[COLUMN] Godzilla Minus One is a Well-Made Blockbuster, a So-So Godzilla Movie | by Darren Mooney
Added 2023-12-14 23:00:04 +0000 UTC
Note: This piece contains spoilers for Godzilla Minus One.
Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One is an impressive piece of blockbuster filmmaking, a movie with incredible scale and spectacle, anchored in very real human emotion and propelled by an earnest sincerity.
It is remarkable that the film was produced for less than $15m. Of course, it is somewhat pointless to compare budgets across borders, given the variable cost of labor and differences in infrastructure. For example, while RRR was produced for just $69m, it was still the most expensive Indian film ever made. That said, like the $80m budget on The Creator and the $166m budget for both Rebel Moon films, Godzilla Minus One demonstrates that blockbusters can be made on reasonable budgets.
Godzilla Minus One has performed well with international audiences. Critics are raving about it. It is a genuine word-of-mouth hit, enjoying an incredible 90% hold across its second weekend and landing third at the domestic box office this past weekend behind The Boy and the Heron and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It has earned over $50m at the global box office to date, becoming the highest-grossing live-action Japanese film in the United States.
To be fair, it is easy to understand why Godzilla Minus One has resonated with American movie-goers. It is an extremely accessible blockbuster, even beyond the eponymous monster’s brand recognition. Godzilla Minus One borrows a lot from major American blockbusters, demonstrating a much finer understanding of the form than many contemporary Hollywood filmmakers. Godzilla Minus One is a Japanese blockbuster that owes a lot to Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan.
Most obviously, Jaws is a huge influence on Godzilla Minus One. Extended portions of the movie find the protagonist, Kōichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki), out on an old boat in the ocean with a veteran seaman, Yōji (Kuranosuke Sasaki), and an eccentric scientist, Kenji (Hidetaka Yoshioka), as they hunt a monster lurking beneath the waves. Jaws was the first true summer blockbuster, and so it makes sense for it to exert an influence on this crowd-pleasing spectacle.
“There's definitely influence from Spielberg and Jaws,” Yamazaki told IGN. “It probably comes out in a very subconscious way at this point.” The press notes for Godzilla Minus One cite Yamazaki’s “childhood encounters” with George Lucas’ Star Wars and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind as formative influences on his choice of career in visual effects. Yamazaki has even used the press tour for Godzilla Minus One to put himself forward as a potential Star Wars director.
There are more modern influences as well. At the climax, as the monster threatens to overwhelm the ships assembled around it, a fleet of smaller boats arrives, like the climax of Dunkirk. Kōichi makes an aborted kamikaze run into the creature’s flaming mouth, like Finn’s (John Boyega) dive at the battering ram cannon in The Last Jedi. However, as in The Dark Knight, it’s retroactively revealed that Kōichi’s heroic sacrifice is rendered moot by technology: he has discovered the eject button.
Like many of those blockbusters cited, there is an endearing sincerity to Godzilla Minus One. The film takes itself and its characters relatively seriously, at least in the context of a story about a gigantic radioactive monster. There aren’t too many wry one-liners. Dramatic beats aren’t undercut with cheap jokes. The movie never feels the need to wink at the audience in order to reassure them that this creature feature isn’t taking itself too seriously. It’s refreshing and compelling.
There is also a very strong nostalgia at play in Godzilla Minus One. Allowing for an introductory sequence that takes place during the conflict, the bulk of the movie unfolds in the aftermath of the Second World War. Although the events of the film technically take place a few years before Ishirō Honda’s 1954 original, Godzilla Minus One alternates between an affectionate love letter to the original Godzilla and sequence-by-sequence remake.
Godzilla Minus One is saturated with references to Honda’s Godzilla. The opening sequence takes place on Odo Island. The creature attacks Tokyo, tearing apart a train car. Reporters frantically broadcast from a vantage point above the streets, before provoking the beast’s attention. Individual shots, like the tanks lining up to oppose the monster, feel like they could have been lifted directly from Honda’s original. Composer Naoki Satō quotes liberally from Akira Ifukube’s classic score.
This nostalgia makes sense in the larger context of Yamazaki’s career. The director is on record as arguing that Godzilla is tied to a particular moment in Japanese culture, “You can’t have Godzilla unless it’s from the Shōwa era.” Yamazaki’s returns time and again to nostalgic invocations of mid-twentieth century Japan, often tied to nationalistic and military service, as in movies like The Eternal Zero and The Great War of Archimedes.
