Shin Godzilla: Deluxe Collector’s Edition (4K UHD Review)
Director
Hideaki Anno, Shinji HiguchiRelease Date(s)
2016 (October 28, 2025)Studio(s)
Toho Pictures/Cine Bazar (GKIDS/Shout! Studios)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: A-
- Overall Grade: A-
Review
When Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s Shin Godzilla (aka Shin Gojira) came ashore in 2016, it didn’t just mark the return of the beloved kaiju after an interregnum that had lasted more than a decade; it also marked a return to the roots of the character, in more ways than one. When the original Shōwa era run ended in 1975 after a series of increasingly campy sequels, Toho performed a soft reboot with The Return of Godzilla in 1984, erasing the previous continuity (such as it was) and positioning the film as a direct sequel to the 1954 Godzilla instead. Similarly, when the Heisei run came to an end in 1995, Toho did another soft reboot in 1999 with Godzilla 2000: Millennium, a film that also discarded most of the previous continuity. After the wildly over-the-top Godzilla: Final Wars put the final nail in the coffin for the Millennium run in 2004, Toho took the longest break in franchise history while deciding what to do next. The answer, paradoxically, was to return to the roots of the series by destroying them utterly.
Rather than following tradition by being a soft reboot, Shin Godzilla was a hard reset, not just discarding all of the previous continuity, but erasing the 1954 film as well. For the first time in franchise history, a Godzilla sequel wouldn’t be a sequel at all, but rather a completely new reintroduction of the character—and one that takes place in a new continuity where kaiju have never even existed previously. It’s hard to go farther back to your roots than that, but Anno had something else in mind that would take the film back to first principles on a metaphorical level as well. While Godzilla films have been pure exploitation material, offering giant monsters and disaster porn with the time-honored intention of making a buck, it’s important to remember that the franchise was also born out of something that’s a far less marketable: pain.
Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka had wanted to make a giant monster movie in the vein of Ray Harryhausen and Eugène Lourié’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and like that film, he decided to invent a nuclear origin for his creature. But that wasn’t as distant of a threat for Japanese audiences as it was for American ones—not only was Japan still smarting from the bombs that the United States had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a decade earlier; they were suffering from even more fallout due to the Castle Bravo testing at the Bikini Atoll, with the occupants of the fishing boat Daigo Fukuryū Maru falling victim to it. All of that was very much an open wound in 1954, and Godzilla actively rubbed salt into it, as one character acknowledges in the film: “Godzilla is no different from the H-bomb still hanging over Japan’s head.”
As the series developed, the nuclear metaphors became more distant, and collateral damage from the kaiju shenanigans was distanced as well, so the pain that birthed the monster tended to be overlooked. The most notable exception was Shuseke Kaneko’s Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, which was yet another direct sequel to the original film, but one that reenvisioned the new monster as a daemonic force fueled by the souls of those who were killed in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Yet the tone of that film was frequently campy and even downright silly at times, so the pain of those deaths was muted.
Not so with Shin Godzilla. Anno’s script retains the nuclear origins for his monster, and even addresses the blithe willingness of the United States government to drop atomic bombs on Japan whenever its own safety may be threatened. Yet the real pain that birthed Shin Godzilla was something else entirely: the March 2011 triple threat of the Tōhoku earthquake, the tsunami that followed it, and the Fukushima nuclear accident that followed that. Or, to be more precise, it wasn’t necessarily the cascading 3/11 disasters that inspired Anno as much as it was the ineffectual response of the Japanese government to them, with paralyzing layers of bureaucracy that prevented action from being taken in a timely manner. Approximately 20,000 people died during the chaos, and while that number is dwarfed by the quantity of lives that were lost in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (to say nothing of the firebombing of Tokyo), it was still fresh pain when Anno sat down to write his script in 2015.
Tomoyuki Tanaka and Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla may have been born from the pain wrought by the use of atomic weapons, but Anno’s Godzilla is the living embodiment of pain. Mutated and distorted, with its bloated body covered by scars, it’s a radical departure from everything that came before it (don’t look for any Shōwa-era puppy dog eyes here). This version of Godzilla doesn’t just cause suffering; it is suffering, with every movement of its hideous bulk being wracked with pain. Even its defense mechanisms look painful—the pain that it suffers from the military response is met with more pain of its own in order to fight back. It’s one of the most destructive Godzillas in the history of the franchise, too, befitting a monster that was inspired by the staggering destruction of 3/11 (which as of this writing is still considered the costliest natural disaster in global history).
