Godzilla Minus One Review

Godzilla is one of Japan’s greatest cultural exports, appearing in 33 Japanese films and five American films. Godzilla Minus One acts as an origins story for the King of the Monsters.

Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is a kamikaze pilot during the dying days of World War II. On Odo Island he sees a Japanese garrison get killed by a monster that the locals call Godzilla and he freezes up trying to operate his plane.

When Kōichi arrives back in Tokyo, he forms a make-shift family with, Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe) and Akiko, a baby orphaned by the allied bombing. However, Kōichi and Tokyo as a whole must face the threat of Godzilla who can devastate the city once again.

The Godzilla series has varied in quality and tone and has been rebooted many times. Some films have been serious, like the first film being a commentary on nuclear warfare, to more campy affairs where men dressed in monster costumes have a big old royal rumble. Godzilla Minus One was one of the serious films in the series and was harking back to the original 1954 film. It was made to celebrate the series’ 70^th Anniversary.

Godzilla Minus One was a film that was about the trauma of war. Kōichi had survivor’s guilt after seeing Godzilla decimate a whole garrison and being unable to do anything to help and when he returned to Tokyo, Kōichi was berated because he bottled it being a kamikaze pilot. Many people lost family during the war, either serving in a lost cause or died during the bombings. Kōichi and Akiko both lost their families and their neighbourhood were ruined. People were living in shacks and the husks of houses. When Godzilla arrived in Tokyo he made the city relive the horrors of war, since he flattened a district of the city and unleashed his atomic breath.

Godzilla Minus One’s war theme also extended to the Cold War geopolitical sphere. Due to the increasing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, the US military refused to act to avoid World War III. This made Godzilla Minus One into a people’s story since civilian forces and ex-military personnel were the ones who had to lead the defence of Japan. One character even makes a rousing speech about it being up to the people to protect Tokyo since governments have let them down.

A criticism of some Godzilla movies is they have poor characters. This was the case for the previous two American Monsterverse films: Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Godzilla vs. Kong. Godzilla Minus One dispels this myth because it has a lot of character drama. Kōichi had a redemption arc, he had to overcome his survivor’s guilt so he could face the monster. He also had to learn to accept Noriko and Akiko as his family. Akiko called Kōichi ‘daddy’ and he told the small girl he wasn’t her father. Other characters also had little arcs like Kenji (Munetaka Aoki) showed off his scientific prowess and Shirō (Yuki Yamada) was a young man who wanted to take part in the fight. These were three-dimensional characters who felt like real people who were trying to survive an extraordinary situation.

Whilst Godzilla Minus One had a lot of drama, it was also a fist-pumping action film. It put recent Hollywood films to shame. Godzilla Minus One had a fraction of the budget compared to films like Thor: Love and Thunder, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and The Flash yet the Japanese production showed them up. The action and effects were fantastic as they showed Godzilla being a relentless force of nature. Nothing can stop him. The film even showed Godzilla having Wolverine-like healing powers. It was impactful when that classic Godzilla theme played. This was blockbuster filmmaking at its finest.

Godzilla Minus One showed that a film can have it all: drama, characters, themes, and exhilarating action. It’s a film that appeals beyond the core fan base and shows that an old series can still have plenty of life.