Godzilla Minus One — A Total Godzilla Newbie Review
“Oi Marvel — stick that up yer arse and detonate it!” — My exact thoughts as Godzilla Minus One roared to its triumphant conclusion as perhaps the best live-action movie I’ve seen in ages. I cannot overstate how much The Giant Green Ribbed One overwhelmingly violated my senses and made me his gibbering plaything. What a ride.
Ahem, apologies for the above paragraph of barely euphemised obscenity, but I just got out of the movie theatre and I need to talk about this film. As an avid enjoyer of multiple forms of Japanese entertainment (particularly manga, anime, visual novels, video games and light novels) I am of course aware of who Godzilla is, and his/her/their monstrous position in the global entertainment industry. However, until now I have never felt at all drawn to watch a movie about a silly man in a silly monster suit squishing Tokyo.
I almost watched 2016’s Shin Godzilla, mainly because it was directed by Hideaki Anno of Gunbuster/Nadia/Neon Genesis Evangelion fame, but it remains as yet unwatched, a sad neglected constituent of my extensive, unloved DVD Backlog Of Shame. I have vague, unformed memories of experiencing the cheap and nasty US Godzilla cartoon on some distant Saturday morning as a kid, but I remember little other than Godzilla’s annoying kiddie monster counterpart Godzuki. Suffice to say, the impression left in my nascent juvenile psyche was less than inspiring.
However, the excited buzz about this newest entry in the colossal franchise from my North American weeb colleagues has been overwhelming, with everyone unanimous in their urging that I must see this movie. It does help that as this is a post-second-world-war period film, presumably functioning as a prequel, absolutely zero knowledge of any of the numerous preceding movies in the Godzilla franchise is required to enjoy Godzilla Minus One. No, you don’t even need to watch any of the eleventy-billion Hollywood-secreted Monsterverse things that Warner Bros/Legendary Pictures keep shitting out like the digestive aftereffects of a cinematic jalapeno overdose. A trailer for the latest US-produced Godzilla/King Kong team-up showed before Minus One, and it looked idiotic.
Thankfully, Minus One is anything but idiotic. It’s the 33rd Japanese language Godzilla movie, produced by Toho to mark the franchise’s 70th anniversary. (The first movie released in 1954, but what’s a year between monster friends?) Opening during the final days of the Second World War, we meet the movie’s haunted protagonist Koiichi Shikishima, one of Japan’s famous Kamikaze suicide pilots, a class of combatant central to the country’s desperate last stand against their US enemy in the pacific theatre. Shikishima fails to complete his mission to die piloting his bomb-laden aircraft into a US ship by pretending his plane is faulty. Landing on Odo Island for unnecessary repairs, he experiences the terrifying emergence of dinosaur-like kaiju Godzilla, who proceeds to kill almost every panicking aircraft engineer. Although ordered to open fire upon Godzilla with his plane’s machine gun (the most powerful weapon on the island), he freezes and perhaps as a result everyone else dies.
A PTSD-ridden Shikishima returns to a bomb-ruined Tokyo to find his family dead and his neighbour berating him for his derogation of duty. This will become the overriding theme of Minus One — Shikishima’s survivor’s guilt, and whether this is justified. Writer/director Takashi Yamazaki is likely acutely aware that when it comes to the second world war, in the world’s collective cognition of Japan, two concepts are most prominent — that of the nuclear bomb, and of the Kamikaze.
Godzilla himself is a clear metaphor for the destructive power of the atomic bomb, and in fact during his first appearance he’s relatively small, though still fearsome. It’s only following the US Army’s test detonation of nuclear weapons at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific in 1946 that Godzilla is mutated to colossal size and supercharged with radioactive atomic energy. It’s hilarious that the movie blames US weapons tests for Godzilla’s incredible potency, but then they bottle out of helping Japan deal with the problem they created because of fears that US military manoeuvres in the Pacific might upset the Russians.