Of course, some of that cost could have been averted (or at least mitigated) with a more efficient governmental response, and that’s the real pain that drives Shin Godzilla. While there are a handful of scientists present in the background of the story, rather than the having the usual collection of military officials, civilians, and scientists as its leads, the main characters in Shin Godzilla consist primarily of bureaucrats (played by the likes of Hiroki Hasegawa, Yutaka Takenouchi, Satomi Ishihara, Mikako Ichikawa, Ren Osugi, Akira Emoto, Jun Kunimura, and Kimiko Yo). “We need a unified initial response,” one of them notes sagely after Godzilla’s first appearance, and then they proceed to provide nothing of the sort. Meeting after meeting in conference room after conference room, nothing is ever accomplished until it’s too late. It’s only once a few renegade bureaucrats start operating outside of the red tape that a real plan starts to come together.
Giant monster movie or not, Shin Godzilla is an extraordinarily vicious satire of bureaucratic inefficiency, with Anno pulling out all the stops to make that fact perfectly clear. As with his anime like Evangelion and His and Her Circumstances, there’s constant onscreen text in order to identify each and every location and/or individual. Even the generic access corridors and elevators are carefully (and meaninglessly) delineated. There are also titles to point out that some of the endless discussions have been abbreviated for the benefit of the audience. Nearly all of this text is pointless, but that’s the whole reason why Anno included it in the first place: all of the bureaucratic disfunction lying underneath that text is equally pointless. In one shot, the film frame becomes completely covered by such text, burying everyone and everything in the visual embodiment of red tape.
Yet there’s another moment in Shin Godzilla that really sums up the entire film, but it’s a subtle one that requires deep knowledge of Anno’s previous work. Anno had been an outsider to the Godzilla franchise, and he brought another outsider along with him: his longtime composer Shirō Sagisu. Sagisu ended up reusing some of his familiar Evangelion themes in the film, usually to great effect, but never more so than in a moment that’s easy to miss (or at least to misunderstand). When yet another conference room is being set up to hold still more meetings, Sagisu introduces his most iconic Evangelion theme (one that he blatantly lifted from John Barry’s 007 theme for From Russia with Love). It provides a hilarious counterpart for the moment considering that it normally played during action scenes, but it’s even more amusing if you know what Sagisu titled the track for the Evangelion soundtrack: Decisive Battle. The ironies run deep in Shin Godzilla, the satire is savage, and the pain is real.
Shin Godzilla was a major hit in Japan, leading to the first North American theatrical release of a Toho Godzilla film since Godzilla 2000: Millennium. It also led to an anime trilogy and another live-action sequel for the new Reiwa era that was an even bigger international success: Godzilla Minus One. Of course, that film reset the continuity once again, even tossing Shin Godzilla out with the bathwater and establishing roots of its own. Proving, of course, that however much the franchise may have been born out of pain, there’s life in this old kaiju yet. Viva la Gojira.
Cinematographer Kosuke Yamada captured Shin Godzilla digitally at 720p, 1080p, 2.8K, 3.4K, and 4K resolutions using Arri Alexa XT and Red Epic cameras with Zeiss master prime and Angénieux Optimo lenses, as well as a Canon XC10s, GoPro Hero 4 Black Editions, and Codex Action Cams. Certain shots were captured on a variety of different iPhones including an iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and iPhone X (and not just the lower resolution shots, either). Post-production work was completed as a 2K Digital Intermediate, framed at 2.39:1 for its theatrical release. This version is a 4K upscale of the 2K DI, with the addition of an HDR10 grade, although it’s really just SDR in an HDR container. Yet it does take advantage of Wide Color Gamut, rather like Toho’s Japanese UHDs that are SDR in 10-bit BT.2020 instead of 8-bit Rec.709. Putting expanded gamut SDR into an HDR container is another way of achieving the same effect without the issues that can result on some displays that stay locked at Rec.709 for SDR material.
The results are as crisp and clear as the 2K DI can provide, with shots that were captured at higher resolutions arguably scaling up just a touch better. In terms of actual resolution, though, the differences between 4K and 1080p are minimal. But the greater data throughput certainly doesn’t hurt, with the UHD maintaining a consistently high bitrate for the entire film (despite the lack of extras, it’s been encoded on a BD-100). No, the highlights aren’t any brighter and the blacks aren’t any deeper, but the expanded color gamut still enhances the overall clarity of the image. As 4K upgrades go, this one is relatively negligible, but if you want to see Shin Godzilla at its absolute best, it’s the only way to fly.
