Prior to Godzilla Day this year, which marked the character’s 70th birthday, Toho let the kaiju cat out of the bag with a monumental announcement. Takashi Yamazaki is getting the keys to the kingdom again to make the follow-up to Godzilla Minus One.
Directing his second Godzilla film in a row puts him in rarefied air with Ishiro Honda, and adds pressure to deliver. Yamazaki has to top what he’s done, which is not simple. How does he continue the story? Does he pick up where Minus One left off? Or does he fast-forward to a point in the future with new characters or the same ones, but older?
More importantly, does Yamazaki stick with Godzilla as the sole monster/primary threat or does he bring another kaiju into the mix? He’s already discussed the potential of giving Hedorah a fresh coat of slime in a hypothetical modernization using state-of-the-art effects, but that is just one option.
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The next film could go in a totally unexpected direction and bring back a different creature that few have brought up for a Minus One sequel until now. Her resurrection is 30 years overdue and any fruit her vines produce is ripe for the picking by now. G-Fans may have caught on to the fact I’m talking about Biollante.
The nightmare monster of science spliced together from Godzilla cells, a rose, and human DNA is immensely popular despite appearing in only one movie. Even odder, that film (Godzilla vs. Biollante) underperformed when it was released and cooled Toho’s hopes of creating new monsters – until Destoroyah, another universal favorite, debuted in 1995.
But time and distance make the heart grow fonder, and the years have been kind to the fondness for Biollante. She routinely appears on wishlists and in features covering where the MonsterVerse or Reiwa period can go next, and her time sounds like it’s finally coming again.
How Yamazaki would introduce her to his grounded reality of monsters remains a pressing question yet the answer is a simple one that lies in the ending of Minus One (spoilers ahead for the uninitiated).
Koichi finds out Noriko somehow survived a nuclear blast without critical injuries and visits her in a hospital. The camera catches a prominent black mark on her neck when they embrace. The consensus is that this mark contains genetic material from Godzilla which might be responsible for Noriko’s miraculous recovery.
If that’s true, the consequences of having Godzilla cells in her body are unknown although Yamazaki has confirmed this ending is supposed to portend that not everything is okay in Noriko and Koichi’s life together despite everything they’ve already gone through. This doesn’t mean Noriko will turn into a botanical kaiju in the next movie, but she could, and it would be apropos.
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Biollante’s human cells come from the dead daughter of a doomed scientist who just wanted to keep part of her alive in some fashion. It’s a tragic story, and Noriko is a tragic figure among many. Everyone and the entire air of Minus One’s world is blighted with tragedy, which they’re all trying to wake up from and put behind them.
A cruel irony of climbing out of a “negative state” and back to a comfier “zero” would be Noriko mutating Quatermass-style or spawning killer foliage when coming into contact with a plant or flower. The latter scenario might be more prudent thematically as it would put Noriko in Koichi’s shoes by giving her a “war” with a dragon to slay at all costs.
Details are under wraps, and with the would-be sequel to Godzilla Minus One in the preliminary stage, it’s possible that Yamazaki doesn’t have the story ironed out. However, he might have a few ideas, including ways to utilize Biollante, on the drawing board.
As cautionary a tale as her origin is, she fits the narrative he crafted like a gardening glove. Hopefully, Yamazaki’s inner auteur notices.
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