My friends, I would be perfectly happy with just another cool Godzilla movie. That’s what I want to see. But it turns out the new one, GODZILLA MINUS ONE, is an actual masterpiece. I think you could say the same of 2016’s SHIN GODZILLA, a visionary take on the big guy. This one, from writer/director/special effects supervisor Takashi Yamazaki (RETURNER, SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO), is more of a sweeping emotional one. Set between 1945 and 1947, it’s a serious and very involving post-war melodrama about the opposite of a war hero.
As WWII is winding down, kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki, RUROUNI KENSHIN: KYOTO INFERNO) lands on Odo Island with engine troubles. Or so he says. The mechanics all give him a look as their boss, Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki, BATTLE ROYALE II, HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI, SAMURAI MARATHON) tells him they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. “What are you implying?” Koichi cries, and storms off.
Tachibana catches up with him and says that, for what it’s worth, he’s on his side. The government treats life as cheap. It makes no sense to give your life for a war that’s already lost. Yeah, we agree, but that’s not gonna wipe the shame off of Koichi. So you see, this is a movie about about a guy who chose to live, and feels tremendous guilt about it.
Oh, and also this is a Godzilla movie! Out of the blue, a fuckin ferocious dinosaur motherfucker already named Godzilla by the locals comes out of the water and starts roaring at them. They don’t know how lucky they are that he’s merely the size of a t-rex at this point. But they’re counting on the only soldier among them, Koichi, to get in that actually fine bomber of his and use its powerful guns to protect them. This is his chance to prove to himself, and to the mechanics, and to the world, that he’s not a coward after all, that he can be courageous, that he has a purpose!
He does not do that. Whoops. The next day he wakes up, the only survivor besides Tachibana, who makes it very clear that he’s not on his side anymore. Not remotely. Okay, yeah, actually this guy Koichi is a coward. Yikes.
So that’s the deeply uncomfortable rock bottom the movie has to climb up from: a protagonist who feels worthless because he failed his supposed duty in war and then his actual duty in life. He returns home to Tokyo, which is now just piles of rubble. His neighbor Sumiko (Sakura Ando, SHOPLIFTERS) survived to tell him his parents are dead and to shame him for being alive. She says if he’d done his job her children wouldn’t have been killed. Savage.
After a chance encounter with a shoplifter named Noriko (Minami Hamabe, SHIN KAMEN RIDER) – who he tries to narc out! – his guilt and/or empathy gets the better of him and he lets her stay with him in what’s left of his house. She has a baby named Akiko (Sae Nagatani) given to her by a dying stranger. Sumiko shames her for not knowing how to take care of a baby, and generously donates her stash of rice.
I have at times criticized some of the American Godzilla pictures for having boring human characters, but the best kaiju movies usually have more going on than monster action. This one is so good it can go long stretches without me even thinking about Godzilla (though it does not choose to abuse this power). I love this story of Koichi and Noriko forming a family unit, but denying it’s exactly that, while Koichi struggles to redeem himself. He takes a government job on a rickety wooden trawler finding and detonating leftover mines – that it’s a risky job is good because it pays enough to support the family and he clearly wants to punish himself.
The job reintroduces Koichi to Godzilla (now giant and a great swimmer) and also lets us meet a set of lovable supporting characters, most notably Dr. Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka, THE HIDDEN BLADE), who will ultimately mastermind a civilian plot to stop Godzilla from stomping through cities. Post-war Japan has no military, and these people don’t trust the government anyway. There’s a big community meeting scene where they propose the plan, which is a clever one that we get to excitedly anticipate them executing. But you could almost forget that with all the intense character drama going on here. Not wanting to repeat the sins of the war, Dr. Noda insists on volunteers only, and no suicide missions. Most in attendance opt out, feeling they already sacrificed too much in the war. I love how Yamazaki keeps Koichi’s face visible in the crowd. I kept seeking him out, staring at him, waiting for him to step forward and make a rousing speech or something. Isn’t this the chance he’s been waiting for? But he keeps it to himself.
I’ve seen drastically different interpretations of MINUS ONE’s politics, from “fiercely anti-war” to “right wing nationalistic propaganda.” Some are touched by these broken people banding together to survive the torment of war and its after effects, others see it as a Rambo “Do we get to win this time?” for Japan. Maybe it’s a FORREST GUMP that lets you fill in its ambiguities with your own biases. I won’t pretend to understand Japanese politics at all, either in the era depicted or the one the people who made this have lived in. I’ll just say that to me it’s a story about the survivors of a war finding hope and pride in the act of working together for a better cause, with a different philosophy that affirms life. I gotta give a SPOILER warning here but it’s very important that this a guilt-ridden deserter who gets a second chance to kamikaze himself. It leaves us in suspense about whether he’ll do it and whether the movie believes that would redeem him. And I was riveted about both.
As the only trained pilot in this vigilante defense force, it falls to Koichi to fly an unused prototype jet they have access to, and lure Godzilla to where they need him. But it needs some repairs before it can fly, which gives him the perfect excuse to masochistically track down the best mechanic he knows and the guy who hates him most in the world, Tachibana. Man, it is beautiful to have a kaiju movie with characters and melodrama I’m this invested in. I’m scared of what Tachibana is gonna say to him, and also desperately wanting them to confront this, work through it, try to find some kind of peace together.
