Gryphon

For the similarly named creature, see Griffon.

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The Gryphon (グリフォン,   Gurifon^?) is an unmade alien kaiju from the unmade 1994 American Godzilla film, Godzilla.

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Appearance

The Gryphon has the body of a puma, the wings of a bat and a hydra-headed tongue composed of snakes.

Origin

As told in the script for the discarded 1994 film, the Gryphon was one of many bio-engineered superweapons created by an extraterrestrial civilization with the purpose of exterminating the life of entire worlds so that they could be colonized. These weapons, which resemble animate masses of metallic liquid in their base form, can assimilate the genetic material to obtain various forms. The weapon in the script uses the genetic material of bats to create Probe Bats, envoys which gather more genetic material and feed it to the weapon. The weapon uses the gathered material to become the Gryphon, a gigantic mutation which bears traits of bats, pumas, and snakes.

History

Godzilla (1994)

In the early script by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot, the Gryphon first arrived in Utah, United States in a meteorite, and begins to consume animals, sending Probe Bats to gather the genetic material from many different Earth animals to construct a new body for itself. Once it built its body, it went to New York to battle Godzilla, where it was destroyed.

A popular misconception is that Toho's agreement with TriStar forbade them from creating any monsters of their own. Toho apparently told TriStar that if "their" Godzilla was to battle another creature, it had to be a Toho creation. The two monsters Toho offered, Mothra and King Ghidorah, were too expensive, making TriStar decline. However, although Toho did offer Mothra and King Ghidorah to TriStar, this was not the real reason the film was scrapped. Sony's executives could not agree on the proposed budget for the film, eventually causing would-be director Jan De Bont to drop out of the project.

After several rewrites to the script and several unsuccessful attempts to renegotiate the budget and find a new director, TriStar brought in Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin to direct and produce the film, who accepted on the condition that they be allowed to discard the original script and handle the film however they wanted. Ironically, Emmerich and Devlin's 1998 Godzilla ended up being more expensive than the proposed budget for De Bont's film that Sony and he could not agree on.

Abilities

Claws

The Gryphon can attack with claws and teeth.

Electricity

The Gryphon can fire blasts of electricity from its wings.

Genetic absorption

The Gryphon can modify Probe Bats to collect animals for it, and absorb genetic material from different creatures to build a new body for itself.

Tongue

The Gryphon has a hydra-headed snake tongue in its mouth.

Gallery

Stan Winston and the model for The Gryphon

Gryphon Maquette 1

Gryphon Maquette 2

Trivia

• The role of the MUTOs in Legendary Pictures' Godzilla somewhat mirrors that of the Gryphon from the unmade 1994 film, even though the MUTOs are natural creatures.
• Several elements from the Gryphon was later reused for the kaiju Orga in the 1999 Godzilla film, Godzilla 2000: Millennium.

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