Among the long list of things we missed out on because we’re not at SXSW like our Senior Editor Glen Tickle comes this new revelation: a screening of the original 1954 Godzilla with Gareth Edwards, at which he leaked some new never-before-seen footage from the upcoming 2014 film. Spoilers after the jump.
While the clip itself is still a “work in progress” and can’t actually be put on the Internet yet, Brian Walton of Nerdist banged out a summary of it for us peons and threw it up after the screening last night. The important bits:
We return to the Honolulu airport just as the power is being restored to the tram. The crowd on the train has a brief moment of relief  before all awesome holy hell breaks loose. The tram is thrown from its tracks by a massive Kaiju that stylistically looks like a combination of a mosquito and the Cloverfield monster. It looks like this is the creature the government had a bead on over the radio.
The tram dangles precariously as Aaron Taylor-Johnson reaches out to save his young ward. But even if he does, who will stop the creature destroying the airport? Who the hell do you think? In a pretty heroic reveal for a character that has already caused mass destruction in his own right, the King of All Monsters steps up to put a smack down. With a massive roar, we get our first full look at the original big bad ass. And he is gorgeous! A perfectly updated look of Toho’s creation stands before us. Massive trunk legs and all. Cut to black. The crowd is immediately on its feet. In Gareth we trust.
So in case your reading comprehension is low, here’s the TLDR version: there’s more than one kaiju monster, and Godzilla’s gonna fight it.While there were reports of other monsters surfacing as early as July, this is the first time that anybody’s actually seen them in action. This also already puts this flick miles above the 1998 version where the antagonist was, like, Jean Reno or something.
Topless Robot‘s sources at SXSW are also saying that all the non-Godzilla kaiju toys they’ve seen appear to be completely original and not inspired by any past Godzilla enemies (so no Bagan or Mothra is what that means) Here’s my biggest concern, though: didn’t Pacific Rim sort of do the whole Kaiju monster creation thing already? And better than anyone else ever could, because of Guillermo Del Toro? And remember the last time someone who wasn’t Guillermo Del Toro tried to get “creative” in a Godzilla movie? You should, because I was just talking about that movie in the paragraph above this one, and it kinda sucked.
Still, I’m willing to give Edwards the benefit of the doubt because all the trailers for Godzilla have been tremendous thus far. Like this one, for example.
Time will tell if this new footage makes it to the Internet before the movie drops on May 16th. Until then, at least we’ll always have Idris Elba piloting a giant robot.
(via Topless Robot)
- This close-up of Godzilla is sufficiently impressive
- Seriously, this new trailer is intense
- Almost as intense as this sound clip of Godzilla’s roar
