Empire Magazine Godzilla 2014 Subscription Cover

Via Empire Online

Looks interesting. I get a real Ray Harryhausen feel from the design for some reason.

I don't like the head, it just doesn't fit in with the rest of the body. The body has jaggy edges and is very rigid. The head is straight off of Barney. That nose is just so bad, not very reptilian.

Just like the original Godzilla!

Honestly that doesn't look like the actual movie design. The head isn't the same, there's about a third of the spikes, and it's proportions are off. It doesn't match the movie design at all.

In that regard, well put. Despite his frequent presentation as a dinosaur or prehistoric reptile, Godzilla has never been any single perfect creature, all the worse as "movie science" radiation is taken into account.

I've still got the Godzilla Encounter footage and can reconcile the sharp-angled snout, flattened brow, and cheeks to the Empire cover design. The Jakks 24" toy head is a little more different, but its sparse amount of spines that others attributed to some being shortened/removed for safety reasons is actually in line with Godzilla's back here. Other than the heavy darkness of the Empire cover obscuring spines and skin detail, this cover fits the Godzilla tail poster. The neck does look different, but this may be thanks to the style of the image and the awkward angle, and the arms look more muscular. The most glaring differences I see are when Godzilla is compared to the leaked headshot poster and the shopped-looking images seen with the book-and-toy and the paper plates, and that could be explained as pre-final art to fill the necessary evil of licensing a design you haven't been ready to officially reveal until now, and even that art isn't wildly off-base. Course, this could in itself be pre-final art.

We probably don't have very much longer to wait and see the legitimate final product.

I heard that might be an early maquette (sp?) with photoshop of course. Before they decided to give him larger proportions. It even looks to match the body of that more rounded croc-face Godzilla everyone thought was final.

Iron Man didn't come out looking like his original. Modern Godzilla should look cool too.

That'll be a subjective thing. I guess they chose to stick to the more traditional design because their last attempt at a redesign didn't work out that well.

For any Londoners reading the boards - apparently Gareth Edwards is going to be in Forbidden Planet on Friday signing copies of this.

I'd go if it were't such short notice