This review of Godzilla Minus One was originally posted in conjunction with the movie’s theatrical release. It has been updated and reposted now that the film is available on digital platforms. Godzilla Minus One is the throwback movie that longtime Godzilla fans have been waiting for.
This is an age of abundance for Godzilla media: Over the past seven years, as part of a partnership between Toho and Hollywood studios, the giant lizard received three animated films on Netflix, two U.S. movies, and an Apple TV series that premieres Nov.
17 . Godzilla fans like me haven’t been left wanting. And yet something crucial has been missing from most of this media, something fundamental to the earliest films in the Godzilla franchise: terror.
We nearly had a decade of terrifying Godzilla. In 2016, Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi released the horrifying Shin Godzilla , widely regarded as one of the best entries in the franchise. It promised a return to the petrifying, humanity-destroying Godzilla of the past.
But Shin Godzilla marked a lengthy hiatus in the production of Japanese live-action Godzilla films, and signaled the beginning of a colossally successful American era for the big lizard. The American Godzilla media of the past seven years, including Godzilla: King of the Monsters , Godzilla vs. Kong , and those Netflix anime movies, ranges from serviceable to pretty damn good, though its creators borrowed far more from the Marvel Cinematic Universe than from classic kaiju matin.