By Brent McKnight | 7 years ago

While many of us are excited for Gareth Edwards’ upcoming Godzilla reboot, Roland Emmerich’s 1998 incarnation has left us feeling a little gun shy. After all, that was pretty much just a dinosaur running around New York City, and one that fluctuated wildly in size through the film to boot. What the King of the Monsters looks like has been a prime concern to us, and while yesterday brought us a promising, though truncated, first glimpse, today gives us an even better look at the creature design.

These photos are from the Godzilla Experience—which has taken over parts of San Diego’s Gaslamp District during Comic-Con, and made the city look like a monster-ravaged Tokyo—should give Godzilla fans something to smile about. He looks like, well, Godzilla. Which is to say he looks like a big green lizard with a spine-covered back, a ferocious snarl, and he resembles a guy in big rubber suit. These models look like the toys some of us were lucky enough to possess back in the day. I remember one that shot fire out of its mouth.

The prospect of placing Godzilla in Edwards’ hands is an interesting, and exciting one. He doesn’t have a lot of experience under his belt—only one feature film on his resume, 2010’s Monsters—and nothing anywhere near this scope, though he may be an ideal person to balance large-scale creature effects with story and character. He knows when to keep monsters hidden and when to unveil them with the greatest impact. Sure some of this was due to budget constraints his last time out—he did all the creature effects himself on his Mac—but the movie is definitely about more than just monsters. And as much as we want to see the high-tech digital equivalent of a guy in a foam suit stomping through cardboard buildings, it would be nice to have some other elements to fall back on as well. Pacific Rim only had a little story, and it was still totally rad.

From the look of all these pictures, the folks at Legendary, producers of Godzilla, went all out. There are flipped cars, radioactive warning signs, and all sorts of stuff for you to gawk at. I want someone to climb under that car and pretend it crushed them to death. There’s even a monster themed restaurant. I wonder if they serve real Godzilla meat burgers, or if fake it? Either way, this event looks like a blast.

Godzilla stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, David Straithairn, and Ken Watanabe, and stomps into movie theaters May 16, 2014.