One of the things we love most about Godzilla director Gareth Edwards is his unabashed enthusiasm for the creaky creature features with which he grew up.
The director's canny handling of the genre became apparent in his micro-budget debut feature Monsters. The film famously held back a full reveal of the creatures until the end, instead focusing much of its attention on two humans adrift in the now alien landscape of post-apocalyptic Mexico.
Now however, Edwards has a budget in excess of $100m to play with, not to mention the heritage of one of the most famous movie monsters of all time. Yet for all Godzilla's expensive bells and whistles, the director says it's rooted in a love of the films he watched as a child.
"Late every Friday on TV, they started showing these creature features, the Toho movies from the 60s and 70s," Edwards recalls in an interview with visual effects blog Popular Mechanics. "I was a massive, massive fan. I just devoured anything sci-fi, especially things from the 50s, 60s, and 70s."
Even so, the director says that the original Japanese Godzilla films didn't come until later. "I thought I’d hit my limit of all the movies you could ever get from that genre," he says. "Then suddenly I realized that there’s this whole new world of Japanese sci-fi and fantasy." The director adds: "I didn’t really tell my mates that I stayed up late on a Friday and watched a Godzilla movie and recorded it."
Yes, it appears that a genuine Godzilla fan has been put in charge of this mega-budget colossus – and frankly we can't wait to see the results.
Godzilla is released on 16 May.
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