Godzilla Minus One (SPOILERS!)

[lhb412]

It's finally here! Godzilla Minus One is in US theaters, it's been out in Japan for a month, and it opens in numerous other territories real soon!

Godzilla Minus One is like one of those good ideas that almost feels inevitable: stripped-down down, back-to-basics Godzilla reboot as a period piece with a sheen of prestige over what is essentially a crowd pleasing melodrama. Obviously good idea, and Yamazaki executes it with skill. I probably admire Shin Godzilla's more eccentric approach a bit more, but this is good, too. Just in a different way.

I love that both Gareth Edwards and Yamazaki made Godzilla movies indebted to Jaws, but Yamazaki interpreted that in a much more fun way (adventure on the high seas!). Godzilla himself is scaled down from the cosmic weirdness of the MonsterVerse, Shin, and so many of the later interpretations into a slightly more mortal beast, but one still appropriately godlike for the more modest world of 1947. I enjoyed seeing him do traditional Godzilla stuff and the moments where (as in Yamazaki's Godzilla ride) you're put right there in the action and he almost gets you are terrific little jolts (more shades of Jaws!).

As for nationalist themes? Basically as I predicted; like a mainstream Hollywood film, where the sins of the past are acknowledged in a palatable way before the heroes of our story can overcome them. Basically, how every American action movie with a protagonist who's a veteran in what we now view as a less noble conflict would do it. The difference here is scale, with a small army of veterans essentially triumphing over Imperial Japan's cult of death by executing an anti-Godzilla strategy where (drumroll) no one dies! I may be a tad more cynical than your average filmgoer, but I have to admit; that's a well played but of melodrama! It got me! Sometimes a classic happy ending hits nice - that touch of ambiguity at the end doesn't hurt!

Oh, and the director wasn't kidding when he said that he wasn't thinking GMK when he wrote it but it must have subconsciously influenced him because it's all over that finale!

Oh, and almost forgot to mention the pre-mutation Godzilla! It's wild, after ideas about how dinosaurs looked changed dramatically in the '70s the idea of "what if Godzilla, but more like our modern understanding of a dinosaur?" has been kicked around in numerous pieces of proposed concept art for official projects and in even more fan art. Very surreal to finally see it on the big screen in all its glory!

[sentaison]

Just got back from seeing it in IMAX, (or at least on an IMAX screen) and my short and to the point reaction is this:

WOW! JUST, WOW MAN!

This wasn't just a great Godzilla film, it was a fantastic period piece and human drama. It captured much of what post war Japan was for the Japanese, and not really surprising, given Yamazaki's past work, made it all feel very real.

The damaged hero and his collected family made it all very personal in a way that I don't think has really been done since GMK and the last Mechagodzilla films, and I think it was done better here.

And the effects, Godzilla's design, and all of the action was first rate! I can already tell this will be a favorite of mine when the Blu Ray comes out and will get a lot of rewatching just to pick up on details I missed the first time around.

And the plan to take down Godzilla, and the way they executed the plan was brilliant. No super science weapons put together by mad scientists, just an application of basic physics and environmental damages, as well as the proper application of high explosives as a finisher.

And the music score was perfection.

Maybe I'll find something to nit pick about in future viewings, But right now I"m thinking this fits into my top 3 G films. It was great.

[lhb412]

Well; $11 million weekend, critical praise, fantastic buzz... this is about as good an outcome as Toho could ever hope for.

Going to my second viewing in a half hour.

[DannyBeane]

This is about as close to a perfect Godzilla movie as I can imagine.

[Benjamin Haines]

This movie's take on Godzilla is fantastic. He is just downright villainous and he brings such a thick atmosphere of dread to the whole story. I felt bad for the people caught in his path in Ginza and I was afraid for Akiko when he made his way back to Japan at the end. I love the whole 'terror at sea' angle and how most of the action sequences involving Godzilla take place on the sea.

