The king of all movie monsters is back.
Godzilla returns in a new trailer for an upcoming Godzilla reboot, in which David Strathairn (Lincoln, The Bourne Legacy), delivers a chilling speech to a group of young military men (one of them portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, popularly known as Kick-Ass) before they leap off of a plane and onto a burning scene of destruction-and right onto the frightening form of Godzilla himself.
While most trailers of monster movies we have encountered so far feature large-scale destruction: creatures bursting through a line of buildings, giant robots and kaiju slow-mo street-fighting amid a confusion of flying debris- with a rousing war speech (preferably the one Idris Elba did) in the background, the "Godzilla 2014" trailer employs a different tactic.
The "Godzilla 2014" trailer comes off as gravely serious, with Straithairn's speech striking fear instead of making moviegoers want to go out and punch something, and the trailer featuring a large ensemble of supporting actors (Bryan Cranston from the recently concluded Breaking Bad, Juliette Binoche, Ken Watanabe, and Elizabeth Olsen, among others) scrambling around helplessly in the wake of all the Military operations and Godzilla destruction. Despite being a movie about an atomically altered giant lizard rampaging another of the USA's most prominent capitals, as in most big-budget creature feature films, there is a chilling sense of realism in "Godzilla 2014" in that while as much as we all want to be the ones doing cool stuff in the robot suit, saving the day, we will most likely be the specks of flesh fleeing from the shadow of the beast, seeking safety.
Directed by Gareth Edwards, the upcoming "Godzilla 2014" film may perhaps be the very first monster movie to focus instead on what is truly frightening in a monster attack (or all cases of widespread destruction): the loss of human life. This comes at exactly at a time when moviegoers are beginning to wonder whether filmmakers even notice that thousands of people are wiped out every time a giant monster takes a walk around a major city. The new Godzilla film seems to be loyal to the original 1954 Godzilla's metaphor of nuclear war this way.
The greatest thing about the "Godzilla 2014" trailer, however, is the revelation of the king of (movie) beasts. Granted that he has undergone the CGI treatment, but fans are already praising the Godzilla design, calling it "an upgraded version of his 'classic' look." Classic meaning the Godzilla suit stomping around a mini-Tokyo, the more favored version over the 1998 Godzilla.
The new Godzilla will be coming to theaters near you on May 16, 2014!
