Godzilla Minus One - Review Thread
Dec 1, 2023 4:04:29 GMT -5
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Post by 1godzillafan on Dec 1, 2023 4:04:29 GMT -5
It's like the people who made Godzilla Minus One heard some nerd make the oft repeated sentiment that nobody sees a Godzilla movie for the human characters, and they decided to respond "Challenge accepted."
Considering this is yet another Godzilla origins tale that comes seven years after we got the last one with Shin Godzilla, which came two years after the one before that with Godzilla 2014, Godzilla Minus One can feel a bit superfluous in concept. The movie actually has a interesting little history to it how it came to being. Minus One was directed by Takashi Yamazaki, who, back in 2007, directed the sequel Always: Sunset on Third Street 2. The film opened with a pretty great, if limited, dream sequence that was made mostly with CGI, featuring the cast in a Godzilla rampage. The sequence was so well received that Yamazaki had been in-demand to helm a new Godzilla movie for a while now, and, apparently, he had even been asked to do it, but turned it down because he didn't feel Japan's CGI industry was up to the task yet. He felt more encouraged to develop his own Godzilla film after seeing the effects work in Shin Godzilla, which looked photorealistic during its best moments. He hammered out the screenplay for the film during a lengthy development process during lockdown in the Covid pandemic.
The resulting film that seems like the Godzilla fanbase has been waiting fifteen years for takes the franchise back to its World War II roots, which is welcome, because while Godzilla's relevance to generations since has evolved (from Captain Planet pollution fighter to angry souls of military veterans), his original themes always suited him best. This film even takes things a step further, setting the film in the 1940's instead of the 50's, where the original Godzilla film was set. This also makes the movie the only real period piece of the Godzilla franchise, unless one counts the time travel sequence in 1991's Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. The film centers on a disgraced kamikaze pilot who fled the line of duty in a doomed mission at the end of the war. While contemplating his own self-preservation while his colleagues all died for the mission, he finds himself in a face-to-face encounter with a giant lizard, that also kills the soldiers around him while he chooses to save his own life. Returning home, he tries to rebuild his life with an accidental family that he creates along the way with fellow refugees. Several years later, the lizard he encountered, now mutated and much larger from the nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll, appears in Japan and wrecks havoc. Now with friends and family to protect, he finds that he has something to fight for and maybe something to die for.
Character pieces are not the Godzilla franchise's strong point. Like most disaster movies, the franchise is more plot-driven than not, as it's hard to be character-driven when your characters can't really do much to influence the actions of something much bigger than they are (and when it does, it's usually through a silly plot device, like the Orca machine from 2019's King of the Monsters). Minus One's characters are the focal point of this particular film, as it's more interested in telling a story about regret and loss than the story of a giant lizard stepping on people. This approach ties in so well with the original themes of Godzilla, as we start out with characters who are at their lowest point, having to cope with living in actual ruins. The film turns into a thematic metaphor for rebuilding: as Tokyo rebuilds itself we see our protagonist rebuild his own life, creating something lovely with a woman who lost her family in the air raids and a baby who likewise lost her parents, becoming a family united of three unrelated people who love and depend on each other. This is a beautiful addendum to the war-horror themes of the franchise, showcasing the way life can emerge victorious like a flower blooming out of a world covered in ash. This story is the most intimate storyline in the franchise's history and may even bring a few tears out of its audience.
On the Godzilla side of things, while the CGI creature chaos doesn't reach the best moments of Shin Godzilla, it also doesn't reach Shin's worst moments of "Okay, look, we had a time crunch" either. The movie's effects work is steady and consistent, and it does look stylish and engrossing even if it rarely looks entirely realistic. Godzilla spends most of his time in the water, only coming to shore for a prologue opening and his centerpiece Ginza attack. Other than that, we spend a lot of time in boats chasing the creature down and coming up with ways to kill him, kinda like Jaws but with Godzilla. The sea-faring stuff is fun, throwing in some some of the more entertaining elements from 1955's Godzilla Raids Again to hit those high-notes of man vs. monster action.
There is a caveat to this, and while it isn't movie-breaking, it does make the film feel less than it probably could be. While the film's focus on human characters and compelling drama is to be commended, Godzilla does come off as an incidental nuisance rather than something that needs to be in the movie. Plotwise, Godzilla is used as something left over from the war that is haunting our protagonist, and he is primarily a device to tear down our hero's built life to propel him into being the soldier that he never had the courage to be, while also driving him to have the internal conflict of dying in war to save his family versus fleeing war to continue to be with his family. Godzilla could be replaced in this movie with probably a half-dozen other plot devices and the film wouldn't be much different. The movie even seems like it was written in case erasing Godzilla from it entirely would be necessary for whatever reason, as the creature seems to hold little relevance to anybody else (even when he's destroying the city) than our main character. There are moments in the film where he relates the trauma of his past to other people, often casually mentioning a fire-breathing dinosaur and moving on, with supporting cast giving very little reaction to it when they really should be responding with "Wait, hold on, back it up. I'm sorry that happened to you, but what's this noise about a monster?" Godzilla still works in the narrative because his traditional echos-of-war themes keep him just relevant enough, but that's through the legwork of other movies in this franchise, particularly the original, and not this one in general.
But that almost feels like a trivial thing to be troubled about when faced with a monster movie that is this good. Godzilla Minus One is easily the best film of Godzilla's resurgence since 2014 (Shin Godzilla fans might throw a tantrum about that, but Minus One is a better laid out movie from top to bottom). Hell, it's easily the best Godzilla movie in twenty-five years. Some might even claim it's the best since the original and it would be hard to argue with. I'd even say it's not outside probability that some might prefer it to the original, though my argument in the original's favor is that it's a more completely balanced movie with all of its elements in place while Minus One is a great movie that is missing just a couple of them to make it function a little less efficiently. But whatever side of the spectrum a Godzilla fan may fall on, there is really no going wrong with either.
