Just add water

Taking into account the numerous versions we’ve seen of Godzilla over six decades, it should be interesting to see what shape the latest remake will take when it stomps into theaters in May. Directed by Gareth Edwards and starring Bryan Cranston, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen, the update is said to be a rebirth of the classic by Toho, best known outside Japan as the producer of kaiju (monster) movies.

Edwards, a British independent filmmaker of modest origins, promised to get it right. “I guess I will say I’m highly aware — and everyone involved is incredibly aware — of everyone’s opinions on what this film has to do and what it has to be,” he said in a 2011 interview with the film news website Screen Rant.

NO-NONSENSE APPROACH

He was, of course, alluding to Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin’s 1998 version, which failed because it was “neither cheesy enough for ‘the fans’ nor committed to being truly scary and violent in a way that would resonate with modern audiences,” wrote Forbes. Edwards has approached Godzilla in exactly the same manner as 2010’s Monsters, the low-budget science fiction feature that marked his directorial debut.

A few projects have hinted at the potential of a no-nonsense approach to whimsical material. 2008’s Cloverfield, about an underwater creature awakened by submarines, came about when producer J.J. Abrams and his son visited a toy store in Japan and saw lots of Godzilla toys. Last year’s Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro’s tale of kaiju rising from the sea and behemoths crashing through skyscrapers, eventually became the 10th biggest film of 2013 at the global box office. Legendary Pictures, producer of Godzilla and Pacific Rim, has announced that they have reimagined the beast’s origin story as “a modern-day epic.”

‘IN THE WORKS’

Before plans fell through, a remake of Point Break was already in the works in 2009, with Twilight star Cam Gigandet leading the cast. Production lay dormant until Alcon Entertainment, the outfit behind The Wicker Man and Beautiful Creatures, got the ball rolling again recently, recruiting Gerard Butler and Australian actor Luke Bracey, who played Cobra Commander in GI Joe: Retaliation. Examiner.com reported last month that principle photography was set to begin.

Kathryn Bigelow, who went on to win a Best Director Oscar for The Hurt Locker, directed the 1991 original. The Guardian’s Joe Queenan says that the late Patrick Swayze’s performance as surfing gangster Bodhi “turned him into a true movie star.” Keanu Reeves, who co-starred as an FBI agent infiltrating a gang of bank-robbing surfers, has expressed reservations about the necessity of the recreation. “If they can find a way to do it that works out good, then God bless them,” he told BBC 5 Live.

POST-APOCALYPTIC FUN

NBC Universal’s Syfy cable network, the group to thank for trashy TV movies such as Sharktopus and Piranhaconda, is said to be closing in on Waterworld, one of the most notorious Hollywood bombs of all time. Set in the future, the 1995 movie was an epic vehicle for Kevin Costner, who took on the role of a mutant fish-man.

If all goes well, we’ll get either a Waterworld TV series or a brand-new full-length remake shortly. As Vulture says, “It’s not the worst setup for a show — post-apocalyptic, everyone’s wet all the time, there are action sequences — except that it would be based on a movie whose only lingering value is as a global punch line and, if you’re about 11 years old, a reasonably exciting Universal Studios stage-splash production.” 

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SPLASH!

Sofia Coppola is in negotiations to direct a live action version of The Little Mermaid. “Not much is known about how this take will compare to previous versions of the Hans Christian Andersen novel, which followed a mermaid who wished to become human after falling in love with a man she saved from drowning,” according to Variety.

The director, who most recently helmed The Bling Ring, has developed a distinct style, “the ‘show, don’t tell’ ever-repeated by English teachers and literary editors,” as Interview put it. If the project pushes through, it will be interesting to see how she reinterprets the age-old tale.