Toho's next Godzilla movie

[JasonPratt]

Note that this is not Legendary's coming sequel to the American G2014, which will apparently co-star Mothra, Rodan, and Ghidora (and be somewhat based on Destroy All Monsters -- so which could be a Monster Zero remake).

Toho announced earlier this year that thanks to the success of G2014, which (despite its paltry monster action and terrible plotting) they were generally happy with, they will be starting up a new round of movies again themselves. Or at least one movie, but they've always done a full series before, even though the so-called Millennium Series wasn't so much a series as a sequence of one-off movies (and one duology, in my opinion the best two movies of the set) mostly intended as independent direct sequels to the original 1954 film.

At any rate, they've released a bit of official promo art which gives some visual idea of what they're going for (courtesy of i09 directly, probably via Vanity).



I gotta say, that one underside of a foot is pretty exciting, as it suggests a love of detail and some grittiness that they've lacked for a while. Hell, THERE'S EVEN A FIFTH TOE, though it's a bit of a dewlap, which I think is unique in official Godzilla art.

The two directors are at least interesting, though I'm a bit conflicted about the choices. Hideaki Anno is best known as the creator and lead writer for Neon Genesis Evangelion -- with all that implies, for better or for worse. (If anyone doesn't know why that could be batshit crazy good and bad news, man I don't even know how to explain. The kaiju battles should be intense at least.) Shinji Higuchi is currently finishing the live-action adaptation of Attack on Titan, but in better-known kaiju films is known for being part of the Four Horsemen team behind the 90s Gamera trilogy -- which is good because especially with the final film they proved that even with relatively low Japanese film budgets in the late 90s they could make realistic-looking (and pretty stunning) monster battles if they wanted to. But it's also bad because when Toho invited him to make one of the one-off G films for the Millennium series, he made a candy-colored nightmare which I've never been as fond of as I've wanted to, Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidora: Giant Monsters All-out Attack. But it was certainly a creative departure from series standards, as KG took Godzilla's place as defender of Japan against G who in this (brief) continuity is imagined as an undead nuclear zombie of a dinosaur brought back to life by the vengeful spirits of everyone killed by the Japanese in WW2. Still, I feel pretty confident from that underfoot that the art-direction will be better than that, so maybe on the balance his return to the property once again could be a good thing.