Gryphon

Do not confuse with Griffon.

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

Design

The Gryphon's design varies depending on concept art, however the original script mentions the monster has the body of a puma, the wings of a bat and a hydra-headed tongue composed of snakes. Stan Winston's model for the creature includes most of these features, however also includes hooves on the back legs much like that of a horse or cow, as well as large clawed hands on the frontal legs with spikes along the fingers. The head also bears three crest on the back.

History

Godzilla (1994)

In the early script by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot, the Gryphon was created by an alien race to become a doomsday monster to wipe out the population on Earth to colonize the planet for themselves. The monster first arrived in Utah, United States in a meteorite, sending Probe Bats to gather the genetic material from many different Earth animals to construct a new body for itself. Once it built it's body, it went to New York to battle Godzilla, a monster created by an ancient civilization to fight back against this monster, 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 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

The Gryphon can attack with claws and teeth.
The Gryphon has a hydra-headed snake tongue in its mouth.
The Gryphon can fire blasts of electricity from its wings.
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.