For those of you interested in the upcoming GODZILLA reboot being helmed by Gareth Edwards, you might want to hear what new script writer, Frank Darabont has to say on how they are treating the monster. The good thing is that they are straying away from anything corny. With Edwards and Darabont on it, I seriously doubted that this would be the case. Darabont seems to understand the direction that the character needs to go in for the film to be successful.
Darabont first talks about the original inspiration for the character, and how that would play into what he was writing now:
“What I found very interesting about Godzilla is that he started off definitely as a metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And some of the atom bomb testing we were doing in the South Pacific in the subsequent years. The giant terrifying force of nature that comes and stomps the shit out of your city, that was Godzilla. Filtered through the very fanciful imaginations of the Japanese perception. And then he became Clifford the Big Red Dog in the subsequent films. He became the mascot of Japan, he became the protector of Japan. Another big ugly monster would show up and he would fight that monster to protect Japan. Which I never really quite understood, the shift.”
Then he proceeds to talk about how the movie will stay away from the camp and take the myth into a more serious direction:
“What we’re trying to do with the new movie is not have it camp, not have it be campy. We’re kind of taking a cool new look at it. But with a lot of tradition in the first film. We want this to be a terrifying force of nature. And what was really cool, for me, is there was a very compelling human drama that I got to weave into it. It’s not that cliched, thinly disguised romance or bromance, or whatever. It’s different, it’s a different set of circumstances than you’re used to seeing. And that’s tremendously exciting as a writer when you’re asked to do something else.”
The last question asked of the writer was whether or not the story would be connected to a contemporary issue, “Yes I am, but I’m not going to give it away.”