Released 2023. Director: Takashi Yamazaki
TO MAKE A GREAT CREATURE MOVIE you need more than getting the beast right, you also need compelling human stories. Jaws would not be the same without the masculine tension and bravado of the three men on a little boat. King Kong would not be the king of the jungle if not for the woman who brings out his protective instincts. The Host is dramatic and touching because of the dynamics in one Korean family in battling a giant mutant fish.
Godzilla Minus One is set in the days immediately following the end of World War II. The once powerful Japanese empire has been defeated and the citizenry is in strife. Amidst the destruction and rebuilding, a new menace arises in the form of a pre-historic dinosaur. The big boy ticks all the boxes when it comes to what you’d expect in the creature horror genre, but the human story is what grounds the movie and gives it the drama and emotions so often completely lacking in the last few Godzilla blockbusters out of Hollywood.
There have been a whopping 36 Godzilla movies from Japan and Hollywood since 1954. The “Minus One” in the title indicates that the emergence of Godzilla as a new threat takes Japan, at its lowest point of zero, into the negative. That’s what I learned from a little Googling. My initial thoughts were that the Minus One meant it’s a prequel, which is also true, as the story takes place in the 1940s.
The mutant colossus is the product of nuclear testing in the Pacific. It rises from the deep to terrorise coastal Japan and possesses the ability to unleash a nuclear blast when provoked. First stop, a night rampage on the tiny Odo island with an air-force maintenance base where Godzilla stomps on the men or picks them up by the teeth. The lucky ones get flung away and others get flattened or chewed up. Only two men survive, including Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot who chickened out earlier and landed on Odo falsely claiming equipment failure. He freezes when he’s supposed to fire at Godzilla and as a result, his compatriots are killed. The man’s overwhelming sense of guilt and shame will drive him (and the story to its climax) to redeem himself.
Action sequences in a Godzilla movie are crucial to enjoyment and those in this movie have a solid wallop, a satisfying whoop to the thumps and smashes. As the monster tramples through the city like a child on a tantrum, you’re gripped in every stomp and crunch as buildings collapse, multitudes scream and flee, trains derail and battleships get tossed like toys. Godzilla itself has a sinister expression with small beady eyes and a fierce “don’t mess with me” attitude. The physical build is classic Godzilla dressed in the latest CGI but way more nimble than the lumbering incarnation in Shin Godzilla (2016).
Shikishima is the lead character, played by Ryunosuke Kamiki with a dramatic overflow of angst and grief. Sharing and rebuilding the war-ravaged rubble of a home with Shikshima is Noriko (Minami Hamabe), a young woman who, like Shikishima, has also lost her entire family. Noriko rescues an infant and the three form a makeshift family of their own. They are symbolic of the greater population, people who have lost loved ones banding together to rebuild their lives and nationhood, to turn defeat into renewal.
Their story is one of the main reasons why Minus One stands out. In comparison, characters in past Godzilla movies are always thinly written as reactionary fodder, with the obligatory scientist type who look solemn and make dire pronouncements, military bigwigs who issue disastrous orders and a bunch of ordinary people who perish or survive depending on luck.
The characters in Minus One have more dimensions to their stories. The orphaned and grieving Shikishima reverses his role to become a surrogate father/husband and protector to a baby and a homeless woman who herself takes on the role of a mother. Their neighbour Sumiko (Sakura Ando, also seen in Monster recently) who has lost her own children in the war is now a nanny to the baby of a man she initially despises for his cowardice.
Godzilla Minus One, in the spirit of its 1954 predecessor, is an expression of overcoming historical trauma. The rubble of Ginza mirrors the atomic bomb destruction. Conquering Godzilla and all that it represents is restoration of national pride to a defeat that remains a wound in the Japanese psyche from nearly 90 years ago that will never heal. In that sense, Godzilla the icon will go on living for a long time.
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