Stan Winston, R.I.P.

[InvisibleWolfMan]

Truly, a man made of iron can never rust away...





















www.aintitcool.com/node/37106

[The Curmudgeon]

Gutted. Really, truly gutted to hear this news.

I didn't know Stan created the Iron Man suit for the movie, but thinking about how effortlessly cool it looked it really doesn't surprise me.

When you look at the list of films he helped create, and I'm not talking script or direction - I'm talking the characters and creatures he helped mould into popular culture, it's almost impossible to think of modern cinema without him. It's easy to say he's one of the biggest influences on THIS website. A site devoted to the likes of Terminator, Aliens, Predator and lesser known but still fantastic movies like Monster Squad.

In the days of CGI bullshit replacing genuine art and special effects, Stan Winston was an all too rare pioneer, and the fact he was still creating amazing costumes like the grey Iron Man armour (and was busy working on Terminator 4) is tragic. This wasn't some old hand put out to grass - this was a guy still shaping the characters and movies WE obsess over.

And it absolutely SUCKS that he's gone. R.I.P Stan.

[trashcanman]

[Benjamin Haines]

I'm at a loss for words on this. I haven't felt this saddened by the passing of somebody whom I've admired all my life since the death of Steve Irwin.

Rest in peace, legend.

[Benjamin Haines]

Here's the maquette which Stan designed for the aborted American Godzilla project from 1994 (which was written by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot and was to have been directed by Jan De Bont).

GODZILLA as envisioned by Stan Winston






In the movie, Godzilla would have fought another giant monster called the Gryphon. I don't have any images of Winston's maquette for that on hand at the moment (I think I've only ever seen two pics of it), but here's the Gryphon's "probe bat", likewise designed by Winston.





It's such a shame that this project was terminated, and an even bigger shame when you consider what ended up being produced instead and released in 1998. Seeing Stan Winston's Godzilla on the silver screen would have been a veritable dream come true.

[The Curmudgeon]

od, that's depressing. As one of my all-time most disappointing films, the news that, just four years before it, the sort of Godzilla film every one of us wanted was in production, with someone like Winston designing the monsters..

That's a real shame. I had never heard of that before, Benjamin. Why did the project get pulled?

[Benjamin Haines]

De Bont wanted a budget of over $100 million to work with for the movie, and Sony really wasn't willing to spend that much on it. When De Bont left the project late in '94, Sony just put it on the backburner. Once Independence Day became a huge hit in '96, Sony decided to approach Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich to helm the film, and they agreed to do it with a budget of just $65 million. Devlin tossed out Rossio and Elliot's script and wrote a new screenplay himself, and they passed on Stan Winston's maquette in favor of having creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos construct THIS atrocious maquette of what they wanted Godzilla to look like. The rest is, unfortunately, history.

You can read Rossio and Elliot's original script for the movie here. Long live Stan Winston's Godzilla!

[The Curmudgeon]

So would Godzilla have been CGI or a model or a guy in a suit or what? If Winston designed the Godzilla (much, MUUUCH better looking than GINO), what were the original ideas? Was it going to be the same sort of effects used for Jurassic Park?

[Benjamin Haines]

I couldn't tell you there; the effects work never made it past the pre-production stage of storyboarding and maquette-building. Had the project continued through with Stan Winston and his studio remaining involved, it probably would have been along the lines of Jurassic Park as far as SFX were concerned. No doubt CGI would have played a big factor, but I'm sure Winston would have wielded some suitmation magic in there (there actually was a bit in what came to be with GINO'98 with the Baby Zillas). With Winston involved, you can bet good money that he would have constructed some giant-sized Godzilla animatronics that would have been featured prominently in the film. Just look at what Winston did with the Queen Alien and T-Rex animatronics and imagine his Godzilla maquette brought to life like that.

[Benjamin Haines]

I found a photo of the Gryphon (Godzilla's opponent in '94 Rossio/Elliot script) designed by Winston.

[The Curmudgeon]

It's quite hard to make out, but he looks a pretty decent villain to me. I don't know if I like the little baby wings on his back, but his claws look bad-ass.

This will go down in history as a "What If".