Yamazaki also directed the Always: Sunset on Third Street trilogy, set against the backdrop of late 1950s and early 1960s Japan. Godzilla briefly appears at the start of the second of those three films. In this context, it is perhaps worth acknowledging that controversial nationalist Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was an avowed fan of Yamazaki’s nostalgic invocations of older Japan. He reportedly loved The Eternal Zero and Sunset on Third Street was apparently his favorite film.
This gets at the strange emptiness to Godzilla Minus One. The Godzilla franchise has always alternated between goofy fun and big ideas. The original Godzilla is one of the most compelling anti-war films ever made, while Toho Studio’s last Godzilla film, Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s Shin Godzilla, was a blistering study of bureaucratic incompetence in the face of unimaginable tragedy. Godzilla Minus One draws so much from Godzilla, it seems to position itself as spiritual successor.
Unfortunately, it’s never quite clear what exactly Godzilla Minus One has to say about its postwar setting. In the wake of the Second World War, Japan was devastated. Many of its cities had been leveled by sustained aerial bombardment. It had witnessed the first (and to date only) use of atomic bombs on a human population. It was under American Occupation, with no real military to speak of and with severe limitations on freedom of expression. There is a lot to explore there.
Godzilla Minus One largely skirts around this. The American Occupation is referenced a few times, but mostly to excise it from the plot. There is an announcement that “recent Soviet movements prevent US military assistance” played over black-and-white newsreel footage. Later, Captain Hotta (Mio Tanaka) explains that “any GHQ-led military action runs the risk of escalating US-Soviet tensions.” America is seemingly nonplussed by a giant lizard showing up in their occupied territory. The Russians don’t seem concerned about their borders.
There is also no sense of Japan as a political entity in Godzilla Minus One. Watching the movie, it seems like the devastation of the Second World War was just something that happened to these characters, with no larger context. Yamazaki describes Godzilla as “an undiscerning god”, divorcing it from the laws of cause and effect. Throughout the film, it seems like these are just random people who found themselves in the middle of these horrific circumstances, with no real agency or agenda.
Returning home, Kōichi strikes up a relationship with a young woman, Noriko (Minami Hamabe), who is caring for a child, Akiko (Sae Nagatani), who happened to end up in her care. “So you… have no relationship to that child?” Kōichi asks. Noriko replies, “Nope. So what?” Kōichi end up together passively, rather than by any choice. When Kōichi tells his neighbor Sumiko (Sakura Ando) that he hasn’t “picked” Noriko and Akiko up, Sumiko replies, “If they’re staying, you picked them up.”
Godzilla Minus One makes a few anti-war sentiments, but these feel like affectations. Journeying to face the monster, Yōji bans young crewmember Shirō (Yuki Yamada) from the expedition. “Not having been to war is something to be proud of,” Yōji tells the younger man. However, Godzilla Minus One is also about how sometimes older generations have to fight wars for their kids. “We leave you the future,” Yōji shouts. Climbing into the cockpit, Kōichi remarks of Akiko, “I want to protect her future.”
Watching Godzilla Minus One, there’s a sense that the movie is not so much opposed to war as it is opposed to “politics.” “You’ve all survived a tragic war,” Hotta tells the assembled volunteers. “So it pains me to ask you again to put your lives on the line. But understand this. We can’t rely on the US or Japanese government. So the future of this country is in our hands.” It’s a movie that ends with the characters triumphantly going to war. Even Shirō gets to ride in at the last minute to save the day.
Yamazaki has talked about how this aspect of the script was influenced by his experience of the global pandemic, specifically the realization that, “Hey, the government’s not doing anything. This is going to be up to us.” Having lived through that same pandemic, Yamazaki’s faith in people’s ability to unite in pursuit of the greater good feels almost naïve. After all, the burden of the pandemic was not shared equally, even in Japan. This is the flipside of that sentimentality and nostalgia.
Yamazaki draws heavily from 1970s Spielberg, as opposed to the director’s later meditations on relevant themes, like Saving Private Ryan, War of the Worlds or Munich. Even the original Godzilla ends on an ambivalent note, as Doctor Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) ponders the possibility that the “oxygen destroyer”, the weapon that defeats the monster, might bring about mutually assured destruction. In contrast, the ending of Godzilla Minus One is boldly triumphant.
Kōichi and Noriko are in Tokyo during the monster’s attack on the city. At the sequence’s climax, Noriko pushes Kōichi out of the way of a shockwave, only to be consumed by it herself. The implication is that Noriko is gone, the surrogate family that she created with Kōichi has been destroyed. As he goes off to war, Kōichi leaves Akiko with Sumiko, making her an orphan twice over. These sequences are genuinely affecting, underscoring the movie’s emotional stakes.