Considering this is yet another Godzilla origins tale that comes seven years after we got the last one with Shin Godzilla, which came two years after the one before that with Godzilla 2014, Godzilla Minus One can feel a bit superfluous in concept. The movie actually has a interesting little history to it how it came to being. Minus One was directed by Takashi Yamazaki, who, back in 2007, directed the sequel Always: Sunset on Third Street 2. The film opened with a pretty great, if limited, dream sequence that was made mostly with CGI, featuring the cast in a Godzilla rampage. The sequence was so well received that Yamazaki had been in-demand to helm a new Godzilla movie for a while now, and, apparently, he had even been asked to do it, but turned it down because he didn't feel Japan's CGI industry was up to the task yet. He felt more encouraged to develop his own Godzilla film after seeing the effects work in Shin Godzilla, which looked photorealistic during its best moments. He hammered out the screenplay for the film during a lengthy development process during lockdown in the Covid pandemic.
The resulting film that seems like the Godzilla fanbase has been waiting fifteen years for takes the franchise back to its World War II roots, which is welcome, because while Godzilla's relevance to generations since has evolved (from Captain Planet pollution fighter to angry souls of military veterans), his original themes always suited him best. This film even takes things a step further, setting the film in the 1940's instead of the 50's, where the original Godzilla film was set. This also makes the movie the only real period piece of the Godzilla franchise, unless one counts the time travel sequence in 1991's Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. The film centers on a disgraced kamikaze pilot who fled the line of duty in a doomed mission at the end of the war. While contemplating his own self-preservation while his colleagues all died for the mission, he finds himself in a face-to-face encounter with a giant lizard, that also kills the soldiers around him while he chooses to save his own life. Returning home, he tries to rebuild his life with an accidental family that he creates along the way with fellow refugees. Several years later, the lizard he encountered, now mutated and much larger from the nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll, appears in Japan and wrecks havoc. Now with friends and family to protect, he finds that he has something to fight for and maybe something to die for.
Character pieces are not the Godzilla franchise's strong point. Like most disaster movies, the franchise is more plot-driven than not, as it's hard to be character-driven when your characters can't really do much to influence the actions of something much bigger than they are (and when it does, it's usually through a silly plot device, like the Orca machine from 2019's King of the Monsters). Minus One's characters are the focal point of this particular film, as it's more interested in telling a story about regret and loss than the story of a giant lizard stepping on people. This approach ties in so well with the original themes of Godzilla, as we start out with characters who are at their lowest point, having to cope with living in actual ruins. The film turns into a thematic metaphor for rebuilding: as Tokyo rebuilds itself we see our protagonist rebuild his own life, creating something lovely with a woman who lost her family in the air raids and a baby who likewise lost her parents, becoming a family united of three unrelated people who love and depend on each other. This is a beautiful addendum to the war-horror themes of the franchise, showcasing the way life can emerge victorious like a flower blooming out of a world covered in ash. This story is the most intimate storyline in the franchise's history and may even bring a few tears out of its audience.
On the Godzilla side of things, while the CGI creature chaos doesn't reach the best moments of Shin Godzilla, it also doesn't reach Shin's worst moments of "Okay, look, we had a time crunch" either. The movie's effects work is steady and consistent, and it does look stylish and engrossing even if it rarely looks entirely realistic. Godzilla spends most of his time in the water, only coming to shore for a prologue opening and his centerpiece Ginza attack. Other than that, we spend a lot of time in boats chasing the creature down and coming up with ways to kill him, kinda like Jaws but with Godzilla. The sea-faring stuff is fun, throwing in some some of the more entertaining elements from 1955's Godzilla Raids Again to hit those high-notes of man vs. monster action.
There is a caveat to this, and while it isn't movie-breaking, it does make the film feel less than it probably could be. While the film's focus on human characters and compelling drama is to be commended, Godzilla does come off as an incidental nuisance rather than something that needs to be in the movie. Plotwise, Godzilla is used as something left over from the war that is haunting our protagonist, and he is primarily a device to tear down our hero's built life to propel him into being the soldier that he never had the courage to be, while also driving him to have the internal conflict of dying in war to save his family versus fleeing war to continue to be with his family. Godzilla could be replaced in this movie with probably a half-dozen other plot devices and the film wouldn't be much different. The movie even seems like it was written in case erasing Godzilla from it entirely would be necessary for whatever reason, as the creature seems to hold little relevance to anybody else (even when he's destroying the city) than our main character. There are moments in the film where he relates the trauma of his past to other people, often casually mentioning a fire-breathing dinosaur and moving on, with supporting cast giving very little reaction to it when they really should be responding with "Wait, hold on, back it up. I'm sorry that happened to you, but what's this noise about a monster?" Godzilla still works in the narrative because his traditional echos-of-war themes keep him just relevant enough, but that's through the legwork of other movies in this franchise, particularly the original, and not this one in general.
But that almost feels like a trivial thing to be troubled about when faced with a monster movie that is this good. Godzilla Minus One is easily the best film of Godzilla's resurgence since 2014 (Shin Godzilla fans might throw a tantrum about that, but Minus One is a better laid out movie from top to bottom). Hell, it's easily the best Godzilla movie in twenty-five years. Some might even claim it's the best since the original and it would be hard to argue with. I'd even say it's not outside probability that some might prefer it to the original, though my argument in the original's favor is that it's a more completely balanced movie with all of its elements in place while Minus One is a great movie that is missing just a couple of them to make it function a little less efficiently. But whatever side of the spectrum a Godzilla fan may fall on, there is really no going wrong with either.
