“Ol’ Godzilla was stompin’ around
Tokyo city like a big playground…”
Just short of seventy years after Ishiro Honda’s initial outing for the world’s most famous giant atomic lizard, Toho studios once again go back to revisit the roots of this series. While Hollywood has gone on with its own kaiju tangent with Legendary Pictures, this seems to stand alone much like the last Toho-made Godzilla in 2016, with that particular one speaking of many sentiments towards the current Japanese government. And this time around, this once again is a film very much about that nation’s issues and sentiment, this time set in a time period of trauma and transition. With all this in mind, how does Godzilla Minus One hold up?
The title is very Japanese—with it set just after WW2, when Japan was set to ‘zero’, now it threatens to go to ‘minus’ thanks to the arrival of an angry reptile. Some might chuckle, but then again it’s not like western works make titles out of random Japanese terms that are no doubt bemusing in term. And I suppose it’s appropriate in other ways—it’s a very loose remake of the 1954 original Godzilla, but set before that and going even further into the roots of certain malaise.
First up—I do really like the way the movie looks. It’s on a virtually shoestring budget next to Hollywood blockbusters, and yet easily matches some in effects and detail. Right from the very beginning the 1940s feel is nailed, as we meet our lead Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot with some cold feet, landing on a remote island outpost where it turns out the Japanese garrison aren’t the only residents. From very scary nighttime monster sequences to the ruins of post-war Tokyo Koichi eventually returns to, the scenery, atmosphere, and scale are always top-notch throughout, with director Takashi Yamazaki on point there.
How this stands out is that it’s a Godzilla film where you very much care for the human characters—Koichi, visibly wracked by his trauma and survivor guilt, has nobody but an adopted daughter and a lady vagrant he bonds with, Noriko (Minami Hamabe). We soon get introduced to a reasonably fleshed out secondary cast consisting mainly of the crew of a minesweeper he’s assigned to, clearing Japan’s waters of explosives, including a bitter ex-military sailor and a technical engineer we know is going to come into play more later. They’re all distinct, they’re all relatable to some degree, and this makes the sequences to come all the more harrowing.
And of course when a radiation-scorched Godzilla does come to play, it’s in ways we haven’t seen before—a standout moment being when our heroes are desperately trying to evade the seaborne leviathan on their rickety boat, with the monster feeling more alive and malevolent than he’s been on screen. In the streets of Tokyo, he feels more vicious and animalistic then ever before—when buildings are demolished, when trains are tossed aside, it’s done in a personal way that has this city destruction feel more terrifying than ever. And that’s before his atomic breath starts up—which in this scenario brings the atomic metaphor to a whole new level.
With Koichi struggling with loss, with Japan doing likewise, the film’s theme is definitely about coming together to work for something positive, despite the follies and war horrors that have come before. Strongly rooted in Japan’s history as this is, there are some oddities in the setup—there’s a hand wave for why the US occupational forces seem to be absent that isn’t completely convincing, given what a personality Douglas MacArthur had, but for the story and themes here it’s understandable. It’s something that ultimately feels a lot more upbeat than the 1954 film, with Honda being an actual Imperial veteran who ended with a far more cynical view of things—but when our characters, jaded to the codes of martial honor that conned them before, decide to put everything on the line to save lives than take them, it give us something that everyone can get behind.
That’s all what makes Godzilla Minus One a surprisingly solid experience—there’s a few minor things to pick, but this time, both the human and monster side of things are done expertly, and it feels a breath of fresh air next to some of the CGI flurrying we see out of flicks with far more money to spend. Though it takes a different course from Honda’s classic all those decades ago, it comes closer than most to honoring its titan-sized legacy--give it a shot.
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