“He’s so fat, I laughed.” –Japanese commenter
Warner Bros is hoping that director Gareth Edwards’ big-budget update of Godzilla will loom large over the box-office in two weeks, but in the opinion of fans in the venerable kaiju’s native country he may be looming a little too large. While early trailers kept the titular monster mostly out of sight, the new Godzilla is all over the new TV spots, and the verdict from some Japanese fans? He needs to go on a diet.
While only the radically-redesigned creature “Zilla” from Roland Emmerich unsuccessful 1998 attempt at a reboot could be called “skinny,” this new Godzilla is unquestionably the heftiest looking; with a thick neck almost twice as wide at the base as his head and smaller forward-set arms that constrast starkly with the more human-like (relative) proportions and upper-body structure familiar from the original Japanese features. At least one fan has already nicknamed the Americanized version “Godzilla Deluxe,” a reference to an overweight Japanese TV star.
It should be noted that the Japanese Godzilla has traditionally been portrayed using suits designed to incorporate the proportions of an actor inside, while Edwards’ creature was realized through CGI. The film, which stars Brian Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen and Ken Watanabe, opens in the U.S. May 16th.
Source: AFP