I love the way so many of these characters begin with firm convictions that change with the circumstances. Back on Odo, Tachibana supported Koichi deserting the war, then turned on him when he froze up while Godzilla ate his colleagues. Tachibana spent years thinking Koichi deserved to die, and agrees to help with the jet only after he realizes he wants to kamikaze Godzilla. Some of the most compelling questions are whether Koichi can stop Godzilla without dying and whether or not Tachibana would forgive him for it.
And then there’s the neighbor Sumiko, who is outraged that Koichi didn’t sacrifice himself in the war, but when she realizes he plans to sacrifice himself to kill Godzilla, she’s outraged by that because he’d be abandoning Akiko. Things change.
These characters and their emotional struggles really are what’s so exciting about GODZILLA MINUS ONE, but don’t let that imply that the kaiju shit is subpar. It’s worth noting that while Yamazaki’s previous works include the 2005 drama ALWAYS: SUNSET ON THIRD STREET (which won 12 Japanese Academy Awards including best picture and best director), he also did the 2021 theme park attraction Godzilla the Ride: Giant Monsters Ultimate Battle (a five minute 3D-animated flying theater motion simulator ride located in the Seibuen amusement park in Tokorozawa, Saitama, Japan). So he’s not some pretentious dude slumming, he’s a man of varied talents, and more than qualified to deliver a great selection of both new and traditional Godzilla business. Early encounters are in the water, not walking but swimming like a gator, spine wriggling like a snake’s, his back plates protruding, creating jets of water as he glides. He’s less agile on land, and when he comes ashore to stomp through Ginza the great score by Naoki Satō (RUROUNI KENSHIN) hands the baton to original Akira Ifukube themes taken from KING KONG VS. GODZILLA and MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA. We get some direct tributes to GOJIRA: KING OF THE MONSTERS, like a re-creation of the iconic train-in-the-mouth scene, this time with the character we’re most protective of inside. I wondered if this was supposed to be a different perspective of the same events in the 1954 film.
As heavy as it is on WWII and o.g. Gojira, this is also a 2023 Godzilla movie, so it’s modern digital effects (done by a company called Shirogumi), giving the big guy different stages of mutation, evolving powers, incandescence. There’s an awe-inspiring scene where we follow up his back as his iconic spikes pop out one-by-one like switchblades and glow blue with radiation, but even that pales in comparison to the scenes where he uses his atomic breath. It has always been cool when he uses it but in this incarnation, believe it or not, it’s reminiscent of the bomb test in OPPENHEIMER or at least the Holdo maneuver in THE LAST JEDI: a face-melting blast, eerie silence, overwhelming destruction. It’s so powerful it burns his face but, by the way, this Godzilla has regenerative powers.
That’s one of the coolest touches in a movie constantly foaming over with cool touches. It makes for a classic oh-shit-what-the-fuck-are-we-gonna-do-now moment when it first foils them, but also it’s perfect for the symbolism of Godzilla. The devastatation of war must be stopped, but certainly can’t be killed, so what do you do?
In the end the way the story is resolved is about human beings, tiny as we are, facing our mistakes, our failures, our regrets. A final conflict is between Koichi and his (and Japan’s, and men’s) insecurities. We figure he’ll save the day, but at what cost? We really don’t know for sure.
I want to note that although MINUS ONE is much less expensive than the American Monsterverse movies while also being (to me) way more satisfying, there is I think a misunderstanding about that. I keep seeing people saying that because this has a reported $15 million US budget there’s no excuse for Hollywood movies not to look this good for that cheap. But that ignores that Japan’s animators and FX artists are even more notoriously overworked and underpaid than ours. What we should aspire to is people being able to make work this good while also being treated and compensated well. Even if it’s more expensive.
Anyway I really appreciate that we could get such a serious “prestige” Godzilla movie from Japan even as Adam Wingard’s goofy neon hollow earth take continues over here. Godzilla and his whole genre are malleable like that. According to a 2016 article in Otaku USA Magazine, SHIN GODZILLA producer Akihiro Yamauchi said that “one touchstone for the Godzilla reboot was the Alien franchise, in which each film is directed by a new director who adds his own unique touch.” I sure hope they continue with that philosophy. It’s paid off so far. (On the other hand I totally approve of Yamazaki’s request to do one more.)
I knew this was supposed to be a serious one, but I was shocked to find myself being reminded of Clint Eastwood’s best picture nominated WWII drama LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA. That’s likely an accident, but there’s definitely some influence from DUNKIRK (and also JAWS). In my research I found that Yamazaki has cited GOJIRA, JAWS, PRINCESS MONONOKE, and Shusuke Kaneko’s kaiju classics GODZILLA MOTHRA KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK and GAMERA 3: REVENGE OF IRIS as influences. I know it’s too soon to carve this into stone but I think this might be the most emotional investment I’ll ever have in non-monster Godzilla characters, as well as the scariest I’ve ever seen Godzilla. It is certainly up there with the best kaiju movies ever made, and the best movies of any type this year. Godzilla, you’re not a minus to me, you’re a plus!
P.S. If you’re reading this review when it’s new, please note that MINUS ONE was planned for a limited engagement, and it has been extended due to its surprise success, but don’t expect it to play forever! I highly recommend seeing it on the big screen. Seeing it in legit IMAX was practically a religious experience.
P.P.S. This The Verge interview with Yamazaki has some good quotes about what Godzilla represents to him in the movie.
December 7th, 2023 at 12:09 pm
I only now learned that it started in my part of the world last week already! Not sure if its a little advertised limited release or I was just not paying attention. Trying me best to check it out next week as long as it still plays nearby, but no promises.