really excited. I can't quite believe not only that Alexandre composed the -Godzilla' soundtrack, he's done my soundtrack. It's the most amazing gift I think I'll ever get."

Godzilla Makes Landfall

Like the title character, the story told in the film begins in Japan. 'That's the birthplace of Godzilla, so we thought it would be an appropriate place to begin our story, which takes us half-way around the world, ultimately reaching San Francisco, where the big battle plays out," Thomas Tull says.

The film was shot on location on the Hawaiian island of Oahu; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Vancouver, B.C., in Canada, with additional shooting in San Diego, California, and Tokyo, Japan. Paterson and his art department"led by supervising art director Grant Van Der Slagt, along with art directors Dan Hermansen, Ross Dempster and Kristen Franson, and set decorator Elizabeth Wilcox"designed and created complex, detailed interior and exterior sets on soundstages and backlot space at the Canadian Motion Picture Park (CMPP), in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby.

One of the first sequences to be shot was at the Vancouver Convention Center, with the cavernous structure transformed into both the Honolulu and Tokyo International Airports.

A number of key Canadian locales became ground zero for some of the film's most dramatic scenes of devastation. 'A giant creature is never going to come and smash up our cities, but probably every human being on this planet has either lived through events that create that kind of destruction or seen their effects on TV," Gareth Edwards notes.

The streets of downtown Vancouver were transformed into San Francisco's besieged financial district for a number of evocative sequences. Elizabeth Olsen was present for one such scene, which placed her among a flood of refugees fleeing in terror from the monster-sized clash tearing up their city. 'One of the coolest experiences for me was being a part of these scenes of people trying to find their way to safety," Elizabeth Olsen remembers. 'I was part of this massive group of people all going in the same direction. I had never been involved in a scene with so many extras before, but there's something about being a part of a body of people that hits you at a primal level. It felt very real in the context of what's going on in the scene."

San Francisco was also pieced together on the backlot at CMPP. On one backlot set, Paterson redesigned an existing cityscape set to portray a small Chinatown street, and also built the entrance to a giant sinkhole beneath Chinatown, which is Ford's target when he plunges with a HALO [High Altitude - Low Opening] team into the city.

The chaotic sinkhole set itself, which Gareth Edwards called the 'Dragon's Den," was built inside a soundstage, and dressed to overflow with crashed cars, chunks of buildings and other debris. After shooting was completed on this sequence, the set was repurposed to portray the massive cavern beneath the collapsed Philippine mine where scientists Graham and Serizawa gain their first insight that something massive and unknown has been released into the world. 'We discover that this cave isn't really a natural cave"it's a giant ribcage, with bones that loom 25 feet in the air," Owen Paterson describes. 'It's a good place to start the story, in a sense. The genie has been let out of the bottle."

'That set was beyond amazing, just extraordinary," raves Sally Hawkins. 'Even though we were working with some green screen, a lot of the time we didn't have to imagine anything. It was there. We were inside this giant structure, and the detail was phenomenal. It made it very easy for the cast to have these incredible worlds for you to step onto."

Gareth Edwards observes that shooting both sequences within the same soundstage reflects some of the symmetry woven into the film's DNA. 'What Graham and Serizawa observe within the giant ribcage at the beginning of the film, and what Ford sees in the Dragon's Den near the end are linked in the story," he says. 'So in a way, it felt like going full circle."

Another exterior set Owen Paterson built on the CMPP backlot was a 400-foot stretch of the 8,980-foot-long Golden Gate Bridge, where Gareth Edwards, aided by veteran second unit director E.J. Foerster, staged some of the film's exciting climactic moments, with the city's famous skyline looming in the background.

To achieve this effect, Jim Rygiel dispatched teams to the tops of some of San Francisco's skyscrapers to shoot high-end panoramas from multiple angles that took in the entire 360 degrees of the skyline, which, using photogrammetry, they were able to merge into a 3D city. 'This technique gives you a real city that is accurate down to every piece of mortar in a brick building," he says. 'So, using that, we were able to composite the live action shots with the keyframe-animated monsters destroying digital buildings into a seamless whole."

Another key site for the production was Finn Slough, a century-old unincorporated Finnish fishing settlement along the Fraser River in Richmond, B.C. Now nearly abandoned, Finn Slough's few residents live in crumbling wooden shacks, both floating and built on stilts, along the marshy river bank. Edwards used the unique site, as well as pockets of New Westminster dressed to appear reclaimed by nature, to portray the Tokyo quarantine zone Ford ventures into with his father to locate his childhood home. Two other significant Vancouver locations were chosen to portray the Janjira Nuclear Power Plant: the abandoned and decayed Catalyst paper mill for the exteriors; and the Annacis Island wastewater treatment facility south of Vancouver for its interiors, augmented by an evocative soundstage set of the nuclear chambers.

Other Vancouver locations included the banks of Lake Alouette in Golden Ears Provincial Park, where Edwards staged a helicopter rescue amidst a landscape of destruction; and the boat docks of Steveston, Vancouver, which became San Francisco's famed Fisherman's Wharf.