I appreciate every wild and crazy take on Godzilla over the past ten years. I like how each MonsterVerse entry has done its own version of hero Godzilla with mega-budget Hollywood effects and a lot of unspoken influence from the Gamera trilogy. I dig how Shin radically reimagines the character while staying true to the core concept of the original film's depiction. I'm a big fan of both of the reality-bending anime takes on Godzilla and how drastically different they are from each other. Godzilla is such a versatile character who has been around for so long and appeared in so many works that it's crucial to keep getting more fresh, outside-the-box takes as time goes on. All that being said, with every take on Godzilla over the past decade being non-traditional in one or more major ways, Minus One really filled a vacant niche in the modern era for a Toho-produced live-action film featuring a truly villainous Godzilla with a classic-style design and old-fashioned animalistic behavior. Even with the ways in which this take clearly breaks from tradition, this is the most recognizably classic depiction of Godzilla in modern times.

I also really like how this take on Godzilla doesn't follow the typical post-1998 trend of depicting Godzilla as not just a very strong monster but nigh-invincible and super-powerful compared to prior incarnations of Godzilla. It's such a fan-centric approach borne out of the backlash to G'98's vulnerability, and I'm a fan of the various super-powered takes on Godzilla in recent years but I don't think it's necessary in order to make Godzilla an interesting or impressive character. He doesn't need to keep getting bigger or gaining new powers in every outing. I think Minus One has the most impressive take on Godzilla of the modern era, and the fact that he's so much shorter than most other versions of Godzilla doesn't make a difference. What matters is how he's depicted here in this movie, and the movie is better for having prioritized that.

The way Godzilla is destroyed here is another spin on what GMK and Planet of the Monsters previously did, the concept of breaking Godzilla's hide by extraordinary means and causing his internal energy to blast his own body apart the next time he tries to use his atomic breath. I like how Godzilla's defeat also mirrors G'54 with him writhing on the surface of the bubbling sea as people look on, and how it mirrors his death scene in Godzilla vs. Destroyer with his body breaking apart as atomic energy shoots out from within. Minus One is very true to Godzilla's previous screen deaths, including the quick reminder that Godzilla can rise again from such defeat.

[Dai]

This was better than I could have hoped. Usually I feel that even my favourite Godzilla movies have at least one thing that could have been better, like how Akira Takarada's character in the 1954 original is less interesting than everyone around him, or the way the pacing in Shin Godzilla grinds to a halt after the mid-point. I can't think of a single thing that would have made Minus One a significantly better movie. It's a masterpiece.

In many ways Minus One is the antithesis of Shin Godzilla. Shin operates on an intellectual level, dissecting Japanese bureaucracy and presenting its characters with an ever-changing enemy that keeps evolving beyond their ability to counter it. Minus One aims for the heart instead of the head, and is the most emotionally resonant movie since the raw and personal original. This is the only Godzilla movie that made me cry. Watching people try to rebuild their lives in the burnt-out ruins of Japan is powerful enough, with 'failed' kamikaze pilot Shikishima's guilt anchoring it in the injustice of the time as he struggles to come to terms with having survived when so many didn't. Godzilla's appearance is then like the final insult that tears them apart again. The human drama is so powerful that those scenes could easily have made a compelling period piece even without the addition of the kaiju element.

When Godzilla does appear, the eerie music and his sheer ferocity and destructiveness sell the horror of the rampage in a way few others have managed. I usually long for more scenes of city destruction in kaiju movies, but the Ginza attack is so intense I'm not sure I could have stood the tension if it had gone on longer. Most kaiju movies revel in the destruction of buildings while keeping people at a sanitised distance, but Minus One focuses unflinchingly on the terror of the people caught in the middle. Seeing this at the cinema makes it clear how much is lost when I'm often only able to watch kaiju movies on a TV.

The eventual plan to deal with Godzilla was inventive, taking advantage of the limited resources available to turn nature against him in classic kaiju movie fashion. That it was left to civilians to spearhead the counterattack when the hollowed out Japanese military couldn't muster the will or materiel to resist Godzilla made it all the more powerful.

I can see why Toho have pushed to give this a wider international release than Japanese Godzilla movies have seen in decades. Minus One will undoubtedly go down as one of the classics of the genre.

Minor notes:
The depiction of Godzilla's heat ray stands among the most memorable in the franchise, improving on the ratcheting build-up of Legendary Godzilla and exceeding the raw destructive power of Shin.

