Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color and the rise of the de-colorized version
For the last two decades, filmmakers have been stripping their films of color. But is it really anything more than a novelty?
Film Features Godzilla
Godzilla Minus One returns to theaters this weekend minus one important element: Color. Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color, a black-and-white version of the king lizard’s biggest Japanese movie ever, makes this old-fashioned blockbuster feel more like the era it mimics. For one week, the monster stomps into multiplexes with an Oscar nomination and the gravitas that comes with a black-and-white cut. It isn’t alone.
Godzilla is the latest significant sci-fi star stripped of his color, a trend that’s been going on since the late mid-2000s. In 2008, Frank Darabont included a black-and-white version of The Mist for the film’s DVD release. In the video introduction to the re-release, Darabont says his monochrome Mist was his original intention because “there’s something about Stephen King’s story that’s a bit of a throwback.” King, Darabont continues, was inspired by those old grainy black-and-white movies, something the director hoped to reflect. Another Darabont project, season one of The Walking Dead, aired in black-and-white on AMC in 2016, emulating the original look of the comics and zombie classics like Night Of The Living Dead.
Advancements in digital filmmaking throughout the 2000s and 2010s helped make these stylist desaturatizations a viable option, allowing directors who imagined their films devoid of color to indulge their fantasies. George Miller called 2017’s Mad Max: Fury Road – Black & Chrome “the best version of this movie.” That year, James Mangold removed the color from Logan for Logan Noir, putting a little more prestige on his elevated superhero movie. By 2021, HBO Max was releasing two versions of the Snyder Cut: Zack Snyder’s Justice League and Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Justice Is Gray. Even Guillermo del Toro’s Best Picture nominee Nightmare Alley got a black-and-white redux, Vision In Darkness And Light, making its resemblance to the 1946 original more pronounced.
Unsurprisingly, other countries were way ahead of Hollywood on this—even in terms of giving the new cuts silly titles. In 2006, the DVD release of Park Chan-Wook’s Lady Vengeance included the “Fade To Black And White Version,” which Park preferred to the original. That one makes even more impressive use of the form, with the color photography slowly fading to black-and-white throughout the movie. Park’s compatriot, Bong Joon-Ho, also jumped on the trend. His 2009 thriller Mother received a 2013 black-and-white re-release, as did Parasite, which went color-less for its 2020 Criterion release. Bong cheekily said that it would help make his film a classic.
“I think it may be vanity on my part, but when I think of the classics, they’re all in black and white,” Bong said at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. “So I had this idea that if I turned my films into black and white, then they’d become classics.”
Black-and-white has never been easier to accomplish nor more in vogue—aside from, you know, when it was the norm. Half of the nominees for Best Picture feature scenes in black-and-white, and all five of the cinematography nominees do—El Conde being the only nominee to go all in. There’s some added prestige, a level of import placed on the twin-tone aesthetic that blockbusters wish to glean. As George Miller said, it’s usually reserved for art films.
Godzilla Minus One has already garnered glowing reviews, but the black-and-white makeover makes it more nostalgic than artful. Shots of Godzilla crushing Tokyo under its massive feet with the horns of the classic Godzilla theme blaring over the soundtrack look about as close as a modern movie could come to the 1954 original. Just as the late Peter Bogdanovich attempted to make a closer connection between The Last Picture Show and its sequel, Texasville, by releasing the latter’s director’s cut in black-and-white, this stylistic choice links the past with something new. Godzilla Minus One was already an old-fashioned film. Minus Color attempts to make it look old-fashioned too.
All this is certainly a worthy exercise. When something is removed from a piece of art, we’re forced to consider what it added in the first place. Steven Soderbergh took the color and sound out of Raiders Of the Lost Ark to understand Steven Spielberg’s cinematic language. He writes on his Extension 765 blog:
So I want you to watch this movie and think only about staging, how the shots are built and laid out, what the rules of movement are, what the cutting patterns are. See if you can reproduce the thought process that resulted in these choices by asking yourself: why was each shot—whether short or long—held for that exact length of time and placed in that order? Sounds like fun, right? It actually is.
But this is, for lack of a better term, all a novelty at worst and an experiment at best. These movies will likely never be the definitive or most widely seen versions, despite how many filmmakers say it was always their intention. After all, NBC doesn’t air the colorized It’s A Wonderful Life.
Still, it makes a good case for the continued interest in black-and-white, a style still of interest to audiences. Why else would YouTube channels devote time to series like “Better In Black And White,” or viewers opt to desaturate movies on their own? Either way, it allows viewers to see these movies with fresh eyes and added resonance. It might be a novelty, but the latest version of Godzilla Minus One proves one thing: Godzilla destroying Tokyo always looks best minus color.
