- "Godzilla is the son of the atomic bomb... ...He is a nightmare created out of the darkness of the human soul. He is the sacred beast of the apocalypse. As long as the arrogance of Man exists, Godzilla will survive..." - David Kalat, author, "A Critical History and Filmography of Toho's Godzilla Series"
"Godzilla Minus One" is living proof that in the words of one viewer over on YouTube, you can re-tell the exact same story a dozen different ways and you can still produce an excellent end-product. Japan saw fit to reboot its long-running "Godzilla" series with "Shin Gojira" back in 2016, and has re-booted the franchise, yet again, with "Godzilla Minus One," which was released in Japanese theaters on November 3rd, 2023, to mark the 69th anniversary of the film that started it all, Ishiro Honda's grim black & white "Gojira" (1954); "Godzilla Minus One" saw an American theatrical release today on December 1st, 2023, making it the first Japanese-produced "Godzilla" film to be released theatrically in the United States since "Shin Gojira," which itself was the first Japanese-produced "Godzilla" film to be released domestically since "Godzilla 2000" (1999) (which as a tearful aside, was the last film I ever saw at the Cineplex Odeon at my local shopping mall before it closed down later that summer in 2000).
As most readers here know, I am a life-long Godzilla fan; "Gojira" is my all-time favorite giant monster movie (and 1989's "Godzilla vs. Biollante" is my favorite giant monster "versus" movie and is a unique gem amongst giant monster movies and "Godzilla" movies, more specifically - I love it). When I had first heard that Toho was planning on releasing yet another kaiju-eiga ("Japanese monster movie") featuring the mighty "King of the Monsters," I began to get really excited. (It's really hard for me to get excited about most new movies these days for a litany of reasons. More on this in a bit.) Of course, Toho was keen to keep the very specific details of the movie under wraps, which only made the anticipation greater. (I had experienced that same sensation of immense excitement when "Shin Gojira" received a one-week distribution stateside back in 2016, and I had to drive all the way to Washington, D. C., from my home in Northern Virginia, which is where the nearest theater playing the film was located.)
As written and directed by visual effects specialist Takashi Yamazaki, "Godzilla Minus One" takes a huge creative leap with firmly established Godzilla lore by going back to the beginning. Well, not just going back to the beginning, but going back even FURTHER than when things first began with "Gojira" in 1954. Yamazaki's film opens during the closing days of World War II in Japan, and ends two years later in 1947 - seven years before Honda's original. We all know the story of how a fictional dinosaur species called a "Godzillasaurus," which was living on a deserted island in the South Pacific Ocean after the Second World War, was then exposed to radioactive fallout from American nuclear weapons testing in the region, and how it later mutated into a gargantuan, seemingly indestructible fire-breathing beast that later attacked Japan - Gojira ("Godzilla," in English).
But right there, by setting "Godzilla Minus One" immediately after Japan's defeat in World War II and having Godzilla appear much sooner than he did in Ishiro Honda's original, Yamazaki's film stands apart from "Gojira" and it gives Yamazaki some new creative and dramatic territory to explore - in this case, how Japan, already at its lowest point after having surrendered to the Allies following the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, must now contend with another looming disaster of unprecedented scale: an attack by a gigantic, radioactive, fire-breathing monster (or daikaiju, "giant strange beast").
The story here focuses on Imperial Japanese Navy kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), who in the final days of WWII in 1945, lands on Odo Island after feigning that his plane is experiencing technical issues. He meets with the lead mechanic there, Sokaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), and during the night their camp is attacked by a giant dinosaur that comes ashore from the ocean and slaughters everyone except Shikishima and Tachibana, who comes to blame Shikishima for his hesitation at a critical moment which resulted in the deaths of all their comrades.
