We have talked about the history of the unmade 1994 Godzilla movie and how it turned into the Godzilla movie that was released in 1998. On Saturday March 5th, the Stan Winston School of Character Arts posted photos of the process in making the maquette of the unused Godzilla'94 design for the unmade Tristar Godzilla.
To give you a bit of background, Tristar obtained the rights from Toho Co. to use Godzilla for the first American film back in 1992 and the original director attached to the project, Jan De Bont, was slowly being phased out of the project due to Sony wanting to cut costs and Sony traded down from Jan De Bont to Roland Emmerich to direct the movie. If you want to learn more about the history behind the unmade Godzilla movie go to my blog post titled 20 Years Of Zilla: Part 1.
It doesn't show anything new, but it is really cool to see the process of how the maquette was made and how much detail was put into this design. The "Stan-Goji" (in reference to the famous creature designer Stan Winston) has a similar leathery skin that you normally see with alligators and crocodiles and I really love this approach as it makes this version of Godzilla look life-like. You can even see some similarities to Legendary's Godzilla such as Godzilla's posture and parts of the chest and belly area. I am not too crazy about the face as this Godzilla looks sort of like a duck. Overall, this Godzilla would have had a very similar design to the Legendary Godzilla and it is a shame we did not get to see this version on screen.
Now, we have seen so many pictures of this maquette and dissected this design inside and out that it now makes me wonder if there are other designs that went unused through out the design process for Godzilla or even the unused monster, the Gryphon. I am sure there is art work hiding in a vault somewhere that had other designs that would lead up to the final designs for this Godzilla and the Gryphon. I would really love to see what other designs Stan Winston and his studio had come up with just to see what kind of ideas they had. For instance, we got to see all of the different designs in the art book for Godzilla (2014) and saw one Godzilla design that looked like a fish, another one that looked like the Heisei Godzilla, and one design that had Godzilla's face with more dragon-like features. So you could see the thought process of how Gareth Edwards and the design team were picking and choosing designs that worked and combined them all together to become Legendary's Godzilla. That's the kind of art work I want to see from Godzilla'94.
Maybe in the future, we will get to see this Godzilla design on the big screen along with the Gryphon. It is only a matter of IF Stan Winston's studio would ever want to revisit Godzilla again in the future after Legendary is done with the Monsterverse series. OR what the design studio could do is add the Gryphon to the Monsterverse either in the upcoming Apple TV series or in a movie and they could do a similar story where the Gryphon crashes to Earth, Monarch tries to contain it and failed, and so Godzilla arrives to bring balance once again. Only time will tell.
What are your thoughts on the newly revealed photos? Does it make you wish we had got to see this design in action or are you happy with we got now? Would you like to see other concept art and designs that lead to the final design? Leave a comment in the comments section of your thoughts on the photos. Also, check out my post 20 Years Of Zilla: Part 1 to get the whole history on Tristar's Godzilla and my review on GODZILLA (98). Make sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Minds, MeWe, and Gab to stay up to date for more news, reviews, and discussions.