Watch Godzilla Minus One in dazzling black and white during limited US run

Enlarge (credit: Toho Inc.)

The critically acclaimed film, Godzilla Minus One, hit US theaters in early December and racked up $51 million in the US alone and over $96 million globally, shooting past 2016’s Shin Godzilla as the most successful Japanese-produced Godzilla film to date. The film is winding down its theatrical run, but director, writer, and VFX supervisor Takashi Yamazaki has remastered a black-and-white version of the film as an homage to the 1954 classic Godzilla, released in Japan last week. And now US audiences will have a chance to see that version when Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color arrives at AMC theaters in the US for a limited run from January 26 through February 1.

(Minor spoilers for Godzilla Minus One below.)

Yamakazi spent three years writing the script for Godzilla Minus One, drawing inspiration not just from the original 1954 film but also Jaws (1975), Godzilla, Mothra and Ghidorah (2001), Shin Godzilla, and the films of Hayao Miyazaki. He opted to set the film in postwar Japan, like the original, rather than more recent events like the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, in order to explore themes of postwar trauma and emerging hope. The monster itself was designed to be horrifying, with spiky dorsal fins and a bellowing roar produced by recording an amplified roar in a large stadium.