GODZILLA MINUS ONE

Directing: A-
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A-
Special Effects: B+

There are many impressive things about Godzilla Minus One, but the one that sticks with me the most is its technical achievement: no special effects-laden American film has ever looked this good on just a $15 million budget.

It should still be noted: you can still recognize the effects here as CGI—this doesn’t have the jaw-dropping effects of, say, Avatar: The Way of Water. What it does have, however, is a far better story, one that references a decades-old history of a global pop icon without being derivative (something James Cameron has never managed). And when it comes down to it, the effects here are far more impressive on such a comparatively meager budget, than stunning effects that are the result of a limitless budget could ever hope to be.

There are arguments either way when it comes to how impressive that $15 million budget really is. A Japanese production has no unions for actors or filmmakers, and far greater potential for exploitative practices than even Hollywood. Of course, to suggest that Hollywood isn’t exploitative, unions notwithstanding, is preposterous, and these considerations hardly account for how expertly executed Godzilla Minus One is on virtually every level, at literally a fraction of the budget of American tentpoles that spend $250 million to make—and often still look like shit.

This much I can tell you for certain: Godzilla Minus One does not look like shit. And, far more importantly, it has a story that is compelling in its own right, even without a giant radioactive sea creature entering the picture. This was the first Japanese-production Godzilla movie I have ever seen, and it’s far better than any of the several American Godzilla films I have seen (Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla was a downright embarrassment; Gareth Edwards’s C+ 2014 Godzilla squandered its potential; Michael Dougherty’s C- 2019 Godzilla: King of the Monsters was a mess of chaos; Adam Wingard’s C+ 2021 Godzilla vs Kong was merely a minor relief in not being quite as bad). Godzilla Minus One is a clear indicator that it’s best to go to the source: this is the 33rd Godzilla film to come out of Japan since the first one was released in 1954, and I can verify it’s a great introduction.

Not a lot of those 33 films are outright sequels, and neither is this one. In fact, it takes the “return to roots” so seriously that writer-director Takashi Yamazaki sets it at the very end of World War II—when Japan has already been leveled. Rare is the blockbuster monster-movie that offers the level of nuance at play here, much of which likely went over my head just by virtue of my not being Japanese. Still, there’s a lot to consider even for the global audience, particularly this film’s fascinating point of view, which clearly indicates a cultural shift in Japan in which kamikaze missions are no longer seen as the ultimate in honor.

We meet the protagonist, Koichi (a truly wonderful Ryunosuke Kamiki), landing a fighter plane on an island for repair, and quickly revealed to have backed out of a kamikazi mission. His guilt over abandoning his “duty” informs everything he does from then on, including his inability to shoot the creature that suddenly appears and wreaks havoc on the military installation. (It’s clear to us, though, that he makes the right decision not to shoot at it: “What if it just makes it angry?”) He meets a woman, Noriko (Minami Hamabe), who also has no family left, and who is taking care of a baby whose parents died in the war. They become a sort of tentative family, coping with all their own forms of PTSD in the wake of war, only to then be faced with a giant monster.

Okay, so let’s talk a bit about the monster, because I have some ambivalence about its design. Godzilla doesn’t look so much like a radioactive lizard as a barely-disguised guy in a monster-lizard suit—even as rendered in CGI. I understand the impetus to do this, as Godzilla is such an iconic character, and one might argue he should look, at least roughly, like he always did. Nevertheless, in many of the wide shots, which make Godzilla look like a strangely buff lizard-man, I just found the look distractingly hokey.

When Godzilla is swimming in the sea with his back spikes slicing through the surface, though, or he’s powering up to spew nuclear-strength heat rays out of his mouth, the look is pretty damned cool. The corny looking wide shots notwithstanding, Godzilla Minus One is packed with set pieces that are fantastically shot and edited, always giving us a strong sense of place with the characters, and using the effects shots exclusively in ways to convey the shock and awe of what the characters are witnessing.

And this is really what it comes down to: countless moments in this movie are genuinely thrilling, which alone would make it worth a look. But the drama unfolding between the characters grounds the story in a way that blockbuster disaster movies never bother with, because we are expected to be thrilled without consideration for expendable characters. This only raises the stakes when the thrills actually do happen, resulting in final scenes that actually offer a genuinely emotional payoff.

Here’s another great thing about Godzilla Minus One: this movie never asks us to think of the creature as just a misunderstood animal, something that deserves our empathy because he’s just acting on instinct. That’s often a good perspective to have with real-life animals—which Godzilla is not, and with Godzilla, that is not the point. In many Godzilla films, the creature is a symbol, and the possibilities of meaning are endless. In this case, he’s a stand-in for Koichi battling his own demons, and it really works.

There’s a lot going on in Godzilla Minus One, but in this case, it’s beautifully orchestrated chaos. This, right here, is the way Godzilla should be done, and a slew of American directors could learn a lot from it. Or, of course, we could just continue looking to the Japanese for how to shepherd one’s own aging creation into a vital future.

It turns out you really can make the old inventive again.

Overall: B+