are you guys happy that gareth is putting godzilla back to his original roots?

yeah i know i am

man i really cant wait to see this badass movie once it is released :)

this godzilla is very pissed off and means business this time. :)

I have been waiting for this movie since past november-december , so hell yeah!!!!

get ready everyone godzilla is coming to crush our theathers once again :)

Historically speaking, the idea of Godzilla as a "force of nature" didn't really come to fruition until Mothra vs. Godzilla and that was a good 10 years after the original film. Even then it was the Heisei that milked that idea a bit more.

Regardless, I'm not completely convinced this is going to be a "horrific Godzilla" as Edwards has likened him to a loan samurai warrior rising up to right some wrongs. Even the new plot synopsis says Godzilla, "rises to restore balance". He seems to be some sort of unsung, anti-hero in this movie. That's hardly the roots of the original film.

@gman 2887

ahh come on man, tell me how you really feel :)

just joking yeah you do bring a good point there still though godzilla is so detailed that he actually looks like something that did exsist during the age of the dinosaurs or something i really like what i have seen and i am sure you do :)

Of course I like what I've seen, I'm just doubtful that Edwards has returned the Godzilla character back to, quote-on-quote, "roots".

It sounds like the only "rooting" is in how Godzilla's being used-- as a metaphor for larger issues, which has been done with other films, especially GMK,  vs. Biollante...etc...

This doesn't make me look forward to it any less, mind you. But I don't think the way Godzilla looks is an indication of his "roots". We'll see how the film plays out though.

I cannot imagine anyone that wouldn't be over joyed 

What the hell is 'roots'?

You know, I love the idea of some things going back to their roots, like Alien, I'd like to see them throw out the horde hive bullshit and go back to the one, indestructible monster killing people steathily.

But if Godzilla has roots, its somewhere between Tokusatsu and Fifties monsters-on-the-loose films of the west.

Godzilla was Japan's take on the very popular film archetype of the west. Godzilla was the grandaddy giant monster tokusatsu and one of Toho's springboard films. Without Godzilla tokusatsu probably wouldn't be what it is today.

In other words, Godzilla's roots are in Japanese theater and culture, not in metaphores and melodrama.

Yes I'm looking forward to this film, but I'd be honest, I'd be just as happy, if not happier to see a Japanese director (like Keita Amimiya) doing a Godzilla Tokusatsu film. That is going to seem like a lot to take in for a lot of fans, but its just how I feel. 

Because as much as I'd like to think a western director can capture Godzilla's spirit, I'd be very surprised to see that true Japanese heritage bleed through in an American produced Godzilla film.

I have to concur with Akagi. Godzilla's "roots" are rooted in Japanese post-war culture and revitalization perhaps more-so than they are in the themes and tone of the original movie. I love the original movie, and it tends to get better with age, but people forget what it created-- what it did for a country's rebuilding film industry and how it inspired future filmmakers.

I would also be just as excited about this movie if it were a Japanese film made in the traditional tokusatsu style, to be perfectly honest. I'm almost equally, if not more, excited about the new Gamera movie and it will likely use the same style and special effects techniques of prior Godzilla/Gamera films.

I can't wait for the new movie, but lets remember its innovation only goes as far as taking another studio's character and putting it in the standard, Hollywood, blockbuster sandbox. The original Godzilla created an entire sub-genre and style of filmmaking through experimentation. The new movie will be a revitalization of a long franchise at best and a continuation at worst. (Not unlike Godzilla '84 or Godzilla 2000, but this time with westerners in mind.) With that said, one could argue Ultraman Victory has more in common with Godzilla's "roots" than Legendary's Godzilla. (And I'm pretty certain Victory is going to suck. And suck hard...)

Again, I'm stoked about this movie and can't wait to see it. But the idea that this is the be all, end all Godzilla film since the original without even seeing it? Well... I find that hard to buy. But then again I'm also the guy who doesn't give two hamster poops about the Mutos...

I do appreciate that they returning to the dark, serious tone for this film that is closer to the original 1954 movie. While I would enjoy/go see any Godzilla move that was made, I am happy we are getting one that is more somber than the later Toho movies.

However, there really is no way to replicate the impact and relevance that the 1954 film had during its time. 

GMAN/AKAGI have already done a good job summing up Godzilla's cinematic impact. It won the Japanese equivalent of an Oscar for Special Effects, and launched a whole new genre of filmmaking. American films with similar Special Effects impacts would be things like the original Star Wars trilogy, The Matrix, or Avatar. This newest Godzilla movie won't quite revolutionize the industry like that.

But filmmaking aside, it's hard for a 2014 American Godzilla to return to the 'roots' of what the 1954 Japanese Godzilla was politically. 99.9% of the time a movie is just a movie. But for Godzilla, it really was something more. For an era when making movies about Hiroshima and Nagasaki was illegal in Japan, the original Gojira served as a cinematic work around to talk about those events. Godzilla really was 'the bomb' in a very powerful way that few character metaphors have been able to embody before or since.

The imagery and destruction in that movie tried to replicate what many Japanese cities actually looked like after the fire and nuclear bombings, as opposed to later films where the destruction scenes were shot for spectacle, not realism. When the movie was first released, it was so accurate, and stirred up such heavy emotions, that the movie was actually heavily criticized in Japan for trying to 'commodify' WW2. They later warmed up to it, and it was nominated for Best Picture in Japan.

In order for a modern Godzilla movie to even get close to that, you'd have to imagine a world where no movies about 9/11 had been made at all. Then you'd have to have Godzilla knock down the twin towers, and show the towers collapsing downward in the same way they actually fell. And even that wouldn't quite cut it, as 9/11 was a comparably trivial tragedy when compared to the bombings of WW2

Yes, Gareth Edwards is trying to make the tsunamis look 'real' and stuff like that, but it it's ultimately going to fall short of the significance of the 1954 film. 

Which is fine. They SHOULDN'T be trying to replicate the significance of that film, as that film is significant specifically because of the massive tragedy that took place before it. We don't have a tragedy on that scale to talk about, and that's a good thing. The 1954 film doesn't have much resonance with modern American audiences because we are so removed from those times and events. But think, would you really WANT to be placed close to the time/location of any real life events similar to those?

Godzilla 2014 is going to be awesome from what I can tell so far. I'm going to love the movie if it plays out like the trailers are portraying. But the movie is ultimately just going to be a piece of entertainment with some political undertones. Rather than the 'therapy for a nation' which the 1954 film was. In that way, I guess I'm glad Godzilla isn't returning to its 'roots'.

As an addition: I should say that I'm trying to sound snobbish or say that original 1954 is the end all and be all of Godzilla movies. 

Honestly, as Akagi as said before, Gojira 1954 is a boring movie. I've watched the cheesy 70's Showa films as well as the 1998 American film way more times, and enjoy them more. I will likely enjoy this new 2014 movie more than I do the 1954 film. 

The poignancy and relevance of Gojira 1954 has faded. It was a very important film for its time. But it's time has passed. 

So when I say that Godzilla 2014 will not be able to go back to the 'roots' of Gojira 1954, I'm not trying to say that it somehow will be a worse or less entertaining movie. I'm just saying that the impact that Godzilla 2014 will have modern audiences will NOT be the same as the impact that Gojira 1954 had on its audience way back when. In that regard, it's impossible for Godzilla 2014 to return to it's 'roots'.