57 Comments
Removing the color is not the same as shooting on B&W film. B&W film has a richness to it that decolorization cannot capture. Just as colorizing a B&W film does not achieve the richness of Technicolor.
Yeah, I think the Godzilla -1/Minus Color idea is fun, but watching the trailer it does not look nearly as good as actual B&W film.
Came here to say exactly this. Just making a movie black and white can be as artless as colorizing a black and white movie. The reason great old black and white movies look so great is the film makers knew what they could do with the medium and made it look amazing
I agree in principle but the big difference between colorizing and de-colorizing is that the former was almost always done without the filmmakers’ consent.
While this is true, you’re undervaluing the incredible amount of work, dedication, and skill it takes for an editor to properly recolor a film to black and white in a way that looks clean and readable. Fury Road: Black & Chrome is an amazing example of this. I’m not saying the other examples given actually achieve that, but it’s possible.
Except that most b&w films produced at the end of the filmstrip era were shot in color, because of concerns about the price and availability of b&w stock and labs that could process it. That’s why there are (desaturated) “color” versions of The Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There or of John Boorman’s The General. A few foreign distributors wanted them, and it was technically easy to produce them.These films were definitely made with b&w in mind, hence the lighting with high contrasts that would look ugly in color (especially before it’s desaturated). But color film stocks had improved a lot since the thirties, and I guess you couldn’t spot these were not “pure” b&w films.
It depends on how they do it. Straight desaturation is boring; black and white film actually has a colour response and can greatly affect the end result. Especially with skin tones.
Maybe my only regret over not having kids is that I was never able to lie to them like this. I can only do it with my wife, and that doesn’t work as often. She did, however, believe that bilirubin was named after the scientist who discovered it: Dr William Rubin.
That’s funny. It’s only from having kids that I even know what bilirubin is. And not from the massive amounts of alcohol I consume, which may be even weirder.
There’s always nieces and nephews. I have quite a reputation with them, although I rarely let the ruse last very long.
One Thanksgiving I told them that the dog knew he was only allowed to eat one of them so they shouldn’t be scared because once he ate one of them the other three could be sure they were safe.I got smiles from their fathers and a stern talking to from their mothers.
I do fear that at some point I will suffer from The Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome if I ever try to tell them something real and important.
“C’mon, I’m not falling for that! ‘Sticking a penis in a girl’s vagina gets them pregnant.’ How gullible do you think I am?”
My parents almost never messed with my like that, and I think that’s basically why I have no appreciation for it. I never make things up just to fuck with anyone, especially kids. There’s something about it that I find disturbing. That being said, it can be absolutely hilarious. It’s just not for me.
I feel like I’m the only person I know who thinks that the concept of Santa Clause is super weird and mildly fucked up.
Nah, anything with origins that far back in history is always weird and fucked up. Which basically means religion, I guess.
Right but most of it isn’t a prank on children that we then let them in on as they age. The concept that an old man in the sky is judging you and determining your fate is weird and bad. and then Christianity slaps on Santa. Then admits he’s fake.
When I said Religion I meant the ties more to the actual person/legend Santa is an amalgamation of than what he (it?) is today. And not sure I agree with the term “prank” –at least in the traditional sense. You clearly feel much more strongly about it than I do, though.
I’ve seen some shit.https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-4255
….I don’t know what the fuck I am reading, but I can’t thank you enough for sharing it with me.
I first learned about bilirubin from reading Silence of the Lambs. William Rubin was one of the false leads Doctor Lector dropped to amuse himself. Apparently it’s also the same colour as Chilton’s hair.
Excellent
I love when dad fucked around with Calvin.
Honestly, I think this is my favourite one with Calvin’s dad.
I just keep thinking back to Billy Wilder, who always maintained that color film was a mistake, and the lack of color was an intrinsic part of the film artform that it became something lesser without. The Apartment is the last Best Picture winner to be black and white simply because the director preferred it to color rather than to deliberately evoke a feeling of the past, and he continued to resist making color movies well into the ‘60s.
Ignore me I’m dumb
redacted. god I hate kinja.
What was his reasoning for this? What did he think colour took away?The Wizard of Oz is a great example of a film that is better with colour. A Wes Anderson movie without colour would still be good, but it sure makes a difference. Kubrick’s use of red is one of the best arguments against this.
does the artist winning in 2011 not count? (edit: i see you specifically said it was because he preferred b&w as opposed to trying to emulate an older movie, which is a very specific caveat but i’ll let anything slide for wilder)
Schindler’s List too.
