(Warning: slight spoilers ahead.)
What to do about Godzilla? It is a question that has haunted more than a few military commanders as well as film executives the world over. Ishiro Honda’s 1954 Classic remains one of the most beloved, Kaiju, monster, horror, maybe even Japanese films ever shot. That’s not even much of a controversial statement anymore. In years past, you would certainly find fans of the series, and even academics willing to shower praises on “the silly monster film with a guy in a rubber suit”; with that said in terms of your average’s Joes and plain Janes, the perception of the series did not rise much beyond late-night b-movie fodder. A Godzilla film was more likely to be found in an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 than on Turner Classic movies.
That is certainly not the case anymore. With the eventual release of the original Japanese version in the early 2000s, came an ever-increasing line of critics waiting to give their take on the film’s relevance, importance, themes, and place in history. In 2004 San Francisco Chronicle writer Mike LaSalle venerated the film as “a collective metaphor and a collective nightmare, a message film that says more than its message, that captures, with a horrified poetry, the terrors that stomped through the minds of people 50 years ago.” The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw said of the film “Godzilla’s killing looks movingly sacrificial, a renunciation of violence. The sheer fervency of this film takes it beyond the crash-bang entertainment of most blockbusters, ancient and modern.”
Empire Magazine called it the 31st “Best Film Of World Cinema’. Slant Magazine named it one of the 10 “best science-fiction films ever produced”.In 2019 All the Showa era Godzilla films received a Criterion release. Etc., Etc. and this only includes the film’s Western accolades; the famous Japanese cinema magazine Kinema Junpo listed it as one of the 20 best Japanese films of all time and a 1998 survey of 370 Japanese film critics saw it land as the 27th best Japanese film ever made. In summary, the original Godzilla is now as legit as a film can be.
This naturally leads to the problem alluded to in the opening of this review. You see for all the prestige and honors Godzilla has received over the years it’s still a 37-film-strong mega-franchise. A very profitable mega-franchise, in dire need of exploitation. In the past this was easy; both the Heisei and Millenium eras could content themselves with being crowd-pleasing blockbusters. Retreads of earlier triumphs with more gloss and special effects. This is not to say they lack artistry (far from it), just that their critical appraisal was destined to be the responsibility of the nerds and freaks of the world. There was no need to be seen as high art.
The central predicament of the modern Reiwa-era of the franchise is how to accommodate these two almost diametrically opposed goals. How do you be an off-the-wall popcorn-eating crowd-pleasing mainstream blockbuster with the thoughtful thematically rich needs a “piece of cinematic art?”
Obviously. I’m being a bit disingenuous here; this has been done quite successfully before by many a blockbuster franchise (Batman, Matrix, Wolverine, Batman again, etc.) With that said, it’s still a tricky needle to thread, and modern results have at the very least been quite fascinating. It seems the original game plan was to leverage that other piece of Japanese pop culture that Westerners love to get pretentious about, Anime. Legendary Neon Genesis Evangelion director Hideaki Anno was brought to write and direct Shin Godzilla. After that equally renowned anime writer Gen Urobuchi was given the reins of his own animated Godzilla trilogy. Lastly, Toho enlisted legendary anime studio Bones to give their own crack at the King of the Monsters in the animated series Godzilla: Singular Point. All of these projects received their own degree of acclaim and success, but none quite set the world on fire as I assume Toho wanted.
This leads to the newest contender, Godzilla: Minus One. The one to finally enter the ring and knock out the philosophical and financial dilemma facing the franchise, and to boot it has a killer pitch. Let’s bring Godzilla back to his roots, with a period piece set a few years after WWII. A good section of the runtime will be set to the human melodrama like the best entries in the Showa era. Get current Japanese film industry superstar Takashi Yamazaki to supervise special effects, and write and direct the film. All the pieces are in place. So can this film recapture the lightning in a bottle of the original?
Absolutely! (but also meh if you want to be a wet blanket about it)
As a piece of effects-driven blockbuster entertainment, this is about as good as you’re gonna get. The pacing is slower when it needs to be, but the film does not skimp on the action. Obviously with Yamazaki at the helm, the scenes of wanton destruction and cosmic horror vs military might are as exciting as ever. This is especially welcome in an era where the current crop of studio CGI sludge blockbusters have lost much of the dynamism and kinetic energy, that can be found here. It is amazing what was done with the film’s $15 million budget, as whenever the monster is on screen it looks as real as one can imagine, and it’s always edge-of-your-seat stuff.
The human drama also certainly isn’t bad. The story of a WWII pilot suffering from PTSD while raising a family in post-war Japan is quite wholesome and effective. However, in the end, the human drama and period aesthetics serve mostly to add flavor to the final piece. It’s effective and I cared about the lives of the characters only so much as is necessary for this type of disaster flick. Everyone does a nice even if the main couple looks a bit too much like pretty J-pop stars to sell the timeframe and poverty they are supposedly living through. The setting certainly adds some unique charm. There is also much more tension given the state of Japan and the types of weaponry available at the time. However, it doesn’t go far beyond that. These characters are not going to sit with me for long, and the postwar setting does not have much to say about Japan or that history as a whole.
In fact, contrasting this with the original certainly reveals a much less poignant subtext. In the original, we had a story of political inefficiency leading to the suffering of the underclass. Politicians ask if Godzilla is simply the natural fallout of Japan’s recent history and new man-made weapons like the atomic bomb. It’s a film very much of its time, being made 9 years after the drop of the atomic bomb and the end of WWII. That’s certainly all here in Minus One. However, at its core, this is a film about bravery. It’s a story of soldiers and a beaten-down Japan regaining their pride by coming together to defeat an existential threat.
In the first film, Godzilla is defeated by the sacrifice of one scientist. At the heart of the sacrifice was the moral dilemma to use his new weapon (the Oxygen Destroyer) even if that meant it may mean the weapon would be exposed to the public and may fall into the wrong hands. In Minus One, The Monster is defeated through teamwork and the combined effort of Japanese civilians and veterans.
Now to be clear, there is nothing wrong or morally dubious about this. It’s the tried and true Independence Day formula, with the spectacle and craftsmanship on par with if not far exceeding that film. I must admit, in the theater, I find it difficult to care much about these issues. When that classic Godzilla theme plays, I could not ever possibly hope to fight off cracking a smile. With the climax being one of the most exhilarating cinematic experiences I had all year, this is certainly a capital M Movie. Pure entertainment from start to finish.
However, once in a blue moon a Wet blanket I must become, and I wonder if the use of Godzilla’s main theme is a bit of a cynical nostalgia play. If the grand spectacle finale, for how well shot and beautifully crafted it was, is not a bit of a bastardization of the ideas original film. The other Godzilla movies were able to easily avoid this feeling, but I think Minus One runs into issues with just how much of a homage it is. Oh well. At the end of the day, Godzilla is many things, but most importantly Godzilla is Godzilla, and Godzilla is generally a pretty good time at the movies.
Work Cited
- Bradshaw, Peter (October 13, 2005). “Godzilla”. The Guardian. Archived from the original on July 25, 2020. Retrieved November 19, 2023.
- Green, Willow (June 11, 2010). “The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema”. Empire. Archived from the original on December 25, 2020. Retrieved Novemebr 19, 2023.
- LaSalle, Mick (May 7, 2004). “Godzilla”. San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on July 25, 2020. Retrieved November 19,, 2023.
- Ryfle, Steve (1998). Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star: The Unauthorized Biography of the Big G. ECW Press. ISBN 1550223488.
- “The 50 best monster movies”. Time Out. October 8, 2019. Archived from the original on July 25, 2020. Retrieved November 19, 2023.