Godzilla Returns to Japan

Godzilla has been part of the pop-cultural landscape for more than three generations, so it’s hard to imagine a time when the monster wasn’t the source of jokes, memes, rock-and-roll riffs, and the ubiquitous prefix “son of” and suffix “-zilla.” Yet it has been a long time since Japan last released a Godzilla film. The dry spell ends with “Godzilla Resurgence,” which recently débuted a new trailer. Due out this July, it will be the first Godzilla movie made in its homeland in twelve years. It is being directed in tandem by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi, two otaku fan-favorites who are widely considered a dream team. Anno’s groundbreaking 1995 animated series “Evangelion” was deeply influenced by Japanese live-action sci-fi TV and cinema, and Higuchi rose to fame with his special-effects work on the mid-nineties “Gamera” trilogy, an improbably dark reboot of a sixties children’s series starring a giant fire-breathing turtle.