Designing Ready Player One's Mechagodzilla

Most of the licensed characters in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One are computer-generated extras, showing up in a shot or two without comment. One of the biggest exceptions, both literally and figuratively, is Mechagodzilla, who corporate baddie Nolan Sorrento pilots in the final battle. It takes on the Iron Giant and a RX-78-2 Gundam in grand fashion, spewing blue flames and launching finger missiles as Alan Silvestri’s fantastic Ifukube cover blares.

Mechagodzilla also stands out because it has an all-new appearance, in contrast to every other licensed character in the film. If you guessed notoriously-fickle Toho had something to do with that, you’d be right. After a piece of concept art bearing his signature started making the rounds online, Toho Kingdom staff member Joshua Sudomerski contacted Jared Krichevsky to ask about the process of creating the latest version of the magnificent machine. Read what he learned after the jump.

Regarding why Kiryu or another pre-existing design wasn't used, he could only assume it was due to legal reasons. He actually submitted his own original MG designs early on, but was requested to make some that were closer to the "classic" (Showa) incarnations. As expected, Toho had to approve of everything sent in, so he had to find the happy medium between something Steven Spielberg wanted and something Toho would permit. He also mentioned how Digital Domain did a lot of work when it came to making the final design “pretty different looking.”

Brought up to him how people have noticed the similarities between his design to Noriyoshi Ohrai's 1993 poster Mechagodzilla, and it turns out it wasn't entirely unfounded – surprisingly, it was per Toho's request! They forwarded Ohrai's work to him and said, “make it like this.”

The late Noriyoshi Ohrai illustrated the advance poster for Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II before the script was finalized, working from Shinji Nishikawa’s concept art of a “Union Mechagodzilla” who could split into multiple machines. It’s a striking design, harkening back to the Showa version much more than the airplane toilet we wound up with, and Ready Player One is actually the second time it’s been resurrected lately. Last September, Tamashii Nations released a Union Mechagodzilla figure as a tribute to Ohrai.

Toho’s aversion to “canon” Mechagodzillas is a reversal of its policy when IDW was publishing Godzilla comics. (Matt Frank got away with an original Godzilla design in Godzilla: Legends #1, but only as a cameo.) They’re as inscrutable as ever. I figured that Warner Brothers leaned on Krichevsky as well, given how much his Mechagodzilla’s silhouette resembles the Legendary Godzilla whose films they distribute, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case.

In-universe, however, I’m sticking with my headcanon that Sorrento’s Mechagodzilla hails from a MonsterVerse movie released after Godzilla vs. Kong. All those complaints about Ready Player One freezing pop culture thirty years in its past are null and void if we accept there are references in it we can’t understand yet!