Listen, MonsterVerse, I don’t wanna say you’ve been barreling down the same woeful path that the Jurassic films did, but let’s not mince words: You are still kind of neutering everything that makes Godzilla and King Kong awesome in favor of putting out a monster movie.
Godzilla Minus One director Takashi Yamazaki, on the other hand, is very much not doing that, so the more movies we can get in the vein of Minus One—the box office phenomenon that left the world enrapt with some deliciously intelligent storytelling wrapped up in that familiar destructive spectacle—the better.
And Yamazaki himself is apparently very much on board to keep going with the King of Monsters as only he could unleash him. Speaking recently to Empire, the filmmaker expressed great curiosity and interest in seeing where this version of Godzilla could go next, though it sounds like he’s only dreaming about it at the moment:
“I would certainly like to see what the sequel would look like. I know that Shikishima’s war seems over, and we’ve reached this state of peace and calm – but perhaps [it’s the] calm before the storm, and the characters have not yet been forgiven for what has been imposed upon them.”
More specifically, Yamazaki riffed on the possibility of tackling the historically cheesy monster-versus-monster premise in a way that instead emulated Minus One’s more profound, grounded tone:
“I don’t know that anyone has pulled off a more serious tone of kaiju-versus-kaiju with human drama, and that challenge is something that I’d like to explore. When you have movies that feature [kaiju battles], I think it’s very easy to put the spotlight and the camera on this massive spectacle, and it detaches itself from the human drama component. I would need to make sure that the human drama and whatever’s happening between [the] kaiju both have meaning, and both are able to affect one another in terms of plot development.”
This direction could open a number of exciting doors, as the process would most likely shift to identifying what each monster in the Godzilla library represents in the same way that Godzilla represents the devastation of nuclear fallout. Perhaps the cybernetic Gigan could represent fears of an escalating digital dystopia, or the no-doubt-incredibly tasty Ebirah (he’s a lobster, for those who were skeptical of that description) could serve as a big, red allegory for climate change.
However Yamazaki would tackle it, he would certainly have the trust of the global public to do so triumphantly, so hopefully the filmmaker’s musings end up being the first step in manifesting the second entry in the Minusverse. (But don’t actually call it that. Dear lord, don’t actually call it that.)
Godzilla Minus One is now streaming on Netflix.
(featured image: Toho)
