On the cusp of his 70th anniversary, Godzilla returns in a monster-mash throwback to his postwar roots
Godzilla Minus One
Starring Minami Hambe, Sakura Ando & Ryunosuke Kamiki
Directed by Takashi Yamazaki
Rated PG-13
In theaters Friday, Dec. 1
The O.G.’s back in town!
The town is Tokyo, and the O.G. is the original Godzilla. This is the 37th movie about the rampaging reptile since he first lumbered onto movie screens back in 1954. So O.G. might also stand for “old Godzilla.”
Except, in Godzilla Minus One, the Godzilla saga rewinds, back to the beginnings and a “youthful” GZ, long before Japan’s iconic, dependably durable all-terrain mega-monster would go on to face off with Mothra, Rodan, Ghidorah or King Kong. Before he became a Hanna-Barbera cartoon in the 1970s, or fed in the imagination of Steven Spielberg as the fledgling director was stewing on Jaws and Jurassic Park.
And before heavy metal musicians saluted him in song. “Oh, no, there goes Tokyo,” sang Blue Öyster Cult in “Godzilla,” a 1978 cult classic.
Here, we’re taken back to Godzilla’s early days, in the years immediately following World War II in the 1940s, as Japan faces another crisis—a monstrous beast in the ocean, activated and energized by the fearsome destructive atomic power of the bombs that had turned Tokyo into rubble, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, leaving millions homeless and demoralizing a defeated nation.
How bad can it get in Tokyo? How low can things go? Well, Godzilla’s arrival makes things even worse—“minus one,” a calibration below zero, on the underside of losing just about everything.
But this Godzilla is more than just a creature feature; it’s built around a very “human” story of battle-weary war survivors, in particular a former kamikaze pilot (Ryunosuke Kamiki) seeking redemption—and closure from psychic wounds that continue to haunt him. Now, post-war, he’s helping a young woman (Minami Hambe)raise an orphaned infant in the decimated city and working on a mine-sweeping crew to clear thousands of leftover explosives—before Godzilla gives everyone a new reason to fear what’s in the water.
The movie reminds us of Godzilla’s cinematic roots in the unbridled destructiveness of a wide-ranging conflict that ended in nuclear mushroom clouds, and how the creature has always been a metaphor for the monstrousness of forces beyond our control—or sometimes, even our comprehension. Godzilla may be a monster, but he’s also a subject that invites our sympathy, as a primal “innocent” creature drawn into conflict, relying on his instincts to survive.
You probably won’t recognize any of their faces, but the cast of this all-Japanese production (subtitled in English) has plentiful credits on TV and film in their homeland. This gives it an authenticity lacking in many other Godzilla flicks, which were peppered with Anglo actors (like Raymond Burr, Bryan Cranston, Matthew Broderick, Elizabeth Olson and Sally Hawkins) to broaden their appeal. It’s Godzilla back on his home turf, rip-roaring again in his original element, back in the day when he and Tokyo were just beginning their long “relationship.”
Everything happens here around four key episodes of Godzilla coming on like a wrecking ball, trampling people, toppling buildings, snacking on train cars like candy bars, rocking battleships like they were bathtub toys and topping things off with the firepower of his “atomic blast” breath. He puts the thunder in thunder thighs in the spectacular, super-size monster mayhem that you’d expect to see from the King of the Monsters.
But it might also surprise you, and move you, with its level of heart and emotion, poignancy and inspirational uplift. Godzilla Minus One reminds us that just like ol’ ‘Zilla keeps getting knocked down but coming back for more, the human spirit is likewise remarkably resilient—even after atomic bombs or facing down beasts from beneath the sea.
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 