Director promises this will be the most terrifying Godzilla movie ever.

It’s astounding that even with less than a week to go until the release of Ghibli’s newest anime movie, How Do You Live?, both the studio and distributor Toho have been able to completely prevent even a single story detail or image from the movie from leaking. Now comes further proof that Toho has a vice-like grip on the spoiler spigot, as they’ve just released the very first preview of a brand-new Godzilla movie that’s less than half a year away from its theatrical release.

Titled Godzilla -1.0 (pronounced “Godzilla Minus One”), it’s the first live-action Godzilla movie to be produced in Japan since 2016’s Shin Godzilla. And while the overseas-made Legendary Pictures Godzilla movies lean further and further into action-movie bombast, Godzilla -1.0, like Shin Godzilla before it, casts the kaiju king not as humanity’s savior against even more destructive monsters, but as a terrifying force of nature with no particular concern as to how many humans are left homeless or dead by his rampages.

While Godzilla -1.0 follows the tone of Shin Godzilla, it’s not a sequel. Shin Godzilla took place in the present day, but Godzilla -1.0 is set in the postwar period, with Japan just starting the process of recovering from World War II. “After the war, Japan had lost everything. I want to portray [Godzilla] as an presence of unprecedented despair, coming to add another blow,” says director Takashi Yamazaki, explaining the mathematical significance of the movie’s title, Japan being knocked down below what it already felt was rock bottom.

It’s a stark departure from the feel-good fare that makes up the majority of Yamazaki’s filmography as a director, such as cathartically heartwarming hits Stand by Me Doraemon 2 and Always: Sunset on Third Street ’64, the latter of which is also set in the Tokyo of yesteryear, but one not under the threat of kaiju attack. “In making this movie, the staff and I have been applying layer after layer of despair, with the aim of having Godzilla feel like a walking physical manifestation of terror,” says Yamazaki, who is also the scriptwriter and visual effects director for Godzilla -1.0. “I think what we’ve made isn’t a movie you go to the theater to ‘see’ but to ‘experience,’” and describes it as “the most terrifying Godzilla ever.”

▼ The original Godzilla movie was released in 1954, and Toho is billing Godzilla -1.0 as the series’ “70th-anniversary work.”

▼ Godzilla -1.0 logo

Godzilla -1.0 is scheduled for release in Japan on November 3, and will be hitting theaters in Japan less than a month later, on December 1.

Source: YouTube/東宝MOVIEチャンネル, Eiga Natalie
Images: YouTube/東宝MOVIEチャンネル
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