Gadgetory

hey this is Brian Bishop with the verge and I am here with the director of the new Godzilla Gareth Edwards Gareth thanks for sitting down with us where is he I want to meet him he's over there hey I still hasn't hit me like when people say that you go oh yeah I guess we did yeah well you here at South by Southwest last night you did a new clip from the movie where you just like screw up and jack up Hawaii all over the place it looked awesome okay can you talk to me there's some clips from that they've been in the most recent trailer can you talk a little bit about what that sequence was and what was about yeah I mean I guess I guess it's fair to say that it's the big it's the big reveal of Godzilla and you only saw a glimpse he's actually like twice as long but we couldn't show all of it last night and so I felt like in the film he needed a really good introduction I didn't just want to throw it away so I spent like it's a 10-minute piece that builds up to the first proper reveal of him in the movie and it's one of my favorite parts of the film and I love the suspense like I love like you know in a weird way when you do a film like this there's like an unwritten agreement with the audience that they want to be teased and they want to be like pulled in slowly and this is kind of like what I'd call like cinematic foreplay that goes on you know before before the climax and I think that's as much fun as as you know the big fight sequences and things definitely and I love there's that one shot where it's and it's in the trailer he kind of like goes underneath this ship it has you know shades of Jaws and this you know feels like that bill before the tidal wave was great and then the dog thing happens what I'm not going to talk about that because people will be sad yeah so I about the creature design like it was the big reveal like there's you know you're very true the 1954 original but also it's like it feels like a real creature like the folds of skin around his face you know how did you when you set it out to do this how do you say we're gonna go and you know bring all the different elements together that people know about the character yeah I mean that the design of Godzilla was predominantly worked on by weatr workshop in New Zealand and I was in the UK at the time so we did like we did everything by a Skype and so I'd be up to like 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. and they would share their desktop with my desktop so I could sort of watch them work and we would chat and and the simple way to approach it was I mean they did hundreds of designs but we had this 3d model of Godzilla and an artist there called Andrew Baker was it was kind of in charge of pushing and pulling all the points and sculpting this thing and we we basically said to ourselves like we would turn it into a silhouette so we instead of seeing it or like a gray clay thing it would be just pure black on white and because it's such an iconic silhouette in our film you see it as a silhouette you know a lot so we wanted to get that right and so basically we we had this model and we turn the silhouette until we saw that doesn't look right let's push and pull that turn it a bit well now we've ruin this bit it's like a Rubik's Cube like you get one side right and you look at I've ruined the other side now and our goal was to do this until we could rotate it 360 degrees and not want to change anything and I thought that would take a few days and it took months and and I am very hard on myself I don't like often whatever I do I think it could always be better and I look at that sculpture that we have got a copy in my office and and I have no regrets that's what I kind of go okay that he's cool right I really pleased with what we did there awesome and what about you know you teasers before other creatures being in the movie was it the same kind of process and how did that and obviously monsters there are many many creatures in that film yeah I mean the I think it's out there now that there is maybe something else in the film obviously and possibly and we wanted to do something unique trying to find a unique monster in this day and age one of the designers summed up well they said it's like trying to find the last parking space at Disney World or something it's like so many monsters have been done in so many films like trying to come up with something that feels different is is really hard and we spend I mean we must have spent over a year or so designing whatever it is and and we basically looked at all our favorite monsters from a t-rex to HR Giger salient Starship Troopers to jaws to King Kong and what is what is it about each one that makes them like so iconic and then tried to die all those aspects in and it's funny because we we didn't do it consciously but we kept right about this try this try this we kept mutating it and doing different things and having different generations until we found this until we taught I've arrived at something we thought like Adela's really cool and then we look back at it and when hang on the head looks like that monster in their arms that like that much than that and realize that all these inspirational creatures it kind of ended up on our thing and and that felt appropriate really because we set out to kind of do this it you know kind of try and combine all those elements but in a way that felt like a cohesive be you know creature that wasn't like a Frankenstein's monster but like yeah it all has it all looks like it was evolved from the same organism a little bit that we saw was very very exciting so I know this even more and I want to talk about you know you know updating the film the original Godzilla 1954 there's obviously a lot going on somatically about what japan had just gone through but you know nuclear attacks you know and the big big monster movies in general are kind of like you know an allegory for you know nuclear paranoia and fears you know when you're sit down to adapt the movie or update the movie you know how did you decide to go and attack it you know and make it relevant for 2014 or there are things you already had in mind was you think it was already relevant no I mean I like um I like a bit of meat on my bone and and I think you know the great thing about good science fiction and fantasy is that they can work on two levels like you can have on one level it's just a fun piece of entertainment and you know you come to see monsters writing or whatever it is and you you it's great but then I like another level that if you want to look for it or you know it's there subconsciously is that there's some meaning behind it and it has a point in a way and and I think all all good stories they shouldn't preach or anything but they should be they should have you know they sort of should have a point you know or be about something and in there's many ways we could have gone like in a million directions and and we have various aspects in our film and I think you know man versus nature is the predominant theme in the movie and and there's obviously a nuclear theme within there an idea that being that you know probably most powerful thing that we've discovered in terms of nature is the nuclear age is that you know the power of splitting the atom or whatever and that was always at the heart of the original in and so something that came for free with with the Godzilla movie was like you know we've spent the last few decades go in you know with this amazing like abuse of nature really this this this Pandora's box that we've opened with the nuclear power and and it's like yeah we can have weapons and you can't have weapons you're not allowed to do that and and these countries can have nuclear power and news countries can't and then what what naturally comes from Godzilla is well what if there were giant creatures that were attracted to radiation suddenly like everything would be flipped and you want to be getting rid of this stuff and and so that was for me that was really interesting and a good basis for our film and it's all like subtext but but I I really like when films like this have a bit more weight to them and I think that's the ones that stand the test of time that you watch again that they're still on your DVD shelf that they still show 60 years later at festivals like this are ones that are about something and so it was really important to me in everyone who worked on the film that there that we find that layer that will make it mean something yeah well that like that notion of like resonance and genres so good at dealing with that and sometimes the opportunity just gets thrown away you know which is um which is a shame because I can it can be such a good allegory and you know function to get people thinking about about different topics I was wondering about the the continuity of the universe like where does this film fit into you know the kind of the other films is that part of it do those forms exist in this movies universe how does it has all the pieces fit together the Godzilla movies don't exist in our universe but monster movies exist there's there's I mean I can probably say it's no big deal is the a main character is a child's you see his bedroom at one point and in the bedroom is a Japanese monster movie poster and so they obviously exist you know I mean that's something that is happening there but it but we didn't want to make Godzilla part of popular culture in that in that world we wanted this was kind of like the origin story this is kind of like where the world finds out about these things and so so yeah the Toho movies were not probably don't exist obviously in that in the world that we created but but I like to think after the events in this film there will be lots of monster movies being created in in you know about Godzilla in in the world that we've set up does that mean you already have ideas in mind for sequels should it go over as well as the the preview did last night last night I don't know I mean I you know I it's I would you know obviously you make a film because you want people to like it and you want everyone you know go see it and and I don't know how people are gonna respond to it hopefully they will like it but I feel like we've setup like we've done the hard work of setting up this thing and now like there's so much fun to be had like there's I get excited about what you could do you know after this but I don't wanna I want to wait and see what people make of it really and then see how everyone responds yeah because it's up to everyone else if we get to do another one well I can't wait to go and see the movies comes out May 16th I believe is the date yeah so great um great meeting you and thanks my chicken the time Dara thank you thank you very much