The upcoming Godzilla reboot, which is coming to us from director Gareth Edwards, is starting to assemble quite the cast. Today, respected actor Ken Watanabe (Inception, The Last Samurai) is joining the film, which already boasts a stellar line up that consists of Juliette Binoche, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and David Strathairn. Like we said, it’s pretty impressive, don’t you think?
No specifics on Watanabe’s role have been revealed just yet but seeing as production began today, we should get more info shortly. Honestly, no matter what part he ends up taking on I’m just happy to see him in the film. I really like Watanabe and seeing another talented actor join the cast gives me more faith in this one.
Admittedly, Edwards is still the only piece of the puzzle that could be a cause for concern. Jumping from a film like Monsters (which was quite good) to a mega blockbuster like this is something that would be challenging for any filmmaker, let alone one with as little experience as Edwards has.
That being said, to have assembled such a stellar cast, the studio obviously has faith in their director, so perhaps we should as well. After all, Monsters was a great film and showed that the director knows what he’s doing when it comes to the genre.
While we don’t have many plot details just yet, we do know that Edwards hopes to take a “grounded, realistic approach to the classic monster” and will try to answer the question “what would it be like if all of this really happened?” To me that sounds pretty appealing and I’m interested to see how he pulls it off.
Godzilla opens on May 16th, 2014. What do you think of Watanabe joining the film? Are you a fan of his work?