After a huge opening in Japan, Shin Godzilla had a limited theatrical run in the United States in 2016. But with only 34 participating theaters, most American Godzilla fans will have to wait for the movie’s DVD and Blu-ray release before catching the latest Toho Godzilla movie. U.S. distributor Funimation finally announced an Aug. 1 release date, but it’s too bad the barebones release won’t include a cool new video from the Japanese release that shows off a giant puppet Godzilla that never actually appears in the movie.
The behind-the-scenes video highlights the practical effects work done on Shin Godzilla, including a lot of destruction to miniature cityscapes. But the big highlight is Godzilla itself, portrayed at 5:53 as a towering puppet.
Unfortunately, the only listed special features for the U.S. DVD and Blu-ray release are trailers and a featurette titled “ Godzilla vs. the Nerds: Interview.”
Though scenes were shot with the giant, animatronic Godzilla, the practical effect doesn’t appear in the final film, though a combination of puppetry and CGI was the original plan.
While Godzilla looks great in Shin Godzilla, CGI is a definite weakness. The level of polish just simply isn’t up to the level of the bigger-budgeted American counterpart, seen in the 2014 Godzilla.
Still, despite some weak special effects, Shin Godzilla is an absolute must-see. Here’s how we felt about it when it came time to write up our list of the best movies of 2016:
“Not only does Shin Godzilla rewrite the Godzilla mythos, it tells the story in new and unexpected ways. While Godzilla movies have long alternated between the monster’s urban destruction and a small cast of human characters, Shin Godzilla attempts to capture the full scope of a kaiju attack. Much of the movie takes place in various committee rooms as government bureaucrats attempt to sift through the incoming information and plan responses. It may sound boring, but the result is absolutely fascinating, as press conferences, on-screen text and detailed accounts of military capacities combine to provide a bird’s-eye view narrative unlike any other.”
Not only is Shin Godzilla a fantastic standalone kaiju flick, but it also ushers in a completely new era for the Toho version of the giant monster, upending the long-running Japanese Godzilla continuity. While the series has been rebooted several times since the original 1954 Gojira, divided the series into various “eras,” Shin Godzilla is the first to start from scratch. Every other reboot began as a sequel to the original.
Instead, Shin Godzilla kicks off a radically new interpretation of the monster as an endlessly adaptive threat, which mutates through several different forms over the course of the movie. Shin Godzilla even retcons the monster’s name! Rather than Gojira, it’s the American who names the monster this time, calling it Godzilla right from the beginning. From this unusual new origin story to an enigmatic and frightening final shot, Shin Godzilla deserves all the hype, even if they did lose the badass puppet.
And it’s finally out on DVD and Blu-ray for audiences in the United States on Aug. 1.
- expansive scope and vision of storytelling
- like reading the most gripping wikipedia page ever written
- the best monster movie in a long, long time
- SFX aren't great
