Trailer: Godzilla (Extended)

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Arleigh

We are just a little over a month away from the release of the Gareth Edwards reboot of the classic kaiju film Godzilla.

As studios are now seeming to get into the habit to help build up the hype for their big tentpole summer releases we have a new extended trailer from Warner Bros. to remind everyone that the Big Guy is seriously in need of a Snickers bar.

While it’s still speculation and this extended trailer doesn’t really show any clues or evidence I still believe that this latest iteration of Godzilla will have him fighting another monster and/or monsters.

Godzilla is set for a May 16, 2014 release date.

Trailer: Godzilla (Official Main)

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Arleigh

Last summer, we saw the return of the giant monster genre on Western screens with Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim. This summer we see the return of the King of the Monsters back on the big screen where he belongs.

Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla looks to bring back the King to lay massive destruction on humanity. The trailers haven’t shown whether Godzilla will be the villain of the film or back to fight other monsters. Either as protector or destroyer he will cause much collateral damage on the cities of mankind.

This latest trailer seems to intimate that Edwards’ film will actually be a sequel to the original 1954 film of the same name.

Godzilla will have a May 16. 2014 release date.

My ideas for a Pacific Rim Sequel

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Viktor VonGlum

This entry will be filled with spoilers. Please don’t read it if you haven’t watched Pacific Rim. The film ends with the destruction of the portal and the alien colonists. With the portal closed and the colonist dead, there are no more Kaijus. How can there be a sequel? I have a few ideas about how there can be Kaijus in a sequel, these ideas are based on anime and Kaiju films.

Each idea has the following elements in common:

A rogue element within the K-Science Lab creating the Kaiju
A variant of Newton “Newt” Geiszler’s Kaiju Drift (mind meld) device used to control the Kaijus
Genetically modified and mechanically enhanced brains to facilitate Drifting with human pilots
The hive mind trait of a Kaiju’s brain enable pilots to communicate with each other through a radio-telepathy frequency.

The first idea involves harvesting genetic samples of defeated Kaijus to grow clones for despots and madmen for the right price.

The second idea is derived from the millenium incarnation of Mecha-Godzilla. The rogue K-Science Lab technician would use kaiju skeletons to create the framework for bionic Kaijus. Each bionic Kaiju possesses Jaeger weaponry. A variant of this idea is to use the Mecha-Godzilla iteration from the animated series based on American Godzilla film. A Kaiju would be repaired and revived with Jaeger parts in the same vein as Deathlok (Marvel’s zombie cyborg soldier).

(Cyber-Zilla from Godzilla: The Series by Dino Master)

The another variant is based on an obscure anime called Argento Soma (where a giant monster, Frank, was created from the remains of fallen monsters). The scientist would cobble together a kaiju from the parts that remained after battle.

(Frank by ミヤマカラマ)

The third idea involves splicing creatures like reptiles, crustaceans, and arachnids with Kaiju DNA to create new biological weapons. In one extreme case, a human-Kaiju hybrid exists.

Kaiju concept art by Guy Davis

Trailer: Godzilla (Teaser)

Posted on December 10, 2013 by Arleigh

This past summer saw the return of kaiju to the film vernacular with the release of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim. The very same studios which released this film, Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures return next summer with a similar film, but this time with the return of the granddaddy of all kaiju: Godzilla.

Godzilla is a reboot of the kaiju franchise with Gareth Edwards trying to make up for the travesty that was Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla of over a decade ago. This time around it looks like (at least from the teaser) that Edwards is going the serious route with this reboot. It helps that he has quite the cast to play around with. This Godzilla will star Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ken Watanabe.

We also get a brief glimpse of Godzilla itself right near the end followed by the iconic monster scream that’s as recognizable as the tweets and twoots of R2-D2.

Godzilla will return to the big-screen on May 16, 2014.

Song of the Day: Gipsy Danger (by Ramin Djawadi)

Posted on July 23, 2013 by Arleigh

This latest “Song of the Day” will be the second of what will be a trifecta of my favorite tracks from the Pacific Rim soundtrack by composer Ramin Djawadi. The first one was the main theme from the film and featured Rage Against the Machine lead guitarist Tom Morello providing lead guitar work. This second track I’ve chosen is siply titled “Gipsy Danger”.

Where the main theme has been everyone’s favorite in the entire soundtrack it’s difficult not to enjoy the motif for the main character of the film. Let’s be honest and just admit to ourselves that the main character in Pacific Rim is the jaeger christened Gipsy Danger. The track which introduces her theme in the film actually precedes the main theme. We actually hear the “Gipsy Danger” theme right from the start of the film. It combines some of the hard rock melodies and chords from the film’s main theme, but also expanding on the deep bass tone (sounding like a fog horn blowing) that punctuates throughout this theme more than it did in the main theme. This deep sound I always thought of as the “monster arriving” musical cue. It appears not just when Gipsy Danger makes her initial appearance but also whenever a kaiju emerges from the ocean and makes landfall to cause destruction. It’s a sound cue similar to classic giant monster flicks from Japan that announces either Godzilla or one of his kaiju brethren which was followed-up by the iconic monster scream.

We get both the rock and roll and heroic sound from the main theme combined with the more ominous musical cue in this chosen track. It pretty much focuses on one of the film’s taglines about creating monsters to fight monsters. The Gipsy Danger jaeger is a monster in her own right. But then she’s our monster and we always have a fondness for monsters as long as it’s our own.