New Godzilla film announced for 11/032023

[Dai]

Overall proportions are quite reminiscent of the Final Wars poster. It's probably the most conservative Godzilla design we've seen in the last 20 years, and I'm fine with that. This feels like a look we could see defining Godzilla across various marketing campaigns for the next several years without it seeming out of place anywhere. Shin's design was perfect for that movie, but that walking nightmare was a bizarre fit for all the cameos it made in other franchises and adverts.

[Benjamin Haines]

YES! I am digging everything about this!

SciFi Japan posted the official press release direct from Toho, including Japanese and English versions of both the poster and the teaser: https://www.scifijapan.com/godzilla-toho/godzilla-2023

I love the title! I really was expecting them to go with Godzilla Zero, considering how that movie countdown on Twitter started at No.29 and went down to No.1 but then they skipped past 0 and went straight to -1. Godzilla Minus One is a cool and unique English title and I like how the Japanese title stylizes it as ゴジラ -1.0.

The press release explains the title's meaning: "The setting of the film is a postwar Japan. Japan has been reduced to zero, and Godzilla appears to strike the country down to a negative (minus)."

It looks like they're going for a very actively destructive take on Godzilla. I'm glad that Toho is continuing that broad approach while Legendary keeps bringing different takes on superhero Godzilla with monster brawls. This new design might be my favorite Godzilla redesign from 2014 to the present, which I'm surprised to say because I've never liked the Always 2 design and I think The Ride's design is just decent. The tweaks they made for this movie's design were just what it needed. The head and the arms blend elements of the Heisei and G2000 suits, the build of the torso is like Legendary's designs, the legs and hips are reminiscent of Shingoji, the tail just screams Heisei, and the dorsal fins are huge and jagged like G2000 but with more traditional, Showa-esque shapes to them. It's a fantastic redesign that evokes so many classic looks while still being distinctly new and modern.

Here's the completed poster countdown graphic: https://i.imgur.com/jhJZfTv.jpg

[Kailem]

Even more images of the new design, as a statue of him has just been installed in Toho's Hibiya cinema:

https://twitter.com/hanamaruki_1/status/1679652910500818944?s=20

[lhb412]

I'm just fascinated by the prospect of Toho... releasing this film in the US themselves? Seemingly a standard movie release and not some limited engagement Fathom thing? This is entirely new territory we find ourselves in.

[emeGoji]

The premise behind the story is so intriguing, it's probably the most hyped I've been for a Godzilla film since 2014. Never thought I would see Toho do a Godzilla period piece, so cool. Goji's design is also rad, love the Heisei influences.

Also, nice to see a few familiar faces are still keeping the lights on in this place.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ The oldest posts on this iteration of the board are from 2003, back when Godzilla x Mothra x Mechagodzilla: Tokyo SOS was the next upcoming movie and it didn't yet have an abbreviated English title. Now it's 2023 and we're still here posting about Godzilla Minus One and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.

Toho is indeed distributing Godzilla Minus One in North American theaters themselves for the first time ever. At just 28 days after the Japanese release, that also makes this the quickest turnaround time for a North American release of any movie in the franchise's history, even quicker than Shin Godzilla. Let's hope for a similar UK release!

[lhb412]

^ And I thought two months for Shin Kamen Rider was fast!

[emeGoji]

[quote]^ The oldest posts on this iteration of the board are from 2003, back when Godzilla x Mothra x Mechagodzilla: Tokyo SOS was the next upcoming movie and it didn't yet have an abbreviated English title. Now it's 2023 and we're still here posting about Godzilla Minus One and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.
[/quote]

I remember those days, yearly Goji films, always news and rumors to talk about, good times.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ In hindsight, even the hiatus between Final Wars and G'14 just feels like a continuation of the good old days for this board. Those years were MZ's heyday of discussion activity between Peter Jackson's King Kong, Gamera the Brave, Media Blasters releasing so many classic Toho films on DVD, Classic Media releasing their kaiju films on deluxe DVDs, Cloverfield, and eventually the years of hype leading up to Pacific Rim and Legendary's Godzilla.

Speaking of Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro approves of the new Godzilla design!

Twitter post: https://twitter.com/RealGDT/status/1680740735275139072
Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/p6ypifu.png

[Kailem]

The hype building up to Final Wars back in the day was so much fun. Regardless of how you ultimately felt about the movie (and I've always personally really liked it), it was awesome to see all those promo pics and videos of so many classic Showa monsters that, in many cases, hadn't been seen since their original debuts. Not to mention the occasional fake photoshop jobs of Monster X with an Alien Queen's head crest on.

And yeah, the hype for Cloverfield was a lot of fun too. "I saw it, it's a lion! It's huge!" Good times.

[emeGoji]

^ The Final Wars hype was unreal. Those promo pics of all the kaiju were so cool. And then those first impressions started trickling in online from Japanese screenings, some calling it a parody of the whole franchise. And then that potato cam version of the whole movie leaked online within days, and the mayhem began.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ For real, and what really laid out the divisiveness of GFW were the reviews posted here on Monster Zero News after the Hollywood premiere.


