Movie Review: Godzilla Minus One reflects the greatness and spectacularity of quality cinema
1954 marked a before and after in science fiction and fantasy cinema, this genre so popular today has seen endless stories parade on the big and small screens, ranging from the most original to the adaptations of novels by great contemporary writers.
Toho Co., Ltd. is a Japanese high entertainment company that stands out mainly for the production and distribution of films and the production and exhibition of plays. This studio was responsible for bringing one of the most iconic monsters in film history.
Godzilla is a gigantic fictional kaiju monster. Its creation and conception in the mid-1950s ended in a film directed and co-written by Ishirō Honda and since then this colossal creature has become a representative icon of Japan and pop culture. appearing in 32 Japanese films produced by Toho Co., Ltd., five American films, and numerous video games, novels, comics, and television shows.
2023 marked the return to the big screen of this kaiju in Japan, Godzilla Minus One is his thirty-third film, directed by Takashi Yamazaki, this film is probably a reboot of the entire franchise as we know it today or, it is opening the door to a multiverse of probabilities in which we can see new things with older overtones.
What is the film about?
After the war, a desolate and devastated Japan witnessed the emergence of a monster called Godzilla, leading the country to even greater destruction. In the moment of greatest desperation, the inhabitants will join forces to try to combat this threat before it ends. with everything and everyone.
That Japan returns to this character on the big screen is one of the best things that could happen to this franchise, although on the one hand, we have the Western monsterverse that is becoming more and more popular, it is the original that causes the most expectation among its own and strangers, in 2024 Godzilla will turn 70 years old and to celebrate, its parent company Toho Co., Ltd. is bringing forward its celebration in style.
To talk about Godzilla is to refer to a franchise that has been very successful over the years. We can say that Godzilla Minus One is the most conventional film of recent times or the most sobering and least extravagantly pretentious work produced in Japan since the original from 1954, this is not intended to be a reboot or a continuation of what we already know, it is a midpoint between a promising future that opens and transforms its original franchise and a past that still has a lot to tell.
Set in 1946 where a group of ex-military members exhausted after the passage of a war come together to try to defeat a creature unknown to all, a being about which they know absolutely nothing and that threatens to end the devastation, among the survivors is the Kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) who after a stop on an island witnesses that they cannot stop Godzilla, he will destroy Ginza and then all of Tokyo.
Koichi suffers from survivor’s guilt, for not having done what was necessary to defend his people and his comrades who had fallen in battle. This is how the film opens, placing us on Odo Island, where this giant makes his appearance, destroying the surviving military camp. Koichi from his plane aims at Godzilla and in a panic he does not dare to shoot him, as a result, several of his companions die, one of the fundamental axes in the story is the fact that its main character has to relive the patriotic feeling and the consequences that this brings to his life after the war.
This type of nationalistic passion is essential to fighting Godzilla and at the same time having to take care of other survivors most of whom have also lost their loved ones, their homes, and their will to fight, we can see this in a very superficial way the havoc caused by war, hunger, lack of resources, people’s fear of the unknown, facing a harsh and cruel reality in which no one has more than their own life, the latter is crucial and is not intended to give us a moral discourse simply poses what survivors would do in the face of an even greater threat.
The human factor in the Godzilla films is fundamental and serves as the guiding thread of a story seen through the eyes of someone ordinary, a rule established by Ishirō Honda from the beginning, whether they are men or women or children or an entire population. which witnesses the devastation that this giant causes when facing a vulnerable humanity or an enemy at its height, in this case, there is an intense need to demonstrate the worth that people have when facing an unknown enemy and an even more future uncertain.
Koichi teams up with Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), a former weapons engineer, and Sosaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), a former Navy mechanic. Each one has a development parallel to that of the protagonist. The film establishes that their fears are based on their traumas. of the post-war period, the female co-stars, the affectionate and selfless Noriko Oishi (Minami Hamabe) and her recently orphaned adopted daughter Akiko (Sae Nagatani), are the motivation to fight in another war where no one knows what it will end in.
Although we see very little of Godzilla within the film, it is due to another of the rules established by Honda, unlike his appearances here we can see and appreciate that his appearances are very well calibrated and it is simple, he appears when he should appear, not before. nor after, this is what greatly enriches this project, as connoisseurs and fans of this genre we are more than pleased with the result, and those who are not, will be pleasantly surprised.
Writer and director Takashi Yamazaki focuses on representing more of a question of national honor than a giant monster that destroys everything, a plot that complements very well with the subplots that directly involve part of what Japanese military culture is, and immediately jumps out. on display when the locals curse Koichi for failing to do his duty and allowing the devastation to continue even two years later. The traumas lead him to wonder if this is real life or if he is just trapped in a post-war hell as punishment for his cowardice.
Themes that are deep and serious enough to be dealt with in the middle of the attack of something giant and unknown, possibly it is in this very specific point where the success of Godzilla Minus One lies, the story in general does not take so many restrictions nor does it worry about falling into excess of explanations, an idea that is taken and paid homage to that of 1954 where at every moment we can make a comparison between the two without detracting from the merit and importance of each one.
