Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Godzilla returns! Does Hollywood make the right call?

The right call, of course, being to me. I'm easy to get ahold of, and while there may be bigger Godzilla fans out there, but I'll wager few of them are half the writer I am. Who else outdid Peter Jackson's King Kong by having a giant ape escape on a Zeppelin moored atop the Empire State Building? I rest my case.
Legendary Pictures has secured the rights to Toho Co.'s Godzilla, and hopes to return the iconic giant lizard to the big screen at some point in 2012.

For those of you dreading another Emmerich-level betrayal of the character, Legendary honcho Thomas Tull is saying all the right things. "Our plans," he tells Variety, "are to produce the GODZILLA that we, as fans, would want to see. We intend to do justice to those essential elements that have allowed the character to remain as pop-culturally relevant for as long as it has."

The above comes via Ain't It Cool News, and I have to say, I'm not sure if Hollywood will ever "get" Godzilla. The Big G is a force of nature, an elemental as it were, unleashed by humanity's tampering with the dangers of atomic energy. It's a metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the other giant monsters (aka Kaiju) can perhaps be best viewed as an allegory of the nuclear arms race. Which is something the Devlin/Emmerich film simply did not get on any level. At all. With atomic energy taking a back seat these days to nanotech, string theory, quantum physics and other universal/multiversal super-science, there's room to update and expand the mythos in a sophisticated, socially relevant way that still allows for a whole heck of a lot of Blowing Stuff Up Real Good.

I've got your storyline, Hollywood. It preserves all the Toho continuity--even the awful, cutesy stuff--while clearing the decks for an entirely new take. It's golden, folks. Money in the bank. All you gotta do is give me the call and take the pitch. I'm waiting.

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