Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio had made a name for themselves with the script for Disney’s Aladdin (1992), as well as previous collaborations with Cary Woods. “The way agencies work, a client often has more than one agent,” Rossio explained. “For example, perhaps one agent for film, another that specializes in television. Or, one ‘junior’ agent and then a ‘senior’ agent to help out if needed. For a brief time, Cary Woods played that role for us — not our primary agent, more of an advisor” (Aiken, 2015).
The writers were uncertain at first. “Cary [Woods] called,” Ted Elliott related, “and said, ‘have you given any thought to your next project?’ and we said, ‘we’re looking around.’ He said, ‘well, I’ve got one word for you: Godzilla.’ And we said, ‘uh, do you have any other words?’ We actually turned the project down about two or three times because we weren’t sure we knew what to do with it.”
In the end, Woods’ insistence paid off, and a three-page treatment was produced by the writers. As the search for a director began, they started working on the script itself. “Our intent was to take it quite seriously,” Rossio said. “We wanted to create an experience that would involve some true feeling for the audience in terms of being mystified or scared or awe-inspired, as opposed to having more of a comic approach.” Elliott also added: “nobody’s doing the highland fling, let’s put it that way” (Gingold, 1995; Aiken, 2015).
Elliott and Rossio studied the Japanese films but eventually steered towards an original direction, rather than imitate existing storylines or characters. “I had been fortunate enough to see a non-reconstructed print of the original Godzilla,” Elliott said, “without Raymond Burr, and that’s really a good movie. I think that’s one of the best of those ’50s atomic monster movies. It’s as good as Them! or any of those. But when you see some of those sequels – what’s the one where Godzilla and Angilas are actually talking to each other? [Godzilla Vs. Gigan, 1972] It does get a little bizarre. And the little smoke-ring-blowing baby Godzilla, let’s face it: some of that stuff, it was a little wimpy. So we thought, what can you do with Godzilla?”
Inspired by Alan Moore’s take on on Swamp Thing, Elliott and Rossio opted to craft an entirely new story for Godzilla. “The original Swamp Thing is a great character,” Rossio said, “and Moore just kicked it up to another level as far as I’m concerned; and our idea was to do basically the Alan Moore version of Godzilla. That doesn’t mean Godzilla becomes some sort of tortured character, it’s to embrace the really wonderful stuff about Godzilla. There are many choices to make, and one of the choices that we made was not to do another step in the long line of Godzilla, which was an option, to have an awareness of everything that’s come before and play off of it. But our choice, and the studio was happy with this, was to say: this is the first Godzilla movie. It’s more of a remake of Godzilla than a sequel.”
The duo agreed that Godzilla should be neither overtly anthropomorphized nor too animalistic. “I think it would be a mistake to get totally away from some humanistic things,” Rossio said. “As an example, if a submarine happened to shoot something at him, and he got hit from behind and turned around, that’s right on the edge, giving him a look like he’s pissed; but it would also be a mistake to completely humanize him.”
Elliott also consulted with “a big Godzilla fan” – a friend of his – who gave him useful insight. “He made the observation that became, for me, the key to what the story should be,” Elliott remarked. “What he said was, Godzilla’s not really a good guy. He is incredibly territorial, he just doesn’t like other monsters; and since most of the time those other monsters threaten humanity, Godzilla seems to be the defender of the Earth. But no, in fact, he’s just pissing in his own territory, getting rid of anybody who interferes. And that, to me, meant that you could actually present Godzilla on the side of the angels but he could still be a monster.” Rossio added: “I felt you would not be happy going to a Godzilla film if you weren’t scared by Godzilla. There’s no getting around the fact that, if Godzilla’s in a fight people are probably going to root for Godzilla. But we felt it was really important that you be scared, that he be intimidating, that he be this force of nature.” In addition, “thematically, Godzilla could be a metaphor for death, for example, for death is something you can’t stop. It’s destructive, it’s powerful.”
Elliott and Rossio also felt that there ought to be more realistic elements in the monster. “we’ve been pushing that he is a reptilian dragon,” Elliott related. “One of the things that we’ve suggested is that he actually have a secondary eyelid for when he’s underwater, like a crocodile does. Just little things like that can make him seem more realistic. That’s such a weird word to use with Godzilla, but that’s the intent.”
The story involved a character with an Ahab-like obsession with Godzilla; after the killing of their partner, the film’s lead engaged in a revenge against the monster. Elliott explained: “our approach was to do a Moby Dick story, in which the scientist’s wife or husband is killed by Godzilla in his first appearance. Now this person wants to hunt Godzilla down and kill it. As it developed, it seemed more interesting for it to be a woman character whose husband was killed” (Ryfle, 1999; Aiken, 2015).
As per series tradition, a key element would be an opponent creature for Godzilla to fight. Originally, the writers wanted to use King Ghidorah in the script — only to find out that they could not. “Our contract specifically stated that we could use any monsters from the Godzilla family of monsters,” Elliott explained, “with the exception of Rodan, Mothra, or King Ghidorah. I’m sure Toho believes they can license those individually, so they didn’t include them in the Godzilla license — so we were left coming up with our own guy” (Ryfle, 1999). The creature was baptized the Gryphon (Elliott & Rossio, 1993).
