Godzilla Minus One Sequel Rises From the Sea
Sometimes, the obvious thing is still met with resounding applause. One of the biggest surprises of last year was Godzilla Minus One, a ToHo Godzilla film that went back to the basic structure of the original Godzilla: King of the Monsters (or Godzilla, or Gojira, whichever your preference). It was a story that brought Godzilla back to World War II and the beginning of the Atomic Age, the nuclear fallout in Japan following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the notion of Godzilla being the villain attacking Tokyo with reckless abandon and nuclear breath. It also featured a very human story with compelling characters who felt like real people wrestling with their demons while they were trapped in a monster-induced nightmare. But perhaps most interesting was that it had an extremely small budget for a modern film, and its $116 million box office haul was an astounding return on investment. Today, ToHo announced that a sequel is coming:
EMERGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT pic.twitter.com/YhfztQgu0Z
— GODZILLA.OFFICIAL (@Godzilla_Toho) November 1, 2024
We all knew this was coming, and honestly, the people who made Godzilla Minus One deserve it. They turned their little film into a massive success that put the bigger-budgeted Legendary Godzilla franchise to shame. On a $15 million budget, they created a movie pretty much everyone loved, and they made seven and a half times that in box office revenue. And perhaps the most amazing part is that Godzilla Minus One even looks better than its Legendary counterparts; the special effects are better than the Monsterverse movies, and Godzilla’s look is leagues ahead of that ridiculously bulky Legendary version, with a more sinister color scheme and facial design. It was a given that Takashi Yamazaki – the writer, director, and visual effects designer – would get another chance to play with ToHo’s most beloved toy.
The biggest question now – aside from when the movie will arrive in theaters – is what the sequel to Godzilla Minus One will be about. Essentially, there are two directions Yamazaki can go (unless he’s creative enough to do something completely unexpected, though I don’t know what that would be). He can do another movie like Godzilla Minus One, where Godzilla returns to stomp on Tokyo, and the humans have to figure out a way to stop him. Or, he can do the traditional Godzilla sequel, where Godzilla has to fight another giant monster, usually in defense of humanity rather than in another effort to destroy it. Both avenues come with risks. The former would essentially be the same movie all over again, and there are only so many times you can do that in the same series (once, in my opinion). With the second, it would be different, but it could lose the human drama of Godzilla Minus One by focusing on a monster fight rather than people banding together to save their country from an external threat.
Ultimately, I think the second direction is the way to go. Redoing the formula where Godzilla attacks the city until the humans figure out how to defeat him again not only feels repetitive but will almost certainly be compared unfavorably to Godzilla Minus One. But if they do Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, for example, they can not only largely avoid that (a certain degree of comparison is unavoidable), but ToHo can show Legendary how it’s done once again by doing a monster mash movie better than they have. It’s not written in stone that a film about two giant monsters fighting can’t have heart and pathos. I’d love to see Yamazaki deliver a supremely fun Godzilla vs. Whatever movie that makes audiences invest in the humans just as much as they did in Godzilla Minus One. I think a lot of folks who are sour on that idea would be pleasantly surprised.
Let us know what you’d like to see in the Godzilla Minus One sequel in the comments!
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