Godzilla has always risen from
the depths of the ocean,
but something that we had never
seen before in a Godzilla film
was where he goes when
he returns to the ocean.
I saw that as an opportunity.
For the first time in
60-plus years of Godzilla films,
let's see where the guy goes
to hang out and rejuvenate.
Doctor?
Launch probes.
Designing Godzilla's lair was one of
the reasons I wanted to do the show
because it hasn't been seen before,
and it was a very interesting task
to decide what that was going to be.
Range 1,000 metres.
Obviously it's deep, deep underwater.
Steady.
And then you wound up in this
graveyard of all of these ships
and aircraft and all that from the
beginning of time, it seemed like.
And after you passed an
ancient Norse god's boat,
you rounded a corner and suddenly
you were in the remains
of a ruined city underwater, but
it was a full-fledged, huge city
with all of the sculptures
and bas-reliefs
and all the totems
that you would imagine.
But it's the kind of
place that you would think
would be above ground as opposed
to underground, and the backstory is
the cultures of the world were
in harmony with the monsters
and they were also in
harmony with each other.
So, no matter where you went in
the world at that period of time,
you would see a culture that was
consistent with the other cultures
in the different parts of the globe,
completely unlike how it is for us.
Godzilla fans have
very high expectations
and demands for King Ghidorah,
and he's just as
beloved as Godzilla himself.
You literally have two kings
squaring off against each other.
That's the Superbowl
to a Godzilla fan.
Any fan needs to be able to see it
and say, 'That's King Ghidorah,'
but at the same time,
you want that modern,
realistic interpretation of that.
Whether it was visual
design of the creature
or his performance, his sound,
we had to be willing to push
the boundaries a little bit.
Ghidorah, the one who is many.
He's not part of our natural order
and he's not meant to be here.
A false king.
There are certain traits,
certain strands of DNA,
that have persisted in every
incarnation of the character
from his first introduction
back in the '60s.
Monster stories have
been around forever.
The earliest story we have
is the Epic of Gilgamesh,
and even in the Epic of Gilgamesh,
there's a monster.
Gilgamesh has to fight
a creature called Humbaba.
And ever since then,
religion and literature and folklore
has been filled with monsters.
I think it's a way
in which different cultures
process and handle their own fears.
Monsters represent the collective
fears of the unknown.
We come up with
these different monsters,
whether it be Godzilla or Kong,
because we know that there's
something else out there
that is stronger than us,
that we aren't really in control
as much as we think we are.
Humans have always needed
ways of exploring
and responding to their primal fears,
and that's just as true today
as it was centuries ago.
The fear of monsters is so
prevalent that it makes one think
that it might be hard-wired
into the human mind.
We see it in
little children early on,
we see it all over the planet,
so it looks like the kind
of thing that might be
part of the architecture of
human thinking and cognition.
It might be in the brain,
so to speak.
