A new trailer for the upcoming Godzilla Minus One dropped on September 4th, 2023, and it shows a lot!
The trailer opens with a classic scene of people screaming and running from something. It is absolute chaos. A voice off-camera says, “What is it?” Another, “I don't know! Something Big!” Cut to two men manning a train, screaming followed by a train car smashing onto the tracks seemingly in front of them. Everything goes black, and we get one of the most iconic sounds in cinema, a thundering footstep. Then we see it, a glimpse of a face in a debris cloud.
He’s Back!
The next series of shots are amazing as it shows a woman on a train asking, “Is that… Godzilla?” and we can see the reflection of a massive creature coming towards her. What comes next has to be the most iconic thing for the Godzilla films since its inception.
Here, I start to notice similarities that draw me to the theory that Minus One is actually a remake of the original 1954 Gojia! The iconic train-biter scene recreated for modern cinema would certainly make this Goji fan very happy. The rest of the trailer shows various quick cuts to people, action, smashing, and destruction. But some nuggets within lead me to believe that this is a remake of the original film.
After a wave of shots that show massive destruction and people standing still during a detonation of some sort, we start to get more of the story and setting. “Postwar, Japan had lost everything,” meaning this film is set shortly after WWII. Then, an overhead shot of a battleship with the form of ol’ G-man swimming just below. Then, a series of shots of soldiers, bodies, and a small boat that one may surmise could be the fishing boat from the original film. These are just assumptions, but they still echo the setting of the 1954 film.
Then we see government officials and a screen for a microfilm that is labeled as“Property of the United States Government,” immediately followed by a close-up of a bespectacled man that could very well be Dr. Serizawa, the inventor of the Oxygen Destroyer.
The dialogue with these shots echoes some of the original film's narrative, with the government not wanting to tell the public about Godzilla and Dr. Serizawa developing the Oxygen Destroyer secretly with the US government. Further proof of the time frame comes in some more shots of very WWII-looking battleships, in which we see the “Serizawa” character with naval personnel shouting.
Godzilla’s hand grabs the top of a ship, and then a shot of what looks to be his fire breath blasting through the ship. In an awesome display of power, I’m certifiably giddy that this could be a reimagining of Godzilla’s first landing on the shores of Tokyo and the utter devastation that follows.
One line in particular stood out among the rest in the brief trailer. “That monster will never forgive us,” this line could mean many things. It could refer to the vengeance that Godzilla represents after the use of nuclear weapons, or another theory is that there is another monster in the film that we have not seen yet. This could be a closing line for the movie after the Oxygen Destroyer is deployed.
The original film ended with Godzilla being killed by the Oxygen Destroyer, but how did he return afterward? What if there were TWO Godzillas in the beginning?! Even the scene pictured at the start of this article, “Is that…Godzilla?” could suggest that the creature the woman sees is not what she had seen prior. Is Minus One the state of Japan, or are we Minus One Godzilla?
Watch the trailer for yourself, and let us know what you think. Are you as excited as I am for the first new Toho Godzilla film since 2016, Shin Godzilla?
