Movies
Sundance ’11: Trailer Debut for Dark Horse ‘The Oregonian’
Out of all of the Sundance Film Festival Midnight selections over the past decade, one of my own personally most anticipated is Calvin Reeder’s The Oregonian, his feature film debut starring Lindsay Pulsipher, Robert Longstreet, Tipper Newton, Barlow Jacobs, and Matt Olsen. Reeder made his Sundance debut back when his short film “Little Farm” screened before The Signal – talk about a way to kick off a night. If you haven’t seen it yet, I implore you to seek it out (oh wait, here it is!) Anyways, the trailer has debuted for The Oregonian, which begins after surviving a brutal car accident, a simple farm woman limps down the road into the nightmarish unknown. After “Little Farm”, I can only imagine the nightmare that awaits her.
Toho has just dropped another teaser for their highly anticipated sequel to 2023’s monstrous hit, Godzilla Minus One. While the confirmation that Takashi Yamazaki is returning for another round of emotionally resonant kaiju action is exciting enough, fans have also noticed a not-so-subtle detail hidden away in the trailer’s accompanying poster/promotional imagery.
The upper right corner of the newly released image initially appears to show golden rays of sunlight peeking in through the clouds behind Godzilla, but the unnatural bursts of lightning and hurricane-like winds surrounding the monster (not to mention the light’s vaguely draconic shape) may actually be teasing something far more dangerous.
Die-hard kaiju fans are more than aware that Godzilla’s arch-enemy King Ghidorah is a flying golden monster often associated with storms, with this three-headed dragon also being capable of breathing out lightning-like “Gravity Beams” to counter his mortal enemy’s atomic blasts. That’s why it seems like the imagery is hinting at a second kaiju threat this time around.
Combine this information with what we see in the teaser itself, and it appears that Godzilla Minus Zero may very well involve former weapons engineer Kenji Noda using nuclear weapons to awaken another giant monster capable of defeating Godzilla for good – a decision that could have disastrous consequences for our protagonists and the rest of Japan.
This is all just speculation at this point, but Minus Zero’s tagline, “There is no third time. Everything ends here,” and official synopsis make it clear that humanity will stop at nothing to end the kaiju threat once and for all. Yamazaki has also gone on record saying that he’s a huge fan of GMK: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, the only Godzilla movie where Ghidorah is portrayed as a hero – though I doubt that will be the case this time around.
Either way, we’ll have to wait a little longer before we know for sure. However, in the meantime, don’t forget to comment below with your own theories about where Yamazaki intends to take the story next, as we’d love to hear what our fellow Monster Movie fans have to say!
The first Japanese film to be filmed for IMAX, Godzilla Minus Zero releases November 6 in theaters around the globe.
Godzilla chomps down on King Ghidorah in ‘GMK: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack’
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