Just a day back I had posted info on how the upcoming Godzilla Criterion
Blu-Ray was already attracting negative attention due to the different Godzilla design used within the inner packaging.(See that article here, as well as the leaked picture above).
Now Criterion has issued an official response on the Facebook post that started this all, which I will post here in its entirety:
"Hey everybody, regarding the Godzilla artwork:
Artist Bill Sienkiewicz used the original, '54 Godzilla as reference for his artwork, but all of the renderings are nevertheless, in the end, Bill's personal vision of the creature, albeit one that is Toho approved. We can see why some viewers consider it to be more akin to the 2002 incarnation of Godzilla because the back plates seem more sharp-pointed and jagged than the curved tips of the '54 original, for example, or the tail tapers more to a point, but those plates don't exactly mirror the ones from the 2002-3 monster either.
We pushed Bill to address Godzilla as a force of destruction, an elemental being, to step away from a rendering that would be purely literal and fetishistic in detail, and think he came up with a terrific interpretation. This is also why there is color in the packaging art. Although the movie is a beautifully-photographed B&W work, we kept leaning towards the elemental aspects of fire and water and wanted the color palette to evoke that."
So...Criterion is not really stating guilty or not-guilty here...but rather focusing on an artistic interpretation done by artist Bill Sienkiewicz and approved by Toho?
Still it baffles me why this manner was even approached. Did they not realize the controversy that would arise from Godzilla purists?
Again I'm not really sour over this decision. I always enjoy artistic interpretations if they make sense, and I can kind of see Criterion's angle here.
By the way, if you haven't heard of Bill Sienkiewicz before here are some great examples of his very popular artwork:
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