Godzilla Minus One Review

Seismic Activity

I never grew up with the character of Godzilla nor understood his cultural significance. I always just saw a big old monster keen on destroying huge monsters with some destruction here and there. At least, that’s what the American films in 2014’s Godzilla, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and certainly Godzilla vs Kong. However, the significance of Godzilla is reminiscent of nuclear destruction in Japan analogous of the bombings in World War II that wiped out entire civilizations and a way for the Japanese people to capture the fear and terror of such a deadly weapon. Godzilla Minus One is the latest in a string of Japanese Godzilla films to capture that sense of dread and fear. More than that thought, the film provides real stakes in giving excellent character development through which the audience feels the fear and dread as well. While most monster movies focus a lot on the human characters and fall flat, Godzilla Minus One actually shows how successful you can be when your characters are fully realized giving more weight to the story.

In the fallout of World War II, Japan becomes threatened by a ginormous monster bent on destroying the entire population.

The plot is simple, yet it is effectively accurate. This film is not trying to make Godzilla some guardian angel or reluctant ally against other monsters that exist in the world. This is Godzilla at his most fearsome and destructive. He is a monster that wants to destroy everything. Period. No character arc or journey is given to him to help the audience to relate to him and I appreciate that. Most films now a days try to humanize our villains, give them motivations we can root for, or even make them an anti-hero in the end. That is okay and can be done effectively (like in The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes), but it is now becoming nice and refreshing to let the traditional villains just be the villains.

With that appropriate lack of development given to Godzilla it is on the film to give us compelling stakes and characters to follow and root for, and boy does it do that! These are some of the most well written and developed characters I have seen this year, with simple wants and desires but deep and powerful emotional depth. Our main protagonist is someone who flew in the war and wrestles with PTSD being one of the few survivors. He is wrestling with guilt and shame and that is further exacerbated with more consequences coming with Godzilla wreaking havoc. Godzilla to him is a representation of the fear and despair he still feels and the battles he still fights in his mind. Rather than let those demons win, he chooses to continue fighting on to find some semblance of closure. It is a rich and powerful character journey for a monster movie to tackle and yet it works so well that I was so emotionally invested in his journey.

The characters around him also find some great development, such as a crook turned mother, a fisherman turned scientist, and a mechanic turned soothsayer that all simultaneously come into play to give a well rounded cast. I was so invested in the characters that when Godzilla is tearing down the city, I was fearful that the characters I had gotten attached to would bite the dust. I had never felt that level of tension in a monster movie to the point where I didn’t want Godzilla to destroy everything. I wanted these characters to live, to fight on, and to see the futures and hopes they have dreamed and longed for.

But we also do come to these monster movies for some level of fear and destruction, and that is definitely on display here with some masterful effects! Godzilla looks scary and fantastic, with Toho studios keen on using practical effects to bring the creature to life. The heat beam that he uses is also epic in all proportions yet creates a sense of dread in its build up. The slow build up of him charging up the beam and then releasing it in a cathartic blast is an experience like non other in 2023 save for the bomb exploding in Oppenheimer. It was that memorable.

The destruction and fighting is the icing on a well baked and excellently made cake that creates one of the best films of 2023. This is a film of epic proportions both in personal and large scale stories. The story carries this film forward with excellently written characters longing to forge new lives for themselves and seek a better future through the demise of Godzilla. While Godzilla is in the movie a fair amount, the characters are what firmly ground this film and deliver a memorable experience. Check this out as soon as possible for this is certainly a film to remember!

(A) Epic