Godzilla Minus One, the long-awaited Godzilla throwback movie, is finally on Netflix

polygon.com:

This review of Godzilla Minus One was originally posted in conjunction with the movie’s theatrical release. It has been updated and reposted now that the film is available on digital platforms.

Godzilla Minus One is the throwback movie that longtime Godzilla fans have been waiting for. This is an age of abundance for Godzilla media: Over the past seven years, as part of a partnership between Toho and Hollywood studios, the giant lizard received three animated films on Netflix, two U.S. movies, and an Apple TV series that premieres Nov. 17. Godzilla fans like me haven’t been left wanting. And yet something crucial has been missing from most of this media, something fundamental to the earliest films in the Godzilla franchise: terror.

We nearly had a decade of terrifying Godzilla. In 2016, Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi releasedthe horrifying Shin Godzilla, widely regarded as one of the best entries in the franchise. It promised a return to the petrifying, humanity-destroying Godzilla of the past. But Shin Godzilla marked a lengthy hiatus in the production of Japanese live-action Godzilla films, and signaled the beginning of a colossally successful American era for the big lizard. The American Godzilla media of the past seven years, including Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Godzilla vs. Kong, and those Netflix anime movies, ranges from serviceable to pretty damn good, though its creators borrowed far more from the Marvel Cinematic Universe than from classic kaiju matinees.

After years of letting Hollywood take its contractually mandated turn, Toho returns with a literal throwback movie that lands Godzilla nearly a century in the past. He doesn’t have any adorable friends in this new Japanese-produced live-action period piece. You won’t see him save Tokyo from a kaiju that represents oceanic pollution, or a reptilian mech that embodies capitalism gone awry. Nor will you spot King Kong or hear mention of the Monsterverse.

Instead, Godzilla Minus One sticks to the