The first script draft was finished on November 10, 1993, with subsequent drafts applying cosmetic changes while keeping the majority of the groundwork intact. Elliott and Rossio’s Godzilla was conceived as a living biological weapon devised by an ancient Earthly civilization to defend itself against the menace of alien colonizers, which send out probes to the planets they want to conquer. The probes use the genetic material they find to create monsters that ‘terraform’ – i.e. conquer – the planets before the aliens even arrive. Godzilla is thus supposed to represent an “immunitary system” that would be able to eradicate the menace in time. Due to human interference, the probe that arrives on Earth is allowed to generate the Gryphon, a giant hybrid monster that fights Godzilla in the story’s third act (Elliott and Rossio, 1993, 1994)
Essentially, the writers removed the original rhetoric of Godzilla as a ghost of the nuclear horror, not only changing the roots of the character but also consciously going against certain guidelines Toho had given TriStar. “One of the directives that we were given by Toho,” Rossio said, “one of the 10 Commandments, was that Godzilla’s origins must be the result of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Now, having said that, it doesn’t mean that we followed that precisely.” (Ryfle, 1999)
Script development was simultaneous with the search for a director. Several filmmakers were approached to direct Godzilla and many refuted. Among the first to do so – quite ironically – was Roland Emmerich. Chris Lee had suggested the director to Robert Fried and Cary Woods. At this time, the director found little interest in the project. “I was never a big Godzilla fan,” he said. “They were just the weekend matinees you saw as a kid, like Hercules films and the really bad Italian westerns. You’d go with all your friends and just laugh” (Strauss, 1998). Among the considered or approached directors figured Terry Gilliam, James Cameron, Ridley Scott, Joe Johnston, Robert Zemeckis, the Coen brothers, Barry Sonnenfeld, and Joe Dante (Aiken, 2015). Dante was skeptic towards the project, saying that “I don’t know what you do with that time-worn plot that can be ‘new’ enough to make it something special” (Jankiewicz, 1993).
Tim Burton also expressed interest in Godzilla, but his involvement was short-lived. “I know that Tim Burton was interested and was called in to pitch a version,” related Terry Rossio, “but there were concerns among some of the crew about how he would have handled the material. I actually think Tim Burton wouldn’t have been right for this movie. If he did a Godzilla film, he might intentionally make it campy or a guy in a rubber suit” (Ryfle, 1999).
The process became frustratingly long-drawn – by mid-1994, TriStar was still looking for a director. “You’d be surprised how many writers and directors passed on the project initially,” Fried said. “They just didn’t realize the commercial potential. And many simply lacked an inspired idea for how to make it, an approach to the material that was unique” (Strauss, 1998).
In June 1994, Woods and Fried’s production deal with Sony expired and the two decided not to renew their contracts, instead dedicating themselves to different projects with other studios. Despite that, they continued to collaborate on the films that had already started development – and just one month afterwards, Godzilla finally had a director attached: Jan De Bont, a Godzilla enthusiast since childhood. “I liked how [the Japanese Godzilla films] were made,” he commented. “There’s a bad side and a tiny little good side to Godzilla, and you have to show those sides. He was born out of an accident… a horrific situation that brought him to life. So he’s kind of fighting that, as well, and you have to feel that a little bit; and they surrounded him with so many creatures… Mothra, the three-headed Ghidorah… but if you see them together they all make sense; and I loved the way that the locations always played such a big part in the Godzilla movies. Destroying Tokyo in the first movie, that was one of the things Godzilla had to do because it was those people who basically created him and it was a little bit of payback. I loved all those parts… it makes me smile when you look at those old movies.” (Aiken, 2015)
De Bont had repeatedly asked to read the script, but had been initially ignored. However, the success of his 1994 film Speed proved to Sony that he could deliver a competent motion picture. “I had asked to read the script for many years,” De Bont said, “because I really loved Godzilla movies as a kid and thought a new version could be really great. Of course, they never wanted to give it to me because they wanted a so-called ‘A’ director. After Speed came out, all of a sudden they called and asked if I was interested in reading the script and I said, ‘yeah, I’ve been interested in reading the script for two years’.” De Bont described Elliott and Rossio’s script as “extremely exciting and very well-written. They have an incredible imagination” (Salisbury, 1995). Both the writers and producers were pleased with the choice (Ryfle, 1995).
Much of De Bont’s enthusiasm for the project stemmed from the possibility to bring Godzilla to life with state-of-the-art technology. In 1993, Jurassic Park revolutionized the world of special and visual effects with its realistic portrayal of living dinosaurs through the use of computer-generated and animated models – and it was that level of sheer realism that De Bont wanted. “They still make those films like that for a couple of million dollars in Japan, and there’s a small crowd that likes it that way,” he related, “but I think audiences are more sophisticated, and I would like to make Godzilla and his adversary a lot more realistic. I’m not going to make it less funny — there’s going to be a lot of humour in the movie — but it must be amazing to see a monster that’s that big, 250 feet tall, that looks real. And when you make it that convincing, you’re going to accept it, like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. That’s the way we want to do this movie — to have a real monster” (Salisbury, 1995).
De Bont met with Toho executives in Japan. “To get the movie made, Toho had to approve it,” he related. “I had to go there because they could say ‘no’ to Sony; and, rightfully, they worried about what would happen to their character. That was their livelihood; they had made over 20 of these movies which were very profitable in their own market.” De Bont met several members of Toho and filmmakers that had collaborated on Godzilla projects before. He was also greeted by a performer in a Godzilla suit. “I met the guy in the suit,” De Bont recalled, “he was at the studio when I arrived there… ‘Welcome Jan De Bont. We love that you love Godzilla.’ And it was really all fantastic. And then the lawyers at Sony started screwing it up.” De Bont convinced Toho, but had to do the same with the higher-ups at Sony. “The studio was very worried about a movie like that,” he continued, “the Japanese subject matter. There were endless meetings. [Executive vice president of production] Amy Pascal was the lead, and I don’t think she understood anything about Godzilla. She kept asking more people to come to the meetings and give their opinions. They always believe that nobody knows anything… they thought that nobody had heard of Godzilla. And they were very worried about that. So we wanted to clear the way with a really good script that they basically couldn’t refuse. That’s what we thought, anyway” (Aiken, 2015).
The Manhattan Project 