The use of Ifukube's Godzilla theme wasn't surprising, but the specific versions picked were: Mothra vs Godzilla was an unusual pick for the Ginza attack, while King Kong vs Godzilla worked surprisingly well for the climax.

It's interesting to see that Japanese movies are now able to go toe-to-toe with Hollywood on the quality and spectacle of CG effects. Shin managed it in places, but the effects there were inconsistent. Minus One's effects are polished from start to finish.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ Yeah, I was taken aback when the music during the Ginza attack shifted from Godzilla's theme into the "Mahara Mosura" motif just like it does in the Mothra vs. Godzilla main title theme. Still, it's only because we're lifelong fans and we're so familiar with these music cues that we even notice Mothra's theme in that scene. It reminds me of how Godzilla vs. Gigan uses so many stock Ifukube tracks in a different context from their original works and still makes them fit well. Gigan was among the first few Godzilla films that I ever saw as a kid and I had no idea that the music was from a bunch of different movies. General audiences who see Minus One won't notice anything unusual about the music. I really liked how the final showdown went from the G'54 main title theme to the King Kong vs. Godzilla main title theme in the same arrangement as Symphonic Fantasia No. 1 and the end credits of Godzilla vs. Destroyer.

Of all the movies featuring giant CGI monsters that have come out since 2013, this one really does reign supreme.

Godzilla Minus One > Pacific Rim > Shin Godzilla > Colossal > Kong: Skull Island > Shin Ultraman > Godzilla (2014) > Jurassic World > Rampage > Godzilla vs. Kong > Godzilla: King of the Monsters > Power Rangers > The Meg > Pacific Rim: Uprising > Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

(I still haven't seen Jurassic World: Dominion or Meg 2: The Trench.)

[Dai]

^ In retrospect, I think I see what Yamazaki was aiming for by using the Mothra theme there. In MvG it's associated with the summoning of a god. The Minus One OST then transitions into a track called Divine for the heat ray atomic blast scene where Noriko appears to be killed. If we view the scene from Shikishima's perspective, he's witnessing divine retribution for daring to have survived the war. IIRC, I think there's a scene later when he specifically says he thinks Godzilla's reappearance is his fault because it came to punish him. Even setting Shikishima's delusion aside, this is very much a vengeful Godzilla, since he comes ashore purely to destroy rather than to feed on nuclear energy or fight another kaiju (since Japan has neither at that point).

[Kailem]

I originally had tickets to see this today, but it seems as though word reached UK distributors about just how well this is doing in the US, because when I checked again last week I saw it was playing at an even more local cinema. So I was able to see it on Friday instead, and wow. Yeah. Even going in *knowing* it was going to be amazing still didn't prepare me for actually seeing it for myself.

First off, I've got to say that I absolutely love the fact that even after 70 years, we can still get Godzilla movies that aren't just good, they're spectacular! Some series end, some fade away, but just like Godzilla himself at the end of this and other movies, this is a series that just can't be killed, and indeed, can come back stronger than ever. And I LOVE that!

But yeah, Minus One was incredible. Stunning visuals, great story, characters I really cared about, tons of emotion, incredible action, and a Godzilla that's both simultaneously classic and also doing things we've never seen Godzilla do before. I'm not sure there's much they could have done better.

From the opening scene I was absolutely hooked. That pre-mutation Godzilla was just straight-up *brutal* in a way we've never seen before, and it was amazing. From there on out I was digging everything about it. Like Dai said, I absolutely loved every time Godzilla appeared, but at the same time, after that opening scene and knowing what he was going to be capable of, I almost dreaded his appearance because I'd actually gotten attached enough to the characters that I knew they were all going to be in serious danger when he showed up. And it definitely made me cry. I realised pretty early on that I'd not brought enough tissues for what I was in for!

Those scenes of Godzilla themselves also reminded me of Gamera 3, specifically the aerial battle, in the way that you could see Yamazaki utilising *just enough* SFX as he was able to on this budget (which was extremely impressive, but obviously not as high as a typical Hollywood blockbuster's would be) to satisfying the audience and give them what they wanted to see without being forced to skip any of the good stuff. It was all really well done.

