David S. Goyer Forum

Not to scale.

Although the Godzilla franchise was dealt a serious blow in America with 1998's ponderously bad movie of the same name by the Devlin/Emmerich team (while it did alright financially, word of mouth was pretty terrible, to say nothing of the reviews), the radioactive lizard is still one of the biggest sci-fi franchises in the world, having starred in 28 films, more even than James Bond. Now that a respectful amount of time has transpired since the Emmerich misstep, it's understandable that someone would want to reboot the franchise for an American audience, and indeed Legendary has been prepping a new film for a while now.

That reboot just got a major boost with the hiring of one David Goyer as a screenwriter. Goyer's got experience building franchises before, having written all of the Blade movies as well as writing Batman Begins and helping with the stories on the sequels; he also contributed the screenplay to the upcoming Man Of Steel Superman movie. It'll be curious to see the direction that they take the franchise in, but knowing Goyer's past work, I wouldn't be surprised to see something significantly darker than the Emmerich film, which tried to mix levity in with CGI action and came across rather poorly for it.

It's difficult to know how to modernize the Godzilla tale for modern times; while the original Godzilla film dealt with the fear of nuclear testing (as did the 1998 movie), perhaps this time around Godzilla might be created as the result of an accident at a nuclear power plant? That might be a bit too Law & Orderish for my tastes, though. Whatever the case, you can bet your lunch that this is gonna be in 3D, which might be cool if they pull it off right.

No man-in-suit, no deal.

Well, that's maybe not true. But I'm not sure even Gareth Edwards can save this movie.

I wonder how you do a giant monster movie in modern times. The first thing that comes to mind is Cloverfield, but I don't think found footage works with Godzilla; you already know exactly what's going on.

Title diss? Surely Goyer's known enough (at least to the interwebs) to be called by name rather than "Batman Begins Screenwriter"?

@regs79: Yeah. I mean the man wrote so many other great movies. Like The Unborn. Or Jumper.

I will defend that 98 Godzilla to the death. I loved it when it came out, and watched it a bunch on video. I will never see it again, but that movie is just plain fun.

@bkbroiler: I was gonna say that!!

It can't be that hard to make a good Godzilla movie.

@regs79: No slight intended. I just think that when it comes to screenwriters they're better known for the films they've worked on than their names. Heck, I don't even know what the guy looks like.

@litrock: Yeah, but you know who he is ;)

@Rorie: Fair enough. I just read the title and started second guessing who I thought wrote Batman Begins.

I kind of liked the emmerich remake is it as good as the Japanese ones no but would you call those good to?

hopefully he dosen't direct it

@MrMazz: The original Gojira, the one with the Japanese cast and not the localize, recut American nonsense, is an amazing movie. Really well made, a pretty thoughtful metaphor for a country still reeling from WWII. Sure, they got ridiculous and dumb later, but that first movie still stands as something more.

The original Godzilla sounds a bit like a donkey, doesn't it? :)

No man-in-suit, no deal.

I'm willing to give this a shot, even if I think it can only end up poorly.

I remember liking the 1998 Godzilla movie. Of course, I was hella young, and haven't seen it since. If someone can make a Godzilla movie in the same vein as the Emmerich movie ("realistic", "what if Godzilla really existed"-type of movie), but good, I'd be very interested in that.

No man-in-suit, no deal.

Well, that's maybe not true. But I'm not sure even Gareth Edwards can save this movie.