No matter how convincing the human part is within this same work, Yamazaki does not allow this to be a distraction from the main event, Godzilla himself, another thing that is surprising in the middle of 2023 is that this film is a cleaner and more honest cinema, while other productions make an impressive waste of visual effects that serve to complement a plot, here things change, as visual effects director alongside Kiyoko Shibuya, Yamazaki presents a Godzilla very different from his current American counterpart without losing that wonderful feeling of having a person wearing a bag made of cloth and rubber.
The quality of the effects is at the level of what is required for a film of this type, what should impress us is not only the creature but how it interacts with its environment, it is not about destroying for the sake of destroying, although one would think that Making a model and putting someone to wreak havoc on it is simple, the reality is that it is more complicated than it seems, a filming process like this not only takes hours of planning but days and even weeks in its execution for it to be completed. See as realistic as possible within how unbelievable it can be.
Its ending is something completely new and worth seeing, something that tells us that there will be more of this Godzilla in the future and that he is not as indestructible as in previous films, this contribution greatly enriches this new franchise and takes it to another level within itself, reinvention is not something that can be handled so easily and here it is so simple to propose that it not only convinces a demanding audience it also flaunts everything we can expect, a monster that dies but can regenerate? The idea sounds crazy but here it is perfectly well executed and justified.
Perhaps, and I say perhaps, the biggest flaw that this film has is in the proportions from small to large and vice versa, as well as its perspective when changing from one scene to another, for example, in the almost climactic part we see a very good Godzilla. planted and balanced on a seabed, moments later we see that the depth of the ocean in which they are exceeds it by 100 to 1, this seems to be something already established and not a sequential error, we have seen it in other productions of the genre, series animated, and even in comics.
Another detail to consider if we are talking about a colossal creature, something very similar happens with movements on land that are more clumsy or with the displacement of the water when it is swimming, these details can go unnoticed and can be justified because we are dealing with a job. merely fantastic that aims to be as realistic as possible.
Unlike Toho Co., Ltd’s latest production, the equally excellent Shin Godzilla (2016), the monster’s design continues to have fundamental bases of something similar to a dinosaur, we can see a partial evolution, a young Godzilla that appears at the beginning and that reminds us of a T-Rex attack sequence in the first Jurassic Park film (1993) and it is until the middle and towards the end where we can see it in all its splendor, another contribution that Yamazaki makes to this franchise is to reinvent its atomic breath, here seen as a buildup of atomic energy that activates along with the scales on its back when they turn blue, followed by a mushroom cloud at the point of impact that destroys the surrounding area that first radiates. and then it implodes, when we see this on screen there is a total absence of sound which gives more drama to the sequence.
It cannot be overlooked that the central message in the 1954 film was the use of atomic weapons, Minus One’s Godzilla once again represents the uncontrollable destruction that these cause and the consequences that exist in its environment and its fauna, It is very well stated that Godzilla here is the result of this, a being that is not a dinosaur but is a mutant humanoid creature that perhaps is only looking for a place in a world that it does not know and that equally terrifies it as it terrifies us as humans. presence, here there is already a link between the monster and wars in general, a synonym for destruction and seemingly unstoppable death without a motivation that is understandable to us.
This sudden and surprising change in the character’s line not only reveals the commercial ambition of the studio but also competes with its American namesake, which completely distances itself from any nationalism and patriotic message, despite all the violence on screen Godzilla Minus One It is an infinitely hopeful film that reaffirms the survival of humans as a dominant species that sees in Godzilla a representation of the warrior nature we have to face adversity and the determining will to live.
The cast is made up of Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, and Kuranosuke Sasaki who understand their characters perfectly well and what they must face, their construction is still based on the first film that here it is recreated in a more current, modern, convincing and terrifying way.
The music composed by Naoki Satō has precise samples of what was composed by Akira Ifukube for the 1954 Gojira without losing its personality, each piece is perfectly well cared for and synchronized so that as spectators we can become audiovisually involved in a great show.
In conclusion, Godzilla Minus One is a clear example and shows us that with a very modest budget of less than 15 million dollars, you can make a great film, that it is not necessary to make a commercial waste to present a mediocre product, that when projects like this, they are in the right hands with a concrete and precise approach to where they want to go. These are the results.
A worthy, honest, and awe-inspiring work, it takes all the classic elements such as Godzilla’s scream and transforms them not in a modern way but with a vision of the past that marks the beginning of a new future, something very worthy of presenting to the new generations and that is up to the task of competing with any monster verse, what took the West 5 films, a comic book prequel, and a television series, it was enough for the East just to do this to capture the world’s attention.
A film that has already been positioned as one of the best of the year is already a classic and that plans to have a re-release in Japan in a more classic format in black and white, without a doubt the projects of this studio will give a lot of something talk in the future and we look forward to more work like this at a very high level.
Godzilla Minus One is now out in theaters in your country.
