Toho’s Godzilla doesn’t often travel abroad in-movie, but he’ll be visiting the Statue of Liberty.
It’s an interesting era for Godzilla cinema, as in recent years the franchise has split into two separate but simultaneously active branches: the Hollywood Godzilla movies from Legendary Pictures, and the Japanese Godzilla movies from Toho.
Part of what allows the two types to coexist in a copacetic manner is that there’s a pretty clear distinction between what each is trying to do. The Hollywood Godzilla movies are aimed at fans of bombastic over-the-top action, while the Japanese ones focus more on the terror and drama that would come from having a skyscraper-sized monster rampaging through your city. Another key difference is their settings. Legendary’s movies take place on a global scale, while Toho has kept its storytelling largely within the Tokyo area for its last two installments. In the just-released preview for Toho’s upcoming Godzilla Minus Zero, though, it looks like the Japanese Godzilla will finally be causing destruction outside Japan by showing up in New York.
The short teaser is the very first look Toho has provided for the follow-up to 2023’s Godzilla Minus One, and while it’s intentionally mysterious in tone, it clearly shows the King of the Monsters standing next to the Statue of Liberty in its final shot. And while it’s true that there is a small-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tokyo’s Odaiba neighborhood, Godzilla Minus Zero is set in 1949, several decades before the Tokyo statue was installed, as per the teaser’s onscreen text that indicates the year along with the warning “A new despair looms, two years after the last.”
The teaser does show Japanese settings and characters, so the new Japanese Godzilla movie won’t be set entirely in America. Even in the Japan-market version of the video, though, the opening dialogue is in English, with a pensive off-screen character saying “If their operation fails, maybe we’ll finally get to use it,” suggesting some sort of device or tactic that the U.S. had in mind during Godzilla’s attack on Tokyo in Godzilla Minus One, when Japan was still under occupation by the American military following the end of World War II. Moving the site of the kaiju’s aggression to New York could then potentially set up a situation where the powers that be have to decide whether using this presumably last-resort countermeasure is worth the potential damage it could cause to their own metropolis and its residents.
The events of Godzilla Minus Zero don’t look to all happen outside Japan, though, as the teaser also includes scenes set in the franchise’s home country as well. Also, as the first direct sequel to a Japanese Godzilla movie in over 20 years, it seems like a given that Minus Zero will also deal with the aftermath of Minus One’s ending.
Godzilla Minus Zero is scheduled to open in Japanese theaters on November 3, with its U.S. premier following on November 6.
Source, images: YouTube/東宝MOVIEチャンネル、Godzilla Channel ゴジラ（東宝特撮）チャンネル
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