However, in its closing moments, Godzilla Minus One pushes back on these. Kōichi survives his encounter with the beast. He then gets word that Noriko survived the shockwave in Tokyo. The two reunite in a hospital at the end of the film, a sequence which recalls the framing device that Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, the American edit of the original film, imposed on Honda’s Godzilla, placing American reporter Steve Martin (Raymond Burr) in hospital after the Tokyo attack.
Godzilla Minus One is still an impressive and well-made blockbuster, a compelling spectacle of cinematic craft. It’s propulsive and arresting. However, despite inviting comparisons, it also lacks the bite of Shin Godzilla and the original Godzilla. This version of the monster is swimming in much shallower waters.
Comments
I thought "Godzilla Minus One" was a very good movie, and I disagree that it doesn't have greater depths. Perhaps in part that comes from my recent reading of Shigeru Mizuki's history manga "Showa: A History of Japan", but I think in particular the element of the ejection seat, glossed over here, is very important. One of the things Shigeru Mizuki's work makes horrifically clear is that in the last months of World War II, officers were often slaughtering their own men rather than face the dishonor that they didn't "give their all" and die in battle. It is mentioned in an earlier scene that this mindset resulted in a lot of unnecessary deaths during the war; in particular, the unwillingness to *put* ejection seats into jets at all is mentioned as a symptom of a military mindset that denigrates the value of human life. The engineer putting that feature in place shows a new mindset to the survivors that finds worth in an experience that doesn't end in self-sacrifice, and allows the hero to place value on his own life. "Godzilla Minus One" doesn't put as much stock into the "Oh, horrors, what hath mankind wrought" sentiments of earlier Godzilla movies. But it does have some very thoughtful things to say about self-sacrifice, survivors' guilt, and the experience of being in war- not as a nation, but as a tiny cog in an unfeeling machine, and the necessary of pulling away from that experience to be whole again.
Kraken
2023-12-29 01:58:22 +0000 UTCYeah, of course! Totally fair and understandable criticisms. As ever, I appreciate hearing your point of view! Good insight is good insight, whether it aligns with my own or not haha 😊
lilypadlame-o
2023-12-17 23:31:06 +0000 UTC“Shin” is one of my favourite Japanese films ever and one of my favourite films of the 2010s. Which is wonderful. And maybe set expectations a little too high.
Darren Mooney
2023-12-17 23:26:57 +0000 UTCThank you! And, to be clear, I certainly didn’t hate the film. These are just the things that held me back from calling it a masterpiece.
Darren Mooney
2023-12-17 23:25:42 +0000 UTCYeah, Shin is a high priority. I’m honestly not sure which Showa films I’ve seen lol, but I’ll be on the lookout for Hedorah
Caleb Dennis
2023-12-15 21:42:38 +0000 UTCOh, it's a remarkable well-made blockbuster. I had a great time with it, even if it sat a bit uncomfortably with me. (I hape the writing conveys that duality. It's a crowd-pleaser in its purest form, but I'm not sure it has as much complexity as the franchise's best films.)
Darren Mooney
2023-12-15 21:07:33 +0000 UTCGreat article as always Darren! Really appreciate the detailed take here as ever. I definitely found myself really appreciating the film in lots of ways. I think I had a bit of a different view on some of the themes you touch on here though. For example, given what Godzilla has historically represented since 1954, the climax of the film felt much less to me that the characters were simply going off to war, but that they were going off to fight *the idea of war itself*. To me, it distinctly felt like it was figuratively an act of community preservation and defiance in the face of the powers that be having completely failed them, and actively stood in the way of their survival - a hugely applicable pandemic sentiment, that while not necessarily foolproof on a grand scale, rings true in smaller communities looking out for eachother. The climax to me was much more saying "our will to help eachother through hardship will always persevere through the dismal pointlessness of war". In this way, it feels to me like a rejection of the nihilistic "blackpill doomerism" that so often those in power rely upon to maintain their privilege over the marginalized. And while I do agree that Yamazaki tends to be a tad naive, I found the third act narrative hook quite compelling, if not a bit saccharine. Personally, I appreciated its earnestness. The idea of a war torn, displaced and deeply hurt community relying on eachother to pick one another back up, save one another, and preserve their future is incredibly touching to me, especially in how it can be applied to so many different aspects of life. Even if Yamazaki is naive for this decision, which I totally agree with, I dont think he's necessarily wrong; the sentiment that those in power will never aid the people in times of need, leaving that responsibility to the community, is one I've found to be wholly true in so many different intersections of minority groups in my own life. Maybe it's a bit of a reach, but these themes felt like a call to action to me - granted, a bit idealistic. Minus One certainly is no Shin, but they feel like they're both alluding to similar ideas. They feel like two sides of the same anti-war, anti-establishment coin in my mind. And I think there's space for both. I think we need both, honestly. Minus One doesn't have that cynical bite that Shin does, but rather trades it in for that idealistic optimism of what a community can accomplish when its able to come together, even in the face of horrifying uncertainty. And hey, we could use a bit of that every now and then, right? Especially attached to such an otherwise stunning and competent blockbuster!
