What The New Godzilla won’t Look Like

When the producers of the upcoming Godzilla reboot announced Gareth Edwards would be directing, it was one of those "whoah" moments - the instant when a project I'm sort of aware of, but not terribly invested in, makes me sit up and take notice. Edwards' first film Monsters was all the things Roland Emmerich's 1998 take on Godzilla wasn't - quiet, nuanced, impactful in the right spots. "Kinda like the 1954 Gojira," I remember thinking. His hiring made a perfect sense, depending on what kind of Godzilla film you were hoping for.

So thanks to the good folks at Slashfilm (who credit about three other sources, but I'm rusty on source etiquette, and Germain Lussier's article is where I saw this), today we see that the producers are still treading carefully, via a pair of rejected Godzilla designs.

The top image, to this casual kaiju fan's eyes, is downright traditional, while the second nudges it toward a more realistic design. What can we glean from the fact that these were rejected? Will the new Godzilla be a more radical redesign? We do know that Godzilla fans DO NOT LIKE when you get it wrong, so as someone pulling for Edwards, I hope he wins them over.