Later that year after Japan's surrender, Shikishima, wracked with survivor's guilt, returns to Tokyo, which has been ravaged by Allied fire-bombing raids - raids that claimed the lives of both his parents. (As an aside, these scenes of a devastated post-war Tokyo have to be a visual reference to the eye-witness accounts given by Ishiro Honda himself after he'd been discharged from service overseas in the Imperial Japanese Army, and then toured Hiroshima on his way home following the city's atomic bombing, and he later used these experiences to form his vision of the character of Godzilla. And as a matter of fact, Yamazaki, as a visual effects artist, has a nice taste for shocking and unsettling imagery - the first sighting of the un-mutated Godzillasaurus, the actual first appearance of Godzilla at sea or the so-called "black rain" following the giant monster's later rampage on Tokyo, are some prime examples - which makes his film one of the more visually interesting "Godzilla" features ever produced.) While salvaging what little he has left, he meets Noriko (Minami Hamabe), another war orphan who carries in her tow, an infant girl named Akiko (Sae Nagatani), whose mother perished in the fire-bombing raids and had charged Noriko with the child's care. He allows the two of them to move in with him and a loose family of sorts is born.
Pretty soon, however, Japan, which is only in the early stages of reconstruction (just at it was in "Gojira"), is threatened by the terror of Godzilla, who rises from the Pacific Ocean to unleash his wrath on a country that has already suffered heavy devastation brought on by nuclear bombers, and must now face a threat that could destroy the country completely. Since Japan cannot rely on its military (the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces were disbanded in 1945 following the surrender, and the Japan Self-Defense Forces - JSDF - weren't founded until July of 1954) or the United States (Japan would not begin to enter into a series of mutual security and cooperation legislative agreements with the U. S., and thus become our closest Asian ally, until the early 1950s) for aid - due to rising tensions with the Soviet Union - it is up to Shikishima and a few other dedicated private citizens to defeat Godzilla and protect what little country of theirs that is left to protect.
"Godzilla Minus One" is a thrilling cinematic event the likes of which I have not experienced since, well, "Shin Gojira." I should now state here that I rarely go to the movies anymore, as there just isn't much out there these days that truly interests me. Since superhero movies no longer carry the geeky thrill that they once did for this viewer, I found "Godzilla Minus One" to be a much-welcomed shot in the arm, and something very, very different from much of what I've seen lately. That it was a subtitled foreign-language feature that had received a wide distribution stateside ("Godzilla 2000" had a wide theatrical release back in 2000, albeit in an edited, English-dubbed format, while, as stated earlier, "Shin Gojira" only had a limited one-week engagement back in 2016), "Godzilla Minus One" lives up to its high expectations and by going in a different direction from the anti-bureaucratic satire of "Shin Gojira" and by extension the dark apocalyptic tone of "Gojira," this makes it stand out from much of the fare that I've seen in recent years, and even other "Godzilla" films.
What also makes "Godzilla Minus One" stand out is that it's a feature that is not steeped in nostalgia or purposeful throwbacks to the "Godzilla" films of yesteryear (most domestic so-called "legacy" features love doing that for eagle-eyed, dog-eared fans of the originals to compensate for a lack of originality). Yes, "Godzilla Minus One" does include some obligatory references to films past, including some familiar musical themes by the late Akira Ifukube, who also created Godzilla's signature roar in the original 1954 "Gojira" and who remained Japan's most esteemed composer until his death in 2006. But this film is not about an avid fan-boy geeking out and showing off his hero-worship of the material. No, "Godzilla Minus One" is simply a tale of a country trying to pick itself up again following the end of a devastating conflict - a conflict that nearly destroyed the nation - and having to face a force of nature more dangerous and destructive than any war. That is perhaps where Takashi Yamazaki succeeds the most, and his film is also not steeped in the usual anti-American resentment and finger-pointing and anti-nuclear allegory, and - and! - the assertive pro-Japanese nationalist sentiment of most recent "Godzilla" movies (a more recent phenomenon that has been pervasive in many "Godzilla" features since the early 1990s, after Japan had fully rebuilt its economy and was looking to re-assert itself on the global market).
"Godzilla Minus One" is a "Godzilla" film that was well worth the seven-year wait.
"Godzilla Minus One" rates a solid "10."
10/10.