lilypadlame-o
2023-12-15 20:58:44 +0000 UTCInteresting to see this controversial (if "somewhat qualified recommendation" can count as controversial) take on the movie. Given how movies are moving away from politics at all, especially for a blockbuster that has to satisfy Japanese, American, and other global audiences, I'll still take it, even if its a little sad there's not space for more.
William Alexander
2023-12-15 14:47:09 +0000 UTCYou know you were Hank-erin' for some puns. Yep, I agree with that. I think that's the thorny issue for me. I do not, for one second, think this is an overtly nationalistic or militaristic movie. But, for me, it lacks the sort of ambivalence that marks the best "Godzilla" movies. (As the piece points out, it's a shame it draws the audience's mind so consciously to "Godzilla" and that it follows "Shin Godzilla", two movies - that to me - manage to thread that needle.)
Darren Mooney
2023-12-15 12:40:27 +0000 UTCThat's an incisive observation - I agree, and I think it alludes to the fact that Godzilla is, for all the praise and recognition it has received as a movie icon, a Japanese mythology at heart, and thus defined by a Japanese remembrance of events that centers Japanese victimhood and heroism. From what I understand, the Japanese consciousness still grapples with the reality of what was done in WW2, and cultural memory has the atom bomb as its primary focal point, leading to it becoming the key causative link between the war with the US and human suffering, with the link between that and the frightful cost of Japanese aggression falling to the wayside, resulting in what could be called "poverty of war memory." It also doesn't help that to some extent, textbooks still imply the separation between the Greater East Asian War (a war of aggression) from the Pacific War (presented as a defensive war, or at least one in which both sides acted to provoke one another until war was inevitable - now, we might also point out that this is not entirely truthful, of course!) This puts additional distance in the consciousness between World War II and Japanese responsibility. I'm sure some or even many teachers make the effort to teach people more than can be found in the official textbooks, and indeed, I can confirm anecdotally that younger Japanese do tend to be much more aware of the human cost inflicted on other nations by Japanese aggression, but as we know, the reach of such efforts can find itself compromised by the pressure the education system can exert. Perhaps there is even something to be said for the irony of - or the struggle underlying - trying to narratively shift this New God of Japanese cinema in place. On the one hand, there is a message to "protect the youth," while at the same time, the diffusion and evolution of views about the responsibility for war violence, more prevalent among the youth, goes unacknowledged. Does the movie really understand what they need to be protected from? We could argue "not really." ...Also, ugh, a Tom Hanks pun. Here, take my grumpiest upvote...
Ian Yee
2023-12-15 09:05:25 +0000 UTCI appreciate the reply, even (especially) when folks disagree. My take is just one take, after all. I think for me, you kinda get at the issue with: “ The same civic spirit that unites people to fight Godzilla was not too long ago used to inflict and abet horrific crimes against humanity, and it is a victory in its own right that it is rediscovered and reclaimed for something inarguably good.” I don’t know that the movie acknowledges that its characters probably inflicted or abetted horrific crimes against humanity. To come back to something like “Saving Private Ryan”, which is not a movie I love, but there’s still a sense that even America’s dad, Tom Hanks, has been sullied (not yet “Sully”-ed) by the war. Even a stray line from a character about having served in China or the Philippines would have gone a long way towards acknowledging the complexity of that situation, for me.
Darren Mooney
2023-12-15 07:52:29 +0000 UTCIf you’re looking to dive a bit deeper of “Godzilla”, I’d recommend “Shin Godzilla.” I am not sure which Showa era films you’ve seen, but I also deeply love “Hedorah.”
Darren Mooney
2023-12-15 07:44:46 +0000 UTCThank you. Glad you enjoyed!
Darren Mooney
2023-12-15 07:43:20 +0000 UTCHa! That is very fair.