Audio is offered in Japanese and English 3.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English, English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles. The three-channel mix with no surrounds was Anno’s choice, presumably to mimic the sound of early multichannel systems like Perspecta (which happens to have been introduced in 1954, the same year that the original Godzilla was released). That may disappoint some people, but it’s a potent mix, with good stereo spread and plenty of deep bass—the artillery, bombs, and missiles are all appropriately thunderous, and Godzilla’s stomping feet can shake the room. Still, there’s no getting around the fact that composer Shirō Sagisu is the unsung hero Shin Godzilla, with his score providing the sonic energy that keeps even the most static of dialogue scenes driving forward propulsively. While yes, it does lean heavily into his Evangelion themes, it arguably rivals Michiru Ōshima’s work on Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla as one of the best Godzilla scores of the 2000s.
Note that while the Japanese audio is essentially identical to the 3.1 Dolby TrueHD track on the Funimation release, this is not the same English dub. I didn’t compare the two extensively because I don’t care for either dub (your own mileage may vary), but it’s something to be aware of. However, there’s a major difference in terms of how the subtitles and onscreen text are handled in this version. Funimation was working from a clean master that didn’t include Anno’s miles and miles of onscreen text, so they replaced it as necessary with subtitles. This version displays all of those onscreen identifiers as originally intended, regardless of which audio track that you choose. While some people may find them annoying, they’re such an important part of the film’s texture that it seems naked without them—Funimation’s Shin Godzilla isn’t really Shin Godzilla, it’s just an imposter. To reiterate, if the text seems redundant or unnecessary, that’s the whole point. It’s a way of visualizing the inefficiency of a bloated bureaucratic structure that talks and talks without taking timely action. If you still don’t like it, stick with the Funimation version—or else just watch Godzilla Minus One instead.
One further note about this version of Shin Godzilla: like the previous home video releases, this isn’t the theatrical cut. Anno is always gonna Anno, so he revised the theatrical version for home video as ver. 2.0. The differences are minimal—while they affect eleven different scenes, eight of those changes are adjusting the placement of the onscreen titles, and one of them is a change to the volume of the music. There are only two really noteworthy visual changes, one altering the CGI exhaust from a helicopter, and the other reframing Godzilla in a single shot. That’s it. It’s highly unlikely that anyone will be bothered by the tinkering (it’s trivial compared to what Anno has done to Evangelion over the years), but it’s another minor point to be aware of.
The GKIDS Deluxe Collector’s Edition 4K Ultra HD release of Shin Godzilla is a four-disc set that includes the feature film on UHD and Blu-ray; Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic on a separate Blu-ray; and an additional Blu-ray with all of the extras. Everything comes housed inside a textured hard slipcase, with a 16-page foldout booklet that breaks down all of the extras (and also details all of Anno’s changes for version 2.0). It was a Godzilla Store exclusive that appears to be sold out at this point, but there are different configurations available. The Standard Editions are two-disc sets that include the feature film (either on UHD or Blu-ray) and the bonus Blu-ray. There’s also a three-disc Steelbook Edition that includes the both the feature film UHD and the Blu-ray plus the bonus disc. The ORTHOchromatic version is exclusive to the Deluxe Collector’s Edition, so if you really want it, your only option may be the secondary market (although while your own mileage may vary, it’s really not worth the expense).
The following extras are included:
DISC THREE: BD (SHIN GODZILLA: ORTHOCHROMATIC)
Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic is a revised version that was created in 2023 to capitalize on the success of Godzilla Minus One (although it was released prior to Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color). And to be crystal-clear, it’s just that: a revision. Shin Godzilla was shot in color, designed for color, and graded for color, so this isn’t what Anno, Higuchi, Yamada, or Toho originally intended. It’s fascinating that film fans express outrage any time that they think a home video version of a film doesn’t match their purported memories of how the colors looked in the theatre (especially if there’s any teal in it), or get irate if wires have been erased, and they really lose their minds any time that a William Friedkin type of director makes even the smallest of revisions. Yet they unreservedly embrace black-and-white versions of films that were never intended to be seen that way. It’s a naked contradiction that can best be summed up as, “revisions are unacceptable and colorization is even worse, but black-and-white is cool, so disregard points #1 and #2.”
