I’ve reviewed a few Godzilla movies on this site, including Shin Godzilla and the American Godzilla films that have been coming out for the past decade. I was a little harsh in my review of Shin Godzilla as a movie that I thought had some good ideas and intentions on how to handle the iconic kaiju seriously, but it didn’t entertain me the way some of the dumber entries in the long-running franchise do. I wouldn’t say the American movies are objectively better, because they really are not; they’re mediocre or bad movies. However, I’m entertained by bad films, and part of that love for the silly and absurd dates back to some of the Godzilla movies from the ‘60s and ‘70s that I would rent over the weekend as a kid. That being said, I still adore the original film from the 1950s (both Gojira and the western dub Godzilla) and I thoroughly enjoy some of the more serious entries from Toho Studios. Thus, I was eager to see yet another attempt at a serious take on the infamous monster, especially having heard nothing but glowing praise for Minus One for the past few months.

Pros

Godzilla looks great and the film works hard to make him scary
Compelling story arcs for the characters
Awesome destruction and dramatic moments when Godzilla arrives and picks up the movie’s pace
Good acting from most of the cast, most of the time
Great musical score

Cons

Some good scenes are slightly undermined by overacting
Pacing is a little slow in some spots
Some contrived situations that happened just because the script demanded it
Plot armor

Plot & Thoughts

Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is a Kamikaze pilot in WWII who gets a case of cold feet and lands at an island for the mechanics to take a look at his plane, even though there’s nothing wrong with it. The mechanic Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) is sympathetic to his choice, knowing that the war is ending soon, and a pilot sacrificing himself for a lost cause didn’t make sense to him. Shikishima stays the night at the small base but his visit is interrupted by a large lizard the locals call Godzilla (or Gojira). This Godzilla has not been enhanced through radioactive, nuclear technology yet, so he’s more like a dinosaur in size, but he’s still a total jerk to everyone on this island. He smashes buildings and kills the people in his way with no desire to eat any of them—several times it looks like he’s about to chew a man up and swallow him, but he just throws the guy into the distance instead. Shikishima has a chance to sneak into his plane and use his guns to hit Godzilla. If he were to fire the guns, he would likely do some significant damage or possibly even kill him, considering this is the regular version of the creature before he becomes the true monster. However, Shikishima is paralyzed with fear and is unable to take the shot, leading to all the mechanics other than Tachibana being killed.

Upon returning to Tokyo, Shikishima tries to rebuild a life for himself in the ruins of the city. He’s not happily greeted by the people who know him, however, as his failure of duty as a Kamikaze pilot is one of great shame, and the wounds of war are still fresh on the surviving citizens. One day, while he’s at a market, a woman named Noriko (Minami Hamabe) is running from authorities and leaves a baby in his arms. She meets him later and invites herself with the baby to his home made of rubble. Before you know it, they’re practically a couple and they’ve adopted the baby—the baby is not Noriko’s but she promised a dying woman to look after her. Shikishima gets a job defusing mines left over from the war, which is a well-paying, dangerous job that most other people would likely steer clear of, but Shikishima’s guilt and suicidal sense of duty makes him seem resigned to take the job. Noriko is the first person in the film to express concern for his life, but he distances himself from her empathy. Still, the job proves to be economically fruitful, he makes some new friends on the job, his life with Noriko starts to improve, and the people who hated him initially when he returned home have come around to only a mild dislike towards him with a willingness to help him out with caring for his adopted daughter. Then, Godzilla shows up and puts an end to the happiness.

An issue every Godzilla movie has is figuring out what to do when the iconic beast is not on screen causing endless destruction. This means that the human characters have to carry the film and fill the time before the next big setpiece involving Godzilla. A vast majority of the entire franchise struggles with this because it’s common for the human characters and their adventures to be quite boring or, in the opposite sense, be involved in a convoluted plot that has very little to do with Godzilla. Most of the Godzilla films from the 1960s involved alien invaders and often had the goal of just setting up the big wrestling match between the kaiju during the climax, for example. The series would occasionally return back to its roots with some basic stories and Godzilla carnage, but there would still be plenty of space invaders in the later entries to make things wild. As a Godzilla fan, you find fun in the movies that aren’t as good as the others and you find enjoyment when the convoluted plot goes over the top.

In my reviews of Shin Godzilla and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, I said my preference for a Godzilla movie was goofy fun over serious drama, but I failed to mention a particular caveat to this preference. I should have said that if I was given the choice between a serious or stupid Godzilla movie with basic or uninteresting human characters, I’d take the stupid one. If the human characters are actually interesting or complex and their story is engaging, I’ll take that movie any day of the week, regardless of solemnity or goofiness. The original Godzilla is a somber affair with engaging characters, as are some of the later entries in which Godzilla faces off against another monster, but it’s still something of a rarity. Thankfully, Godzilla Minus One is one of those rare exceptions that manages to be a film to be taken seriously and it has interesting characters. The pacing slows down a little bit here and there, but during this downtime, we still get a lot of good characterization with Shikishima and Noriko, as well as with the other friends Shikishima makes along the way. With how everything is handled in Godzilla Minus One, I’d argue that this movie has the most compelling story for its human characters in the entire Godzilla legacy.