Darren Mooney
2023-12-15 07:43:05 +0000 UTCThis is a fascinating read, and I found myself particularly interested in your dive into the murky politics surrounding the director of the latest Godzilla movie. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not that familiar with Yamazaki in particular, but if you don't mind me, I'd like to provide a different perspective to some of your thoughts on the movie's themes as a Godzilla movie. Full disclosure, I am not Japanese, and not the best student of Japanese history and culture. What I do have is a little training and not a little enthusiasm - hopefully, that shall suffice to not make a mockery of myself and the issues at hand. The original Godzilla is, as you correctly identified, a critique of the use of atomic weapons and their future, and also of the United States unleashing an uncontrollable genie that could never again be put back in the bottle. Even then, however, I suspect Godzilla was an "undiscerning god," or as the island scene implies, a folk god that represented Old Japan, Japan before State Shinto and the more monotheistic dogma of God-Emperor Veneration (itself warped from its original legendary context to serve the interests of militarism and imperialism), now misplaced in time and warped by the march of time, technology, and the ravages of war. A god that, in response, lashes out in its physical and spiritual pain, imprinted indelibly on the soul like an atom-bomb shadow - no longer capable of discernment. As such, I'm not sure Yamazaki's characterization is completely incorrect. Furthermore, rather than being a contrast between uncertainty and triumphalism, I would say that both the original and this "spiritual successor" provide a ray of hope amidst the storm clouds. While the wounded past can only be put down in the original by all but cementing an uncertain future, there is strength remaining in the Japanese, inheriting what was good about the spirit of old and new, to see a new day, whether it be through harnessing the power of science for good (Yamane's desire to study and understand Godzilla and Serizawa's ingenuity in developing the Oxygen Destroyer) despite its volatility in human hands. Something similar is done by Godzilla Minus One with civic unity despite its nebulous nature and weakness to manipulation. The same civic spirit that unites people to fight Godzilla was not too long ago used to inflict and abet horrific crimes against humanity, and it is a victory in its own right that it is rediscovered and reclaimed for something inarguably good. Still, the movie doesn't entirely shy away from the inherent contradictions in this solution, and I think it makes a conscious choice to present that reclamation of civic spirit as something nascent and confused (though clarified by the threat faced), hence the sometimes conflicting expression of it by characters, who are themselves not completely over their trauma, their conflicting experiences and realities. It would certainly not be lost on Japanese audiences that conflicting attitudes toward what had to be done in the post-war years would contribute to producing the disenfranchised young Japanese of today - a road paved with good intentions, and a whole lot of capitalism. I would agree that some unity of messaging is sacrificed in the process of creating an imperfect world of imperfect people, but I believe that this is an interesting, perhaps even laudable, direction in and of itself. It is also my belief that our monsters and how we relate to them shift over time. In the original Godzilla, Japan was all but helpless against the creature, and this reflects the sense of the times, the fresh memory of sitting amidst the ruins of your home, looking up at the might of a man-made sun, feeling yourself an ant before it. Godzilla is not quite a villain here, but it is certainly the primary representation of all that is wrong, be it atomic technology, foreign intervention, or the shadow of war and brutality. The dynamic in Godzilla Minus One is markedly different. Human ingenuity is fully capable of holding the creature off... at least for a time, since Godzilla, like all who follow the tradition of the Old Gods, has been historically awful at staying dead. Adding that to my previous point about Godzilla as the "god whose discernment has been lost" and the "necessity of working through pain, even in a confused manner," Godzilla becomes less a villain, and more the antagonism of agony that returns, the bubbling, then boiling over consequences of our actions. Instead, I would argue that Minus One is similar to Shin Godzilla in its assignment of villainy, or at least responsibility, to human governments. Yes, they're not there, but their absence in the face of a possibly world-ending threat for which they are each in their way responsible is itself an indictment - while those in power shirk responsibility, the people are left to their own devices, to scrabble in the soon-to-be apocalyptic-thrice-over dirt for a solution. We don't get to see their inner workings and paralysis as "Shin" gives it to us, but it still stands on a similar firing line, taking shots at the system downrange. The late Shinzo Abe might have been a great fan of Yamazaki's nostalgia, but I'm not sure if Yamazaki entirely reciprocated. Godzilla movies have, in their Monster of the Week nature, become a metaphor for all sorts of other things, with some of those being environmental damage in "vs Hedorah" and climate change in "vs Mothra" (just to fire off