Here’s an ominous phrase when one is speaking about Godzilla: “We didn’t finish the job like we thought.”
That’s the opening line of the English-subtitled first trailer for Godzilla Minus Zero, Takashi Yamazaki‘s sequel that is set two years after the events to his 2023 hit Godzilla Minus One. Equally troubling is this from logline for the new film: Just as humanity managed to cling to a hard-won peace, a new threat strikes, crushing hope in an instant. There is no third time. Everything ends here.
Watch the trailer above.
It’s 1949 Japan, and Ryunosuke Kamiki returns as Kōichi Shikishima, the ex-kamikaze pilot who originally was tasked with dealing with Godzilla in Minus One — and did so … right? “You saw it! Godzilla was blown to pieces,” he hear in the new trailer. Well, there was that little bit of the monster that was seen regenerating as it sunk into the ocean.
The returning cast also includes Minami Hamabe as Shikishima’s now-wife Noriko, along with Yuki Yamada, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando and Miou Tanaka. Masami Nagasawa joins the cast as Ms. Aoyama, a “forecasting prodigy” who suggests a Plan B.
Godzilla Minus One won the 2024 Oscar for its modestly budgeted visual effects and grossed $113.9 million worldwide with a near-even split from domestic and overseas. Yamazaki, who also did the effects for the new one, was the first director to win the VFX Academy Award since Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1969.
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Godzilla Minus Zero is the first Japanese production to be filmed for Imax. It will have its world premiere September 26 at the New York Film Festival before screening in November as the centerpiece of the Tokyo Film Festival. The sequel attacks North American theaters on November 6.