The impact of his failure and cowardice during the war and his first encounter with Godzilla weighs heavily on Shikishima’s mind, preventing him from being able to accept the positive things that have happened to his life since then. He can’t accept the young girl he’s adopted as his daughter. He pushes Noriko away emotionally because he doesn’t feel that he deserves another person’s love. He is somewhat disappointed when Noriko gets a job, feeling like he has lost his worth as a provider in some way. This isn’t directly said, you can just tell from Kamiki’s performance that her desire to be self-sufficient wounds him, and you can see from this interaction and what happened in the previous scene that these are two people who are falling in love with each other but are denying themselves that happiness for complicated personal reasons. One particular reason is that Shikishima considers himself a coward and a failure who doesn’t deserve love and it’s through the encounters with Godzilla that we see his bravery take shape as he fights to make himself worthy of living and deserving of happiness. Godzilla is not just a force of destruction in the film, but a personal monster to Shikishima, physically representing his shame and guilt. It’s a powerful and moving story that is told exceptionally well. There are a few good scenes that are, unfortunately, undone by some dramatically over-the-top acting. Nonetheless, when the music swells at the right spots or when Shikishima’s determination takes hold and he’s facing off against Godzilla, it’s emotionally gripping.

The side characters are all more than surface-level background characters for Shikishima’s story, too. The dialogue between him and Tachibana before and after Godzilla’s initial attack establishes a great deal about who Tachibana is, why we sympathize with him, the state of Japan during the time, their view of the government, as well as setting the tone for the rest of Shikishima’s story. The story between just these two characters alone is impactful and satisfying, but there are others that have their own arcs. Noriko goes from being a somewhat opportunistic and sly individual when she first meets Shikishima to a loving and affectionate woman who wants to care for him and wants him to escape his demons with her so they might be able to find happiness in the life they’ve carved out for themselves. The friends Shikishima makes during his minesweeping job have their own personalities and perspectives to make them stand out and be likable. The neighbor who accosts Shikishima upon returning to Tokyo, Sumiko (Sakura Ando), says some cruel things to him because of her situation having lost her two children in the firebombing during the war. Yet, even with such anger and hatred towards him as her scapegoat for the tragedy that has befallen her, she comes to understand him and feel something positive towards him by becoming involved in rearing his adopted daughter. The movie manages to tell compelling stories about interesting characters as they recover in a post-war Japan that would be worth watching if Godzilla weren’t involved. That being said, even though he appears very little during the first half, Godzilla is still intrinsically tied to Shikishima’s story, and the themes of the film about war, the destruction it causes, and the sacrifices both soldiers and civilians make when facing an existential threat.

As for all the Godzilla-filled portions of the movie, they hit all the right notes—they certainly satisfy a fan’s lust for destruction. When he’s just the dinosaur on the island, it’s at night and he’s only illuminated by the fires he starts, making him already a scary threat similar to the T-rex in Jurassic Park. Godzilla is entirely CGI in this movie, so the effects don’t look as good as something from Jurassic Park or from many of the modern American Godzilla movies, but Godzilla Minus One was made on a much smaller budget and it still looks pretty impressive. It’s satisfying watching Godzilla stroll through Tokyo, smashing himself into buildings like the big jerk he is. And every time he uses his iconic fire breath, it’s a big moment with a lot of buildup, due in no small part to the sound design as you listen to the hum of an organic nuclear reactor power up. If there’s one thing I can praise the American Godzilla film from 2014 for, it’s for getting this moment so right to the point that films have mimicked it since then. In 2014, you barely saw Godzilla, but one of its best moments was when it was dark and you couldn’t see anything but the blue glow starting from the tip of his tail and going all the way up his spine to his mouth and eyes alit with indigo. That visual and audio build-up of radioactive energy in Godzilla raises the tension bit by bit. It works tremendously and is even better here in Minus One as his spines jut out from his body from the building pressure of power. I was admittedly worried that we might have a repeat of Shin Godzilla’s tail beam when I saw the spines rise from his skin but was relieved to see him just blast a nuclear explosion from his mouth.

There aren’t many gripes I have with Minus One. It’s easily one of the best Godzilla films ever made and has a compelling enough story with its characters to make even the people who don’t care about kaiju interested. There are a few minor particular moments that I think could have been done better so that it wasn’t such a contrived circumstance. Without spoiling anything, the main example of something happening that feels like the writers just wanted to add some emotional weight to the situation without really thinking things through is in the Godzilla’s visit to Ginza and how Shikishima is tied to this scene.

There is also the fact that a demilitarized Japan has to deal with Godzilla on its own. Whenever they mention getting help from other countries, namely the U.S., they have to mention how assistance from that would add to tensions with the U.S.S.R. Seems like a weak excuse to me because it’s not like the U.S. doesn’t have military installments all over the world today, regardless of the tensions being raised in different regions. If anything, Godzilla would have been the perfect political humanitarian excuse to send more troops to Japan without being challenged by opposing countries. If the Soviet Union complained, all the U.S. would have to say is “Godzilla is a giant lizard capable of smashing buildings to pieces and causing nuclear explosions with his breath. The rest of the world would be very interested in making sure it’s killed and we should not just leave a weakened Japan to its own devices.” This sort of thing didn’t occur in most of the previous Godzilla movies as they were often removed from the impact of WWII—aside from the original—but there was always a suspension of disbelief. Many of the other Godzilla films took place in a reality in which Japan had at least some military capable of fighting back against the beast, even if that was a pointless endeavor. Since this was more grounded in the grim reality of a recovering Japan and the impact of WWII is central to the themes of this film and what Godzilla represents, I understand the need to justify why Japan had to be on its own against him and the difficulty in coming up with something, but this is not the best excuse. Nonetheless, this is still nitpicky stuff and was only something I pondered about; it didn’t negatively impact my experience in any significant way.

TL;DR

Godzilla Minus One is not just a good Godzilla movie, it’s a great movie. The characters and their stories are incredibly compelling. The effects and the destruction caused by Godzilla are impressive and exciting. I can’t say it exceeded my expectations because those were raised pretty high by how much positive buzz was surrounding this movie. However, I can say that I enjoyed it immensely and consider it to be one of the best films if not the best film of the entire franchise spanning 70 years.

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