Godzilla Minus One Is Getting A New Version On Netflix In August You Won't Want To Miss

Japan's most famous Kaiju rampaged across the theatrical landscape in late 2023 and early 2024, and before the summer is over, "Godzilla Minus One" will be hitting Netflix — again. On August 1, director Takashi Yamazaki's black and white version of his acclaimed film, "Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color," finally makes its debut on the world's largest streaming service.

During the course of "Godzilla Minus One's" monstrous box office run, the movie was re-released in theaters as a black-and-white film. Though the monochromatic version was initially released solely for Japanese audiences, Toho quickly made the decision to set it loose in American theaters for a single week in late January. The film would later go on to set a new record when it arrived on streaming and home video, becoming the first movie to debut at the same time in the number one slot on Netflix and as a rental in Apple's iTunes store. This happened after it also became the first film in the Godzilla franchise to be nominated for an Academy Award. The movie ultimately took home the Oscar for best visual effects, beating out "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," "The Creator," "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One," and "Napoleon."

It's firmly established that Yamazaki's vision for Godzilla is one that resonated with fans across the globe. Critics everywhere lauded the movie, resulting in a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. Looper's own review called the film "the exact sort of scary, inspiring, super entertaining large-scale popcorn movie we've been missing" and dubbed it "the blockbuster we needed." But we all paid good money to watch movies on our hi-def, big-screen, color televisions — so why would we want to watch Godzilla cause ruin and destruction in black and white? Yamazaki himself has the answer to that question.

If you've already seen (and loved) Takashi Yamazaki's terrifying vision of Japan's greatest monster, you might be wondering why you need to watch it again with the color stripped from the film. Well, "Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color" is more than a dramatically desaturated Kaiju flick. When the movie was re-released in its monochromatic state in early 2024, Yamazaki broke down the approach he and his team took in crafting the second version of his film and explained that the end result was a movie that has a very different feel than the original release.

"Rather than just making it monochrome, it is a cut by cut, I had them make adjustments while making full use of various mattes, as if they were creating a new movie," the director said (via Fangoria). "What I was aiming for was a style that looked like it was taken by masters of monochrome photography. We were able to unearth the texture of the skin and the details of the scenery that were hidden in the photographed data ... By eliminating color, a new sense of reality emerges."

Godzilla fans seemed to agree with Yamazaki's assessment of the revamped film. Redditor @ShyGuyPal101 said of the re-release, "That one scene (near the end) when you can see the white of Godzilla's eyes just made him look even more freaky in black/white imo. Such a great experience." @StygianMaroon agreed, saying "So many shots were made better in b&w, I think. That first scene with Godzilla especially. The spotlight on him and nothing else was genuinely terrifying."

You can decide for yourself if the King of the Monsters really is scarier in black and white when "Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color" hits Netflix on Aug. 1, 2024.