In their latest Godzilla outing—the first one since 2016’s Shin Godzilla—Toho is bringing the mutated kaiju to a Japan still devastated by the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
The teaser for Godzilla Minus One is a short one, but gives us glimpses of Godzilla’s feet and his iconic roar as he turns half-destroyed buildings into rubble. Having the film take place at this point in Japan’s history when the kaiju has sometimes been used as a metaphor for the horrors that came with the nuclear bombings also raises interesting questions as to what Minus One’s story will be.
Koji Ueda, President of Toho International, shed some light on that story in a statement released with the teaser trailer. “Set in a post-war Japan, Godzilla Minus One will once again show us a Godzilla that is a terrifying and overwhelming force, which you already get a sense of from the teaser trailer and poster,” he said. “The concept is that Japan, which had already been devastated by the war, faces a new threat with Godzilla, bringing the country into the ‘minus.'”
Toho’s rendition of Godzilla, who first appeared sixty-nine years ago in the 1954 Japanese film Gojira, is completely separate from Legendary’s MonsterVerse endeavors, which gave us 2021’s Godzilla vs Kong, the recent Netflix animated series Skull Island, and has an Apple TV+ Godzilla series in the works.
Godzilla Minus One will be the 37th Godzilla film in existence and is written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki. It premieres in Japan on November 3, 2023 and in theaters in the U.S. nationwide on December 1, 2023.
Check out the movie’s poster below, which is a better poster than most:
