Toho surprised fans today with the long-awaited release of Godzilla Minus One to home entertainment in a four-disc 4K UHD Blu-ray box set. I also have an exclusive clip of writer-director-VFX supervisor Takashi Yamazaki and his team from their U.S. visit, plus a look at the different glorious versions of the Oscar-winning film.
Panic erupts when the monster attacks in "Godzilla Minus One."
The Godzilla Minus One box set is an exclusive through Toho’s official Godzilla site, and includes lots of behind-the-scenes features and making-of footage. Fans of the film have been eagerly awaiting word of a physical home media release, although the film finally arrived on streaming recently and VOD. The surprise today is part of a larger 70th anniversary celebration of Godzilla in 2024.
This Godzilla Minus One release is a goldmine for fans of the film and of filmmaking, providing some mind-blowing examples of ingenuity to achieve effects and shots within the limited budget.
Yamazaki-san’s limitless ambition and vision is never restrained by the imposed limitations of available resources. He moves around the set figuring out how to turn a half-block of street on a studio lot into a city under nuclear attack, or a small parade stand becoming a massive Navy vessel at war with Godzilla.
Godzilla Minus One earned the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, and for good reason. There are moments that look so realistic it’s like watching documentary footage of an actual giant monster attack.
But it’s important not to forget how much the acting and directing, the lighting and photography, all match the VFX in brilliance. The boat scenes are convincing not just because of the amazing CGI work, but also because of Yamazaki-san’s directing — the actors and camera move as if on waves, making the water seem all the more realistic because it’s suddenly part of the physical scene and performances, until you accept the illusion completely.
The black-and-white version — known as Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color and featured in Blu-ray, not 4K, in the set — enhances the sense of hyper-realism, as well as creating an even tighter bond between this modern masterpiece and the original 1954 masterpiece that launched the biggest and longest-lived franchise in cinema history.
One thing I noticed comparing the color and monochrome versions is how much the tone and impact of the film differ. The monochrome version creates more sense of the film as from another time, the black-and-white mirroring the 1940s-1950s origins of the story and series yet incongruent with the photorealistic effects, and this makes it seem even more real and documentary in nature.
The color version, however, carries more overt kinship with Steven Spielberg’s films, which of course served as inspiration for Godzilla Minus One. It has that very unique sense of timelessness, at once modern and also of any era, while reflective of an elevated reality from our own.
This distinction between the two versions of the film is especially noticeable during the first few sequences on the boats, including the run-in with Godzilla. It’s one of the few examples of the color version seeming more photo-realistic because the water effects and boat effects are so good that the addition of lifelike color enhances everything and ties it together perfectly.
Both versions look glorious, and the home release will let audiences make these comparisons for themselves and experience a whole new level of respect and awe for Godzilla Minus One’s filmmaking team.
This exclusive clip comes from Yamazaki-San and team visiting the U.S. during the LA premiere of Godzilla Minus One. They’ve just premiered their movie, and the audience goes wild as they take the stage to speak about it. Take a look...
So with such rave reviews and record-setting box office success, should we expect a sequel?
In a terrific interview with Steven Weintraub at Collider, Yamazaki-San indicated his next film is already in development, but it’s not a sequel to Godzilla Minus One. But don’t fret, kaiju fans — it’s clear he has ideas for a sequel, and it appears he’s probably already in some sort of conversations with Toho about a sequel, even though he’s not able to talk about any of that just yet.
Toho and Yamazaki-San say they want to be sure they have the right story and can deliver a worthy follow-up, so they aren’t going to rush the process. That means any sequel to Godzilla Minus One, while seemingly in early stages of story development (and with a different project currently prioritized by Yamazaki-San), will have to wait a few years. My personal guess? Since Minus One released in 2023, I think we’ll get a sequel in 2026. Fingers crossed.
