Opening as it does with what seems like a radioactive incident at a Japanese nuclear power plant, it definitely feels as though Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla reboot has a very real contemporary resonance distinct from its origins in post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki nuclear anxiety. This, as Edwards exclusively tells SciFiNow, is all a coincidence.
“There’s various ways to go,” Edwards explains, “when you list what makes a Godzilla movie two of those things that come up are radiation and Japan, and so once the events happened that were horrific for real in Japan, we had to be very careful and sensitive not to do something that would be considered insensitive to what happened there.
“Our film is not based on anything to do with Fukushima, it’s in a fictional city outside of Tokyo and happens 15 years ago, but that said it does deal with the genuine problem of around the world we have these nuclear power plants and we benefit from it.
“It’s an amazing thing,” Edwards continues, “but when it does go wrong it really does go wrong in a big way, and I guess our film is about we have this nuclear Pandora’s box that we opened a long time ago and we still police the world about – you can’t have it, you can have it.
“Like the ‘what if?’ of this film is ‘what if creatures existed that needed to feed on this stuff’, so having it became a a really bad thing rather than a good thing, that it’s considered a bad thing.”
Godzilla is due in cinemas 16 May 2014. You can read our massive director interview in SciFiNow issue 92 and buy the 1954 Godzilla on DVD for £10.83 at Amazon.co.uk.
