5. Godzilla Minus One, dir. Takashi Yamazaki
I have to put cards on the table. I love Godzilla more than life itself. Huge fan. So maybe some bias creeps in here. But also, this was the fifth best movie of 2023.
Sometimes a giant monster is just a giant monster. But Godzilla's thirty-eight features, nearly seventy-year-long filmography also covers many metaphors. He can be the terror of the atomic age (Gojira), environmental catastrophe (Godzilla vs. Hedorah), governmental incompetence in the face of crisis (Shin Godzilla), or the lingering guilt of Japan's crimes in the Second World War (Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack). He's a very flexible performer: villain, antihero, or superhero depending on need. Japan's champion or the embodiment of its destruction. Godzilla Minus One needs the Big G-man to be as mean as he's very been before. This is not a sequel (in fact the opposite) but Minus One is following the tone previously set in Hideaki Anno's Shin Godzilla. In the Reiwa era, our kaiju icon is a complete nightmare, an awful force of punishment, so awesome as to be a surreal terror.
The "Minus One" in the title tells us this is Godzilla's first period piece, set nine years before the series began in 1954, right around the end of World War II. Our protagonist is Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot unable to complete his mission. His failure to die "honorably" or even open fire torments him. However, his survivor's guilt is only the second-most pressing piece of baggage from the war, the bigger problem being a rampaging giant radioactive monster that follows Koichi home to Tokyo. Two years pass, Koichi has just put his life back together with his partner, Noriko (Minami Hamabe), while Japan rebuilds and life feels normal again. And that's when Godzilla shows up to ruin everything, to demand answers for all the uncomfortable questions left unanswered by WWII.
There are uncomfortable tensions at the heart of Godzilla Minus One. For one, Koichi's "crime" is in fact, the correct choice. Dying for a cynical and cowardly, if not even criminal Emperor, would be a pointless act of nothing. The Axis Powers were trapped in a death cult, their actions after 1942 having no logic other than to kill as many people as possible, including many of their own citizens. 1945 is a year of many tragedies, the self-extermination by the Germans and Japanese is no less a horror than those they inflicted upon others. Every pilot who killed himself in the air was a victim, murdered for a war effort everybody knew was no longer in doubt.
The survivor's guilt of a World War can be a terribly negative thing. WWII was launched by men who refused to believe WWI really was for nothing. Here in America our misadventures in the Middle East were pointless replays of the disasters of Vietnam, attempting to rewrite history in the blood of another few countries. Japan also has struggled to make clear sense of its past. Yukio Mishima, one of the greatest Japanese writers post-war, turned towards a quixotic fascist coup. In his suicidal stunt, he could not accept any reality other than one where his country betrayed the Emperor, rather than the other way around. Mishima admired the kamikaze pilots and in a way died with them, decades after the war ended. Koichi could easily be another body on the pile, Godzilla being his excuse.
And that left me very worried watching Godzilla Minus One. Especially as Koichi starts flying around, with private plans to take on the big monster. He's flying a J7W Shinden fighter, an unused WWII prototype jet fighter. This leaves the movie with a very important choice to make. Will Godzilla Minus One choose to reject the death cult? Could it give these victims a final battle, one about life instead of death?
I also should mention that Godzilla Minus One is a fucking amazing special effects blockbuster. I'll never be 100% happy with a CG Godzilla, there is a magic lost by moving beyond miniatures and suits. But accepting what we have, this is a movie that can recreate all the greatest thrills of Steven Spielberg creature features. There's a Jurassic Park T-Rex attack and Godzilla plays Jaws. The finale is a spectacular thriller. The big attack on Tokyo is terrifying. The atomic ray only gets closer and closer to a replay of Hiroshima, and only more nightmarish. It takes a lot for me not to root for Godzilla, I think he's a nasty guy this time. Deserves an L.
Speaking of Ls, I feel awful for the next American Godzilla coming out this year. Minus One is not an act to follow.
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