MoviePilot Interviews Director and Cast of Godzilla 2014

Speculation continues to heat up for Godzilla 2014

"You want to see Godzilla, and you want to see him fight something else." --Gareth Edwards, Director of Godzilla 2014

Melissa Molina of MoviePilot.com has just posted a terrific interview with the director and a few cast members from Godzilla 2014. Not many spoilers, the interview mostly covers their creative approach to the movie. Read an excerpt of a few of the best responses below:

How did you approach the effects for Godzilla?

Gareth Edwards: I tried not to view them as effects and go “Ok. This really happened. There really are giant monsters. What would be the best story to tell, that we can think of?”, and it always involves humans. So you come up with those characters, and try to create that story. I don’t separate the two in my mind. You just picture the movie. What was so refreshing was that we would shoot scenes that sometimes had a creature in them, sometimes didn’t, and we’d desperately try to make it work from an emotional point of view, on its own. You guys had the advantage of this, but we’d go in the evening, and kind of review scenes with the digital effects company, and they’d start putting the special effects in, and I’d go “Oh my god. I totally forgot that this whole other layer was going on with this.” We were painstakingly worried about the characters, and their journey, and suddenly, on top of that, there’s this spectacle that’s going to be invented in the whole film. It makes you feel really good, because we wanted to get it right from the character side of things.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson: The thing that I found really interesting around a film that’s a special effects movie - my idea was that you’re going to be in a studio filming these green screen monsters. There was, maybe, a couple of days of that, but the majority of time we would go film on location. It gave it just a whole other depth, and you forget about it. We’d be on location with destruction everywhere, people were injured, and it came to life. It felt natural and realistic. The way we shot it, it’s just kind of with you on this journey, from our perspective point of view. When you do get a glimpse of Godzilla, you’re looking up from a car window, or from a military helicopter, so you really feel, as an audience, that you’re totally involved in it. That you’re on this mad roller coaster journey with us.

Elizabeth Olsen: It’s kind of funny to go “Ok. So in that corner up there is this thing. Is it like a unicorn, or like a spider?” It’s like you’re playing hot lava as a kid, or something. You’re trying to go deep into your imagination, like “Yeah, that’s a monster! It’s going to kill me unless I run fast!” So it’s fun.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson: There were times as well that it’s hard to get the imagination of something, but it is a frightening prospect. We would have a scene where we’d see something happen from one of the creatures and Gareth would play something on the microphone so we’d get the sound of Godzilla, or somebody playing around with the special effects. That was really great, to kind of hear something. You’re envisioning it through your consciousness, and then you’re hearing something through the giant speakers around you. Sometimes he would do it without you knowing it, and it would give a totally different layer.

Gareth Edwards: It was on my iPhone. I would desperately try to get to “this clip” with “this sound” and go “That’s not it. That’s not it. That’s not it. “ and they’d go “You’re wasting camera time” and I’d go “I gotta find that noise!”.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson: There was one time where it was, like, a walrus meets a tiger, meets a hippo farting. [Laughs] It was so bizarre…

Elizabeth Olsen teases a small detail about her character and Bryan Cranston gives us a good laugh.

Elizabeth, can you tell us about the character you play, and whether she is suited or unsuited to face what she is facing?

Elizabeth Olsen: I feel like my character’s role serves a purpose in the hands on interaction of chaos in the city, and how you deal with that, as well as having a child who needs to not be part of the chaos. I think that’s the perspective you get, and what ends up happening after these things occur, and there’s an overflowing hospital, and people have to get from point A to point B, so that’s the practical part of it. It references any time some sort of natural disaster happens in a city. There’s a real truth to it, as opposed to a fantastical thing.

Because Godzilla is such a legendary creature, and on top of that, this film is highly action driven, what were some of the biggest challenges on the set of this film?

Bryan Cranston: Getting Godzilla to come out of his trailer. He was an ass. He was a real a--hole. [Laughs] He’d come out, he would eat all of the food on craft services, he would wreck everything, but boy, when the cameras rolled… boy he was good! That’s why they keep making Godzilla movies. [Laughs]

For the whole interview go to Moviepilot Exclusive: Gareth Edwards And The Cast Reveal More Information About The Godzilla Remake