Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters

After Godzilla and other giant monsters bring human civilization to collapse, the survivors abandon Earth aboard interstellar vessels in search of a new home. Only twenty years pass for the refugees, but relativistic effects mean roughly 20,000 years have elapsed on Earth. When attempts to colonize another planet fail, Haruo Sakaki convinces his people to return and destroy Godzilla. They discover that their former home has become an alien world whose ecosystem has evolved under Godzilla's influence. Haruo develops a daring strategy targeting the monster's electromagnetic defenses, but the apparent success of humanity's counterattack ultimately reveals that the creature they defeated was only part of a far more terrifying reality.

GODZILLA: Planet of the Monsters is the first film in Toho's anime Godzilla trilogy, produced by Toho Animation and animated by Polygon Pictures. Directed by Kōbun Shizuno and Hiroyuki Seshita with a story by Gen Urobuchi, it opened theatrically in Japan on November 17, 2017 and became the first animated feature film in the history of the Godzilla franchise. The movie radically reimagines Godzilla through a far-future science-fiction setting in which humanity has abandoned Earth after repeated kaiju catastrophes and Godzilla's eventual domination of the planet. When the refugees return after approximately 20,000 Earth years, they encounter an environment transformed into a hostile ecosystem whose biology and even material properties reflect Godzilla's influence. Protagonist Haruo Sakaki, driven by an obsessive hatred of Godzilla, develops a strategy centered on disrupting the monster's electromagnetic shield and attacking a vulnerable internal organ. Much of the campaign is fought against Godzilla Filius, a smaller organism possessing essentially the same biological characteristics. After Filius is destroyed, the expedition discovers that the original Godzilla survived and continued growing for twenty millennia, becoming the approximately 300-meter Godzilla Earth. The film also features Servum, flying creatures adapted to the transformed planetary ecosystem. Planet of the Monsters establishes the post-human scale and philosophical conflict of the anime continuity, continuing directly into City on the Edge of Battle and The Planet Eater.