Image: Toho
If I ever happened to direct a really great Godzilla movie that also happened to become a record-breaking blockbuster of international kaiju cinema along the way, I would personally be pretty content. But I’m very glad that Takashi Yamazaki, who did exactly that with Godzilla Minus One, is going beyond that and just using its success to have a really nice time.
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Earlier this week in Director Has Nice Time news, we brought you up to speed on both Yamazaki’s delight at getting to meet famous stars at the Critics Choice Awards, as he dragged a miniature Godzilla around the vicinities of Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, and more—as well as his excellent taste in Godzilla-themed formalwear shoes. But now Yamazaki has kept that nice time rolling, with a presentation of Godzilla Minus One to Lucasfilm employees at the studio’s San Francisco offices as well as a Q&A hosted by Chief Creative Officer (and noted Godzilla stan) Dave Filoni last week.
Yamazaki is himself a diehard Star Wars fan—when I spoke to him about his work on Lupin III: The First in 2020, his office was littered with Star Wars model kits he’d built—and recently expressed his own desire to one day make a Star Wars movie, an incredibly good idea for a lot of reasons that Lucasfilm should take the director up on once it has re-remembered how to actually release a few movies again. So while this is mostly just another important entry in a director who made one of 2023’s best movies getting rewarded with having a nice time, fingers crossed that at least somewhere in the hallowed halls of the proverbial senate, someone sat him down with the potential of getting his eye on the galaxy far, far away at some point in the future.
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