Once the Canadian portion of production concluded, the company shipped off to the most populous of the Hawaiian Islands, Oahu, to shoot a variety of locations, from Waikiki Beach to a rock quarry that provided the entrance to the collapsed mine. To capture shots for the film's main title sequence, production traveled to the Windward (or East) side of Oahu to recreate a Pacific Atoll where hydrogen bomb tests were conducted in the early 1950s and, in fact, resulted in a tragic loss of life the same year the original 'Godzilla" was released.

The company next touched down on a part of existing World War II history at Pearl Harbor, which serves as both a working naval base and a somber memorial for those lost in the event that precipitated America's entry into war. Here, Edwards staged three scenes onboard the USS Missouri, with the historic 'floating memorial" standing in for the massive USS Saratoga battleship that tracks Godzilla across the Pacific. Moving to the adjacent Hickam Air Force Base, Edwards shot Aaron Taylor-Johnson within an actual C-17 aircraft to depict the moments just prior to his HALO plunge into San Francisco. James D. Dever, the film's military technical advisor, had participated in HALO jumps, and worked with HALO Jump stunt coordinator JT Holmes to bring the highest degree of authenticity to the dramatic free fall. 'The stunt performers were HALO-trained and did an outstanding job," James Dever says. 'In this movie, you'll see the Air Force moving ICBM missiles, the Navy running an aircraft carrier, and a lot of moving parts from Huey helicopters, destroyers and flying F-35s. My job was to make sure it was all accurately represented."

In addition to consulting on military arcana, such as chain of command, terminology, gear, weapons, and environments, James Dever also liaised with the Department of Defense to help secure the film's array of military assets, as well as a full complement of U.S. and Canadian servicemen to portray the majority of forces seen in the film. 'It turns out that a lot of people in the Department of Defense are massive Godzilla fans too," Gareth Edwards smiles, 'and I think they got a kick out of participating in this movie."

A retired Sergeant Major in the U.S. Marine Corps, James Dever also worked with Aaron Taylor-Johnson to ensure his Navy bearing was up to snuff. 'I had three days of working in boot camp with him, teaching him how to use his weapon, how to put his gear on, how to move and present himself as an officer in the U.S. Navy," James Dever says. 'And Aaron aylor-Johnson was like a sponge for information because he wanted to get it right, and he did. It was a pleasure working with him."

The production also took over a stretch of the popular Waikiki Beachfront for two days to complete sequences tied to the arrival of a tsunami that destroys one of the beach's most recognizable landmarks, the Hilton Rainbow Tower. The production accomplished the near-impossible by closing Waikiki's most popular commercial shopping strip, Lewers Street, for fifteen hours to capture footage of hundreds of extras fleeing the giant wave.

'Our intentions with this environment and all the scenes of devastation in the film was absolute reality," says Owen Paterson. 'Gareth Edwards wanted the sets to feel so real that people would walk out of the cinema after seeing the movie and actually not expect to see buildings still standing."

'It's that much more thrilling, intense and ultimately, I think, a more satisfying movie experience if you believe it," adds Parent. 'Godzilla deserves to have his story told within a movie that's worthy, and Gareth was able to put together a group of people at the top of their game with the skills and artistry to do it in a way that has never been seen before. It's a good match, and gives you a front row seat for an epic adventure, with the iconic Godzilla at the center of it."

Says Rogers, 'I am so proud to be a part of the talented team responsible for bringing Godzilla back in time for his 60th anniversary, and re-introducing him to all the faithful fans of the franchise, along with all the new audiences that have not yet experienced meeting the -King of the Monsters.'"

'Observing scenes being shot on set or watching dailies doesn't really compare to watching considered, cut sequences that absolutely verify that your filmmaker has achieved a certain tone, scale and quality," Jashni observes. 'I remember sitting in the editing room and watching Gareth show us a sampler of four or five sequences early on and realizing he had -done it'"he had somehow made this movie his own. I felt excited for him and for us, as he was clearly well on his way to achieving what we'd all aspired to."

'Those of us that grew up on Godzilla feel so much affection and nostalgia for this character that we can't wait to see him stomping across cinema screens again," says Thomas Tull. 'The first movie came out 60 years ago. That's a long time for a fan base to continue to grow, and now there's a whole new generation that hasn't really had its Godzilla. So, our hope is that we give existing fans and this new generation the movie they've been waiting for."

With the culmination of his own epic journey to deliver on that promise, Gareth Edwards likens the experience to the moment when the film's central character, Ford, finally locks eyes on the legendary dinosaur. 'Before I started, there was this ominous and intimidating threat hanging over me," he reflects. 'But then, towards the end of the process of making the movie, I started to realise that Godzilla has become my savior. I had the benefit of a lot of incredibly talented people that worked all hours to deliver this thing and make it look flawless, and they did it. I'm so proud to have directed this film.

If I were going to be known for a genre, I'd happily be trapped in the world of monsters, and there's no better monster in the world than Godzilla."

Godzilla
Release Date: May 15th, 2014