Godzilla Minus One’s message is at its most powerful when it reads as an admonishment/apology for Japan’s own history regarding the callousness with which the lives of their own people were sacrificed. I didn’t even realise until now that Japanese fighter planes weren’t fitted with ejector seats — Kamikaze pilots were expected to go down with the ships they bombed — an “honourable” death. Shikishima mentally struggles with both occasions when he “failed” in his duty, and it drives him to make some potentially poor choices as a result. Normally I dislike most Japanese live action dramas because of the prominence of heightened overacting that I see as endemic in their movies and TV shows, yet actor Ryunosuke Kamiki absolutely nails Shikishima’s conflicted, tortured nature — from his sometimes quiet resignation, to his shuddering, tearful panic attacks. Although this is ostensibly an action-filled monster movie, it’s Shikishima’s character and his interactions with his friends and found family that keep the viewer’s interest.
I’ve read criticisms of other Godzilla movies that sometimes the human characters can be annoying ciphers, existing only to bulk out the runtime and keep the budget under control. (I imagine a two-hour movie of nothing but apocalyptic kaiju destruction would be prohibitively expensive, and possibly also overwhelmingly boring…) In Minus One, the characters are so well-written and acted, so sympathetic and interesting that it’s almost a disappointment when the next action sequence starts, interrupting the extremely compelling human story of rebuilding and reconnecting following existential-threat-level societal destruction. The action sequences are of course not disappointing in the slightest, but we’ll get onto them in a minute.
Shikishima inadvertently forms a sort-of-family unit with Noriko Oishi, a woman of similar age to him, plus the young child she cares for. They provide the emotional backbone to the movie, and the toddler-aged child actor does remarkably well, she’s not annoying in the slightest, and we come to really care for this odd little trio, thrown together (reluctantly, on Shikishima’s part) by tragic circumstance.
Also a highlight is the trio of men who comprise the crew of the ramshackle wooden mine-hunting boat Shinsei Maru where Shikishima finds employment. From the mercurial captain Yoji Akitsu, to the smart, encouraging former naval weapons engineer Kenji Noda, and the naive but motivated Shiro Mizushima, they’re all a delight. The way they pull together in the film’s big, clever and tense action climax is real punch-the-air exciting stuff.
It’s hard to believe that Minus One was made on a tiny fraction of the budget that it takes to produce bland, homogenous, shitty-CGI sludge like the last few Marvel movies. It beggars belief that something as frankly embarrassing as the most recent Ant-Man cost Disney upwards of 200 million USD to shit out half-formed, yet an incredible-looking film like Minus One cost less than 15 million USD. Hopefully this isn’t a Studio MAPPA-like situation where the Japanese filmaking crew were forced to work long, life-threatening hours for a meagre pittance, but perhaps is evidence that good-looking movies don’t need to cost the Earth. Perhaps a director with a vision, a crew that believes in that vision, and no small amount of practical skill, can make something as incredible as Minus One.
Take Godzilla himself — he’s very clearly a CG creation, he even looks a little daft with his funny, toothy grin — however he has a real weight to him, a sense of threat, some wonderful design details, and he doesn’t look out of place in the world. Look at whatever the hell was going on with MODOK in Ant-Man, and it doesn’t compare. Toho shames Disney with their brutal efficiency and artistry here. No Hollywood movie I’ve seen in years equals Minus One in sheer heart, entertainment value, and coherency of theme and meaning. The naval engagements between enormous battleships and Godzilla are nothing less than thrilling — and I’ve no idea if all of the scenes were CG, or practical effects. Everything just works to tell a damn good story, and tell it well.
If I’ve not already made it stultifyingly clear with my overwhelmingly effusive praise, Godzilla Minus One is a fantastic movie that I loved wholeheartedly. I never would have figured that one day I’d become a kaiju fan, but I’m already itching for my next fix. I guess Shin Godzilla won’t remain on my Backlog of Shame for much longer. (I’m not sure I feel the same about the Hollywood versions, though. The whole MCU-style cinematic universe garbage really puts me off…)
Godzilla Minus One
Directed, written and with visual effects by: Takashi Yamazaki
Cinematography: Kozo Shibasaki
Music: Naoki Satō
Production company: Toho Studios
Japanese premiere: 18th October 2023
US theatrical release: 1st December 2023
UK theatrical release: 15th December 2023
Runtime: 125 minutes
Language: Japanese with English Subtitles
BBFC rating: 12A
