Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a quick update from the epic, 2 ½ hour long Warner Bros panel. They announced Man of Steel, The Hobbit and Pacific Rim, but what they didn’t announce was what is essentially a proof of concept trailer for Gareth Edwards’ GODZILLA.
They didn’t even announce what it was before running the footage… we just got the Legendary logo against a plume of black smoke… the camera floats over a devastated city… It’s not big Roland Emmerich devastation, more like Neill Blomkamp heavy reality devastation. Buildings are tumbled, fires have broken out, busses squashed and a skyscraper with a huge hole in the middle of it.
The camera keeps moving and then we see something not very real world at all… A huge creature… segmented shell, multiple arms ending in claw and dead, dead, dead. Flies buzz around it and from a long way away we hear Godzilla’s iconic roar.
Cut to the title, which is exactly the font of that teaser poster.
But then the big hero shot: huge hazy plume of smoke and dust as something moves inside… we see a clawed hand, camera tilts up as the big creature turns, his back scales causing shafts of godlight to filter through the haze (and these back scales are not spruced up… jagged, sharp… totally Godzilla) as the head turns in profile, letting out a roar.
Someone on Twitter (it might have been Erik Davis, but don’t quote me on that) mentioned that the tone of the footage was like post 9-11 news footage and that’s dead on. This is real, sad devastation combined with the awe of Godzilla.
I gotta say, this was the first footage of the con that birthed goosebumps for me. Great, great stuff. If they can match the tone of this footage for a whole movie then this could be incredible. Truly.
Now I gotta run. Marvel’s big Iron Man 3 panel is about to start! Be back with that report in a bit! Oh, and they showed 12 ½ minutes of The Hobbit… and a sizzle reel for Pacific Rim that really proves the world is about to be taken over by Kaiju and fucking huge robots.
Make sure to follow my twitter account for a live-tweeting of the big Marvel panel and stay tuned for detailed write ups of the rest of the coolness I saw today.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