In any event, Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic isn’t even a good black-and-white revision. Unlike Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color, it looks like exactly what it is: desaturated color, not true black-and-white. The grayscale is unnatural, with a definite color cast to it. The “orthochromatic” designation is odd, too, because orthochromatic black-and-white film stocks weren’t sensitive to wavelengths of light that went beyond yellow, so anything that was red or orange tended to turn dark or even fully black. The result was an extremely high-contrast look with overexposed skies and dense blacks that obscured detail. (Think the Robet Eggers film The Lighthouse, which was shot on panchromatic stock since orthochromatic film stocks aren’t available anymore, but cyan filtered to mimic that look.) This relatively low-contrast black and white version doesn’t look even remotely orthochromatic. Worse, since Shin Godzilla isn’t a period piece like Godzilla Minus One, parts of it were shot on cell phones and intended to look like consumer-level home video. Those sequences look silly in black-and-white. As a result of all that, Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic is little more than a novelty, and it’s definitely not the best way to watch the film.
Note that Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic is presented here with the exact same audio options as the main feature: Japanese and English 3.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English, English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles.
DISC FOUR: BD (BONUS FEATURES)
- Promotional Video Collection (27:04, 39 in all)
- Making of Shin Godzilla (30:43)
- Deleted Scenes (45:27)
- Outtakes (15:44)
- News Reels (35:15)
- Previs Reel Collection (28:05)
- Previs and Special Effects Outtakes (20:17)
- Visual Effects Breakdown (17:58)
- Trailer #1 (1:32)
- Trailer #2 (1:32)
- Teaser #1 (:32)
- Teaser #2 (:32)
The Promotional Video Collection is an extensive collection of teasers, trailers (including IMAX trailers), advertisements, previews, television commercials, and more. There’s even footage from a screening where fans were allowed to do their own Rocky Horror Picture Show interactions with the film. Unfortunately, there aren’t any chapter stops to separate all of them, so they only play as one continuous feature.
The Making of Shin Godzilla opens on the very first day of production, with a prayer for everyone’s safety and a speech from Anno laying the groundwork for what they were trying to achieve. From there, it covers the rest of the live-action shoot, mixing behind-the-scenes footage with an occasional interview with the various cast members. It’s mostly a fly-on-the-wall look at the main unit, showing Anno, Higuchi, and all of their cast (and extras) at work, but towards the end, there’s footage from the live-action effects unit, including tantalizing glimpses of the large scale Godzilla animatronic that ended up being entirely replaced by CGI in the final cut.
There’s an extensive collection of Deleted Scenes, which also includes alternate takes and angles—Shin Godzilla was shot with multiple cameras simultaneously, so some of these are unused angles of takes that did appear in the final cut. They’re all designated with the scene number, camera, resolution, and even LUTs that were involved, so it’s an interesting way to see how the multicamera shooting worked in practice. (Once again, there are no chapter breaks.) The Outtakes is primarily a blooper reel (even Kimiko Yo and Mikako Ichikawa break character!) According to the notes, there’s also supposed to be some “test footage” here, but in practice, it’s all bloopers. The News Reels is a raw collection of all the television news footage that appears on various monitors throughout the film.
Finally, there are three different featurettes focusing on the design work and visual effects. The Previs Reel Collection includes storyboards and rough animation that were created by Studio Khara in order to help planning for the main unit. The Previs and Special Effects Outtakes focus on the digital animation previs, but it also offers raw camera footage from the live-action miniature shoot, including some unused angles. The Visual Effects Breakdown does just that, showing the full 3D model for Godzilla and various pieces of hardware, rough animation (including motion capture), and the layering together of the final shots.
That appears to be all of the extras from Toho’s Japanese release of Shin Godzilla, and while I’m not taken with Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic, I’m still glad that it’s included in the Deluxe Collector’s Edition since it’s a part of the history of Shin Godzilla (for good or for ill). It’s the easiest thing to lose, however, which means that the Standard Editions and the Steelbook Edition are viable alternatives. The only thing else that’s missing here is the Godzilla vs. the Nerds roundtable discussion that was on Funimation’s Blu-ray, but compared to Toho’s slate of extras, there’s no comparison at all. Shin Godzilla in 4K isn’t a huge upgrade over Blu-ray, but it’s just that teeny bit better, and the inclusion of the original onscreen text and the Toho extras is the icing on the cake. Casual fans who already own the Funimation disc may not think it’s worth upgrading, but hardcore G fans (you know who you are) won’t be able to resist the siren call of Shin 4K.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).