Godzilla Minus Zero goes nuclear in new teaser

Two years have passed since Minus One, and in 1949, despite all signs pointing to Godzilla’s immunity to nuclear weaponry, the powers that be in Minus Zero are angling to drop the bomb on him. While his other blockbuster iteration is battling it out with a giant ape, Toho Studios continues to push this version of Godzilla—the Reiwa era—towards serious historical reckoning. “Another moral boundary mankind shouldn’t cross,” a character says. 

Nothing good can come from nuking Godzilla, but the realistic destruction wreaked by the monster in the first film, which won an Oscar for visual effects, was always meant to tie to the harrowing aftermath left by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Confronting this traumatic historical moment even more directly, especially if Godzilla really is tromping around New York City at the time, will surely add to the somber gravitas that made the original film so special.

Godzilla Minus Zero comes to theaters on November 6, moving back a few days from the previous date of November 3.