The atomic breath attack on Ginza was jaw-dropping. Probably the most powerful and destructive thing we've ever seen Godzilla do, period, made even more dramatic by the fact that we can see civilians looking on in awe and trying to run from what's coming. And like Benjamin said, I loved how, even though we got some great new twists on things like the atomic breath and how it comes about, this is the most classic-looking Godzilla we've gotten in the Reiwa era to date. Which that in and of itself makes it stand out. And I loved how it still retained so much of the "main in a suit" look to it, from standing completely upright to stomping along one foot at a time at the end there especially. It's just awesome in every respect.

The music was fantastic too, and really unscored the bleak and somber nature of the post-war setting, but also just how dread-inducing Godzilla's appearances were. And man did they ever pick the perfect times to hit us with the Ifukube classics! Even though we'd seen Godzilla being a destructive powerhouse in previous scenes, his first full, proper appearance in the middle of Ginza synced to his theme?! So good! Not to mention how ridiculously hype it was when they go all-in on the plan at the end and the ships move out. Just absolutely perfect.

And of course, characters I actually cared about, which made everything that happened when Godzilla was around that much more gut-wrenching or tense. This really was like a post-war period drama that happened to have amazing monster action in it. I definitely got teary-eyed at multiple scenes, and not just onces where characters died (or appeared to die). You could take Godzilla out and still probably get a very compelling drama out of this group of people. But thankfully we got Godzilla in there too!

The crazy plan to deal with Godzilla was great as well. It felt very (appropriately) Showa-ish, and very Honda-ish with its group of ordinary people banding together to make it work. I actually loved that, after so much death and chaos throughout the film, they actually managed to stop Godzilla without anyone else dying......is what I thought until I remembered the decoy team got decimated. Well, nobody else died *after* that point, anyway! And they made it so clear that Koichi was going to sacrifice himself to stop Godzilla that I guess I should have seen the bait and switch coming earlier, but I'm glad I didn't. I twigged right before he flew the plane into Godzilla's mouth that he was going to eject (Doc's earlier speech about how shameful it was that Japan sent their pilots out without ejection seats and told them to sacrifice themselves immediately sprang to mind), but that was the perfect moment to realise that. And even Noriko survived! Again, after all the death that permeated the movie beforehand, I loved that we got a happy ending. That moment when Godzilla rose up and was about to destroy the ships?! That was the best "oh no....." moment I've had in a movie in a long time.

You could definitely feel the GMK influence here in a few ways, the ending perhaps being the most obvious in terms of it taking a main character piloting a vehicle into Godzilla to destroy them from the inside, as its atomic breath then breaks it apart only for the final shot of the film to be a piece of it regenerating to the classic theme. But Minus One did so much else different and new that I'm more than happy with it taking a few direct cues from other Godzilla films.

I'd say if there was one, frankly minor criticism I had it would funnily enough be the same as I had with Shin, in that after Godzilla decimates Tokyo at the midway point it does feel as though the pacing starts to lag just a little bit. Not enough that I thought it was a problem, but enough that it did enter my mind as I was watching it.

Also not so much a criticism, but I *was* a little surprised that there wasn't as much emphasis on the wrongs Japan had wrought during the war as I thought there'd be, especially with that "this monster.....will never forgive us" line from the trailer implying as much, and being curiously absent in the finished film (at least in the UK version. Was it in the US version and we got different subs?). Like lhb412 said, that aspect was presented in a bit more of a palatable way than I expected going in, but at the same time they still directly acknowledged Imperial Japan's "hey guys, go out and die for us!" mentality more than once, if not so much the impact they had on others (like GMK did). But again, it wasn't something that suddenly made me dislike the film itself.

Oh, and I've got to say, after being a Godzilla fan of the better part of 40 years now, it was an absolute joy to finally see an actual, Toho-made Godzilla movie on the big screen. When that Toho logo appeared at the beginning I had such a big smile on my face!

So yeah, Godzilla Minus One is incredible. One of the best Godzilla movies ever made, for sure. Spectacular. And if Takashi Yamazaki has said he wants to do another one, then Toho needs to sign him up right now. Not just because he's put the word out that he wants to make a Star Wars movie and could get poached at any time, but also because I'd honestly feel sorry for anyone else they might get to make the *next* Japanese Godzilla movie after the one-two combo of Shin and now this!