Movies
‘Godzilla’ to Be Terrifying Thanks to Japan’s Cutting-Edge Special-Effects!
With Attack On Titan, its sequel and accompanying television miniseries releasing through this fall, Toho is now focused on brining Godzilla back to Japan.
Godzilla hasn’t had an impact in years, and didn’t become part of the general public’s conscious until Warner Bros. rebooted the film here in the States last summer.
Now, with the new Japanese Godzilla, the stakes are high. Not only do they need to make a movie better than the U.S. remake (that won’t be hard), but they need to reinvigorate the franchise that’s become nothing more than a cheap rubber costumed joke.
Shinji Higuchi, the director and special-effects whiz chosen by Toho Co. for the made-in-Japan comeback, is hoping to one-up last year’s Hollywood version, with not only the biggest Godzilla filmed ever, but one that takes up challenges previous ones haven’t attempted, reports ABC News.
“Godzilla had to deliver more and more, responding to calls from the audience, as well as creators,” said Higuchi of the series’ trappings.
“Godzilla went through these stages, resetting itself, developing and then succumbing to exhaustion, until it just got so big it had to stop.”
And so Higuchi plans to keep his Godzilla, in a sense, simple, stripped to the essentials.
With shooting to begin next month, Higuchi is under order to keep Godzilla details secret. But he is promising the most terrifying Godzilla that Japan’s cutting-edge special-effects movie-making can muster.
Higuchi’s special-effects techniques were amply demonstrated in Attack on Titan.
The work combines computer graphics with manipulating a towering doll of rippling red muscle that resembles a giant biological anatomy chart, as well as special-effects filmmaking, using actors moving through miniatures, to depict grotesquely enlarged humans.
Applying to Godzilla that kind of technology, which Higuchi calls “hybrid,” has never been attempted in Japan. Higuchi is promising just that.
But why is Higuchi the right man for the job?
“I’m confident I am among the top-50 lovers of Godzilla in the world. That’s how much I love Godzilla,” he explained. “Maybe I’m not in the top 10, but definitely in the top 50.”
I’ve never thought Godzilla was scary, and he’s never been a great anti-hero either. The idea that they’re going to try and make a terrifying movie out of Godzilla is more than exciting as most feel more action-oriented than anything else.
What would you like to see? First and foremost, I want there to be some character interaction with Godzilla, as opposed to watching from miles away like in the U.S. remake. Second, we need some fresh mythology, and for Godzilla to be a real threat to the entire planet…
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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