an example or two), and critiques of capitalism (albeit his solution to that is rather brute force, to excuse the pun). In that context, and with the additional context of Yamazaki having taken reference from the pandemic, the sense of deafening silence but for the tick-tock of the doomsday clock makes a lot more sense, or so I feel. This is especially true for the Japanese government, if we may be so bold as to superimpose the modern Japanese situation and mindset upon the dying 1940s of Minus One. I shall oversimplify here, and beg forgiveness for it beforehand. Modern Japan is a vibrant cultural space admired the world over that tragically rots from the pillars up due to mismanagement. The Lost Decades turning fast into the Lost Half-Century. The youth dwindling and disenfranchised. The old increasing. Social and gender inequality halting in progress. Families that lack parental presence and love (especially of fathers) leading to younger people skeptical of the very concepts that conceived them. Where is the government in all this? Silence at best, and at worst, in continuing to drone on with creative numbers, excuses, and policymaking that gives those who have struggled and contributed all this time what they deserve, at the cost of the future for those who must now pay a debt the country cannot afford to owe. The house of cards is divided against itself, the very self-sacrificial, "the nation is the company, the company is the family, and the family is life" (in that order specifically) ethic that sustained the economic miracle turned into a millstone around the neck of those forced to maintain that past luster, in truth long since lost. In such circumstances, it might seem naive, but at the same time, fully understandable to call the people to action. The gods in their heaven (it is not an accident that the Japanese practice of giving retired senior bureaucrats and officials powerful positions in public and private sectors is known as 天下り - amakudari, or the "descent from heaven") pretend to their fair election. But it is a lie. They are in truth old gods reinstalled by the negligence of foreign gods, as decrepit as the crumbling heavenly palace they tried to plate over with gold. They will save no one. Only the people can save themselves. Nor is meaningless self-sacrifice salvation or redemption. The people must survive and live to become better people, not just better soldiers or drones in the system, who can create a better tomorrow together with those they love, not leave them with a yawning void of community that they must then fill with destitute, bare feet. That, I suspect, is the heart of Koichi's arc - a person convinced that his lack of glorious self-sacrifice has dishonored him learning that one of the most powerful ways to sacrifice oneself is to do so one day at a time, alongside those he cares about, as they build a better future from the ashes. It is not as direct, it's far from perfect, and one might even argue it to be politically safe in some ways, but I would argue that if we peel back a layer or two (and that's often characteristic of Japanese language and culture, where there's at least some onion-peeling and context required to get at the heart of things), I would argue that Minus One is no less cutting. If anything, it seems to me that it suffers from the malaise of media that is subtle yet ambitious - that it might suffer much analysis (to which I add my poverty of perspective), yet only grudgingly yield up its secrets. Again, thanks for your work! Thought-provoking - and as can probably be seen, ramble-provoking - stuff. We could ask for little more from our discussions of media.
Ian Yee
2023-12-15 06:20:31 +0000 UTCI am admittedly working from a very small and ignominious sample size (just King of the Monsters and Godzilla v Kong plus parts of a couple of the Showa era films), but Minus One is my favorite Godzilla movie that I’ve seen. For one, I’ve never cared about the humans in a Godzilla movie before, and the monster was genuinely scary. I also asked a friend who’s deeper in the weeds of Godzilla lore than me and he agreed that it’s one of the best. But to each their own. Gotta say, I was so relieved that Noriko survived, however implausible it was, because anything that pushes pop culture back from the Lone Wolf and Cub singularity is a relief. On a more serious note, I have to disagree on your characterization of the film as not having much to say. At the beginning, Koichi is suffering from survivor’s guilt, with the added shame of his failure as a kamikaze. He feels like he is still at war and that he has to die, to fulfill his obligation to his country and the men who died in front of him at the start of the film. But his choice to eject at the climax is a repudiation of that guilt, an assertion that he deserves to live, both for his adopted daughter and for himself. I found it incredibly moving. Maybe I’m projecting something deeper than what’s really there, or maybe I just have less discerning tastes. Still, always a pleasure to read your work, Darren, even when I disagree.
Caleb Dennis
2023-12-15 04:41:49 +0000 UTCI really enjoyed reading that!
Mithras K
2023-12-15 02:07:22 +0000 UTCOn hearing everybody survived, nobody breathed a heavier sigh of relief than Sumiko. Seriously tho, on the $15m budget, it doesn't take an intimate knowledge of a foreign economy to look at that number, then look at the imperfect vfx, and say, "that makes more sense."
Aaron Von Seggern
2023-12-15 01:04:40 +0000 UTC