Wilder’s first color film was The Emperor Waltz in 1948, followed by The Seven Year Itch in 1955, The Spirit of St. Louis in 1957, and Irma La Douce in 1963. He preferred B/W to color because he really disliked technicolor (“fake”).
“Nightmare Alley got a black-and-white redux, Vision In Darkness And Light”
Did they screen it for prison inmates as punishment?
Color makes some exquisite punctuation in Lady Vengeance, so I can’t imagine a B&W version, but I also have immense respect for our South Korean masters, so I’ll give that a pass.But most of these strike me as too-obvious attempts at increased revenues. And that feels kind of gross.
Somewhere out there on 10’s of 1000’s of acres of ranch land, Ted Turner sits. And waits.
Y’know what film looks surprisingly good in black and white?
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.
I did a conversion myself while testing my editing software and it looks really good. It gives the flashback scenes kind of a Citizen Kane quality.
Username checks out.
It happens so rarely, who gives a shit
Decolorized versions of movies tend to make me scratch my head unless the director was specifically reaching for a throwback tone with the movie. Parasite and Mad Max are such odd choices (especially Mad Max, a movie which takes great advantage of color), but I get it with The Mist and Godzilla. Why I’d give it a shot for Nightmare Alley if that movie didn’t bore the heck outta me.
There was a better B&W of Mad Max a fan made where it was a silent film. All score, not even sound effects if I remember right, and dialog cards. It was worth the watch.
I was going to mention this version! Absolutely fantastic! With only the score and without dialog and sound effects, the action scenes were electrifying. The scene where the bullet farmer is blinded was especially good.I’ve still got it on my movie hard drive. I need to watch it again.EDIT: There are minimal sound effects, like some gunshots and occasional engine revving. Still very well done.
“Silent” films had sound effects though, at least when they played the best theaters. It’s pretty amazing what some of those pipe organs could do.
Huh. I didn’t know this was a thing, and honestly it just sounds weird until the next comment so I’m convinced. I’m off to seek this out.
Sweet Jesus Christ on a crutch, that was amazing.
A black & white movie can be gorgeous. You sat down and watched the restored version of Casablanca? The monochromatic images practically leap off the screen—dripping with shades of silver.But the trailer to Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color: it just looks like someone shoved the saturation control down to zero—ended up with a ton of muddled grays—and let it go at that. Keeping in mind how Ansel Adams would use a deep red filter for his B&W landscapes to make the clouds completely pop, I see no evidence that anyone at Toho did likewise for the Godzilla flick. Why not?
Gimmick, and a depressing one.
Counter argument: The Mist B&W slaps
It’s okay, it spackles over some CGI limitations and it’s not exactly a movie that works in an obviously meticulous colour design like Fury Road. I’m glad I have both versions, I’ve seen both, I’m not sure which one I’d go back to next time.
I thought Godzilla Minus One was one of the dumbest movie titles I’ve ever heard, but Godzilla Minus One Minus Color absolutely bodies it.
what? minus one is a cool title imo…
I was hoping that everything would be monochromatic except the blue spikes and what came out of them.
Still waiting for the rerelease of The Wizard of Oz where most of it is in black and white, but Kansas is in color.
I loved Fury Road, but I cannot imagine watching it in black and white. The contrast of the blue sky with the red ground, or the blue sky and the red sandstorm were half of what made the movie. And what showed how Immortan Joe hoarded so much moire than he needed than all the green plants surrounding him as he preached against “becoming addicted” to water?
I have a list somewhere leftover from my movie-theater years, titled “Might be better in Black and White.” The Mist was on there before Franky D rereleased it, and I was like… “Called it!” Now, like with Se7en, a movie that’s practically in b&w to begin with, I wonder if watching it in b&w would rob the little bits of color of their specialness. The pale green of the reflected fluorescent lights, the green of the air fresheners, small amounts of blood, the fried out desert at the end, skin tones…Anyway, interesting maybe in b&w: (from memory) Se7en, Panic Room, Zodiac, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Mouse Hunt, Leaving Las Vegas, Coen Bros’ True Grit, Bridge of Spies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Babel, The Hindenburg, Mars Attacks, JFK (except for the Zapruder film scenes), The Devil’s Backbone, The Ring, The Grudge, The Dead Zone, Nightbreed (?), Lost Highway, (Mulholland Drive is close, but I think it needs to stay in color. Lynch’s Dune though… I bet that would be interesting) and I’d say The Crow, but again, I’m questioning if my brain is just being lazy since it’s practically in b&w to begin with.
The decolourized version of the colourized version of It’s a Wonderful Life looks so much better than the original B&W.
The Mist in B&W is better
didn’t like it in bcs, prolly won’t like it here either