Review #1 (December 1, 2004) was distinctly negative:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060428033308/http://www.monsterzero.us/editorials/editorials.php?catID=&subCatID=3&contentID=630

Then review #2 (December 4, 2004) was distinctly positive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20041224013415/http://www.monsterzero.us/editorials/editorials.php?catID=Mov&subCatID=3&contentID=635

Review #3 (December 25, 2004) was a bit mixed but mostly positive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050303094135/http://www.monsterzero.us/editorials/editorials.php?catID=Art&subCatID=1&contentID=640

Months later, review #4 (September 11, 2005) was pretty mixed but came down mostly negative:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070202005001/http://www.monsterzero.us/editorials/editorials.php?catID=Mov&subCatID=3&contentID=710


I didn't even see the movie until Sony released it on DVD at the end of 2005, but man, the flame wars that GFW ignited on this board and elsewhere were epic to behold. Even the divisive reactions to Shin Godzilla's weirdness still took a distant second place to the bickering over Final Wars.

[lhb412]

Man, I vaguely remember this stuff, but maybe as a teenager I was more of a lurker and didn't wade into the heated stuff.

Anyway, I'm gonna make a negative comment about Minus Godzilla and Legendary Godzilla: I'm not crazy about Godzilla's hide having this dark base color but being heavily highlighted/spottled with lighter earth tones, browns and greens and greys. I would prefer a return to a deep, dark color.

[emeGoji]

^ I really think it comes down to the CG artists trying to make the model look like a living breathing animal that exists in the world. If it was just a mostly flat dark color it would probably look too cartoony.

[lhb412]

^ I'm sure there's a good, technical reason like you say, but I'm just set in my opinion that Godzilla's hide should be very dark in color.

[Kailem]

A brief new teaser has been released which is very reminiscent of the G'14 opening sequence, along with the announcement that we'll be getting a full trailer on Monday!

https://twitter.com/godzilla231103/status/1697912405492453635?s=20

[Kailem]

The first full trailer is out; and it looks pretty damn fantastic!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7DqccP1Q_4

The visuals, the tone.....I believe the kids these days would describe them as "peak". This trailer is just packed with amazing imagery, including that one shot that's clearly directly inspired by G'14. And that sense of hopelessness and desperation certainly seems appropriate for the kind of film they've said this is going to be.

Gat-damn, this trailer got me hyped! Here's hoping the movie itself can live up to it!

[lhb412]

It's a fantastic trailer. I mean, I'm a lifelong fan so I'm an easy mark, but I think this thing is damn slick and already seems to be grabbing more casual viewers via YouTube and the socials.

Not only am I excited to see this thing, but I'm feeling bullish about this US release.

[Dai]

Wow, this looks like it's going to be a seriously harrowing disaster movie. The cinematography and effects are top notch. The destruction looks so visceral.

While there's a whole debate to be had about the relative merits of practical effects vs CG, looking at the approach they've taken here I think we can say Toho have finally closed the gap to Hollywood CG to practically zero, if this trailer is representative of the whole movie. Shin Godzilla got there in places despite its relatively tiny budget, but did suffer from a lack of consistency on that front.

Argh, how long am I going to have to wait to see this in the UK?!

[lhb412]

^ All three Shin films used digital effects in service of creating a retro stylized reality that, well, I adore (Shin Ultraman is my favorite) ... but might be hard for folks on the outside to get. Minus One straight-up looks like a major Hollywood production in terms of the slick visuals, which I think points to Yamazaki being an effects guy who knew exactly what he was going to do, in contrast to some chaotic $200 mil Hollywood films which suffer from wonky effects despite their budgets!

[Benjamin Haines]

What a bone-chilling trailer! It looks like we'll be seeing a lot of Godzilla's destruction from the ground-level perspective of the characters.

The effects in Shin Godzilla certainly were a huge breakthrough for Toho but most of the CGI of Godzilla himself was very limited in animation, and the more he moved around onscreen, the less polished the CGI looked. Based on what's shown in this trailer for Godzilla Minus One, it seems like Toho really has caught up with Hollywood's ability to render Godzilla through computer graphics. We still don't know if the rest of the film's effects shots will match the quality of the shots glimpsed in this trailer, of course, but what's visible of Godzilla so far is visually on par with Legendary's movies.

I think the quality of the effects reflects both Takashi Yamazaki's vision for the film and the fact that Toho allowed for so much more time between the start of production and the release date compared to past Godzilla flicks. The Heisei and Millennium entries always began shooting in the summer and opened in theaters in December. Shin Godzilla started shooting in September 2015 and opened in theaters more than ten months later in July 2016, which was significantly more time in itself, and that was after at least a year of development. Now we've got Godzilla Minus One, which commenced shooting in March 2022 and opens in Japan in November 2023, more than a year and seven months later! That's even more time between the start of production and the release date than a lot of modern Hollywood tentpoles, including G'14, Kong: Skull Island and many of Marvel's movies.

[lhb412]

https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/1370627-godzilla-minus-one-godzilla-day

Survey of Godzilla Day announcements says tickets for the American release go up for preorder on Nov 3, and if I'm reading this correctly it seems we'll be getting one-night only IMAX preview screening two days earlier, on November 29.

[Benjamin Haines]

Toho released a Japanese TV spot for Godzilla Minus One earlier this week. It's only 15 seconds long but it looks incredible!

Toho's English-language YouTube channel has now posted two subtitled TV spots for the US release. The first is a shortened version of the main trailer and the second is the same as the Japanese TV spot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph-22HvCNfU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YErjQAcentk

[lhb412]

Those brief new shots are just so damn cool. This movie looks great. I try not to get too carried away with hype, but...

[Benjamin Haines]

Big news! Big news! It's really super big news!

Godzilla Minus One is getting a wide theatrical release in the UK and Ireland on December 15!

https://deadline.com/2023/10/godzilla-minus-one-tokyo-film-festival-uk-ireland-toho-1235582539/