Godzilla fans have had plenty to feast on in the past decade, with Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse producing five films and a pair of streaming series. But while Hollywood has come up with increasingly silly ways for its titans to fight, Japan’s Toho Studios still produced the smartest and best Godzilla film of this era — and it’s coming back to U.S. theaters in August.
Originally released in Japan in 2016, Shin Godzilla from directors Hideaki Anno (Neon Genesis Evangelion) and Shinji Higuchi (Bullet Train Explosion) was inspired by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to fail. It starts as a dark comedy focused mostly on an endless series of meetings to address a mysterious incident in Tokyo Bay that keeps getting worse every time the politicians think they can declare victory.
As Godzilla makes landfall and evolves from an ungainly lungfish-like beast to the iconic city destroying kaiju, the country’s leaders need to cut through the red tape and come up with a solution. If they can’t figure out how to neutralize the monster themselves, America will nuke the whole city. The examination of Japan’s place in the post-World War II era is deeply political, reframing the series in a nationalistic vein continued by 2023’s Godzilla Minus One.
A 4K remaster of Shin Godzilla will be released in North American theaters on Aug. 14 by GKIDS, which was purchased by Toho last year. According to the announcement, a home entertainment release will follow.
“With an incredibly timely story of people struggling to work together to stop imminent destruction, backed by some of the most explosive action scenes the franchise has ever seen, Shin Godzilla is a modern masterpiece,” GKIDS president David Jesteadt said in a news release. “We are honored to play a part in bringing the film back for American fans, better than ever.”
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