Next year marks the 70th anniversary of Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, a great political statements about the fears of nuclear war, disguised as a creature feature. Spawning a decades-long franchise by Toho – the Japanese equivalent of the James Bond series – the atomic-breathing lizard has defined the kaiju genre as we know today while being reinterpreted numerous times by Hollywood to varying degrees of success. Although we are getting next year’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire – the latest instalment of Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse – Toho makes their first Godzilla film in seven years.
Whereas Honda’s 1954 original was made nine years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Godzilla Minus One’s narrative starts near the end of World War II, where a small group of Japanese soldiers, including kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), encounter a dinosaur-like creature on a remote island and are massacred. Plagued by survivor’s guilt, the now-orphaned Kōichi returns to his home of Tokyo, working as a minesweeper and begins supporting a woman and a baby, both of whom are also left with no family. Two years later, Godzilla returns to reign in terror over a country that is still recovering from war.
Considering that Toho haven’t made as many Godzilla movies as they did during the first fifty years of the franchise, they seem to be more open to experimenting with the property, which has also made the transition to anime. When you look at the studio’s previous live-action entry, 2016’s Shin Godzilla, it was the most experimental instalment that was rather divisive as it was more about showcasing the talking heads of the present-day Japanese government trying to resolve the monster attacks. In the case of Godzilla Minus One, it is an attempt to return to the roots of the franchise with the fantastic premise of Godzilla being a threat during the initial years of post-war Japan.
There is no denying that writer-director Takashi Yamazaki, who also worked on the visual effects, is a fan of the 1954 original with callbacks such as Akira Ifukube’s iconic theme, and Godzilla’s attack on Tokyo that a group of newsmen broadcast live before consumed by the destruction. With no other kaiju in sight to participate in the action, Godzilla is depicted as a monstrous force of nature where his path of destruction is not meant for us, the audience, to be dazzled at, but to be feared of, even when the monster unleashes his atomic breath. Considering that several directors have tried to put a Spielbergian twist to their Godzilla films, Godzilla Minus One references the likes of Jaws and Jurassic Park to create effective horror use on the titular monster.
When it comes to these kinds of movies, you are just here for the monster spectacle as the human element is usually not that compelling. However, like the best slashers, the best Godzilla movies make us root for humanity, and that is definitely the case with this latest feature, which serves as an anti-war statement. With our protagonist seen as a disgrace to his people due to not fulfilling his duty as a kamikaze pilot, he is among citizens that are still recovering from the horrors of war, and yet the beastly presence is trampling their right to live. As much nostalgia there is towards Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla that ends on a downer, Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One has a hopeful sincerity about how the people of Japan can survive and move on from their historical horrors.
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