"Godzilla" director Gareth Edwards revealed that the new film is inspired by the original 1950's Toho movies.
During an interview with io9, Edwards said that he was working alongside Toho studios and therefore needed its approval for the designs of the film. He explained: "We went through all of the previous Godzillas [for inspiration]. We did hundreds of designs. I wanted to experiment with everything. We're making this film in partnership with [Godzilla franchise owner] Toho Studios, so they had signoff on a lot of the designs."
"The way I tried to view it was to imagine Godzilla was a real creature and someone from Toho saw him in the 1950s and ran back to the studio to make a movie about the creature and was trying their best to remember it and draw it," he continued.
The director also said that he saw Godzilla as an antihero and not a deadly and horrible creature. Edwards explained, "That's the fascinating thing. Godzilla's an antihero. He started as the enemy and in the later films became the good guy. In our film, it's not black or white. I wanted people to be afraid, and have that reaction. You wouldn't be cheering if he really turned up, and we tried to keep it that way."
He also admitted that he tried to keep some of themes from the original 1950's film. "Godzilla is a metaphor for Hiroshima in the original movie. We tried to keep that, and there are a lot of themes from '54 movie that we've kept. To me, if all we did was just have monsters smashing things up, then the film would be pointless. The great thing about the 1954 Godzilla is that beyond the spectacle and epic enjoyment of seeing giant monsters smashing a city, there's another layer to the movie that you could take or leave," said Edwards.
"Godzilla" tells the story of a giant radioactive monster called Godzilla that awakens from its sleep to wreak destruction on its creators.The reboot stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson ("Kick-Ass"), Elizabeth Olsen ("Martha Marcy May Marlene"), Juliette Binoche ("The English Patient"), David Strathairn ("Good Night and Good Luck"), Bryan Cranston ("Breaking Bad"), Ken Wattanabe ("Batman Begins"), and Sally Hawkins ("Blue Jasmine") and is written by Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham. Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures will release it on May 16, 2014 nationwide.