Godzilla Minus One (2023) Review

As I have said before I love Godzilla and I always have however sometimes I do worry about him. The problem is that after Marvel showed every Hollywood studio how much excitement and money could be generated from creating their own universe with criss crossing characters and intertwined films, everyone has been attempting to replicate their success.

Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures together just happened to have the rights to Godzilla and King Kong, a match made in monster heaven, spawning the shared fictional universe that is the MonsterVerse. Starting in 2014 with Gareth Edwards Godzilla there have already been 4 films and 1 TV show with another small and big screen instalment still set to come.

Hollywood hasn’t always got it right and even the more entertaining films such as Godzilla: King of the Monsters seem to be lacking something. Having revisited not only the 1954 original but some of the Showa era, the Heisei Era and the barmy brilliance of Godzilla: Final Wars, the issues seems to me that America just doesn’t really understand Godzilla.

Thankfully Toho Co have continued to make their own Godzilla movies aside from Hollywood and what they have done is far more interesting while still being true to the original message and motifs that the series was infused with.

In 2016 the sensational Shin Godzilla reinvented the iconic monster slamming him straight into a modern day procedural disaster movie that was as much a political satire on the bureaucracy and incompetence of the government than it was an thrill packed action movie.

Almost seventy years after the first film Godzilla Minus One gives us a whole new slant on the story shifting the setting to 1954 near the end of World War 2 and asking the question, what if when Japan was at its lowest point having already lost everything Godzilla came for them as well?

Opening with the arrival on Odo Island of Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot who can’t complete his mission because he claims his plane is faulty, we quickly see that this is a film as much about Japan’s complex relationship with World War 2 as it is about a huge God like dinosaur killing machine which just happens to arrive that night, wiping out everyone on the island but Shikishima and one mechanic.

Racked with guilt not only for his cowardice during the war but also his inability to help when Godzilla appeared, Shikishima returns to a desolate and fragmented Tokyo which has been almost levelled. Meeting a woman whose parents also died in the bombings name Noriko Oishi (Minami Hamabe) the pair being a new life together in the rubble with an orphaned baby who Noriko promised the dying mother she would take care of.

Getting work on a minesweeper the crews already dangerous mission is made far worse when they are tasked with stopping Godzilla who has reappeared after years and is approaching Japan. Mutated and enraged by the US nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll the creature is now more unstoppable than ever as the men find out when they try and blow Godzilla up only to have him regenerate before their very eyes.

With more attacks and the threat to an already devastated and demoralised populace increasing Shikishima and his friends band together with other individuals who have taken it upon themselves to stop Godzilla after being told that they will receive no help from America or even their own government.

It is in this final battle that Shikishima finally acknowledges not only his fear and the survivors guilt he has been carrying for years now but also the sins he feels he has perpetrated in the past, sins he knows he can atone for by facing Godzilla.

Expertly directed by Takashi Yamazaki who also wrote the script, Godzilla Minus One achieves something that has been missing for a while in Godzilla films, it makes Godzilla genuinely scary. All too often in the Hollywood films Godzilla is an anti-hero defending humans against other monsters which may be exciting to watch but doesn’t make much sense or offer any real peril or emotional investment for the audience.

For all its bad effects and rubber suits what the 1954 original tried to do was imbue a sense that the monster was an unstoppable force of nature unleashed on humanity and Yamazaki takes this to another level.

It is not just the scale of destruction we see or the superb long shots which truly show the creatures size or even the excellent special effects but the heart and soul that is put in to the film and the loss of life we feel during and after every attack.

In the same way that the most moving moments in the original were the simple shots of a child alone crying for its mother, Yamazaki makes sure we understand what is at stake for everyone involved especially the main characters who go through as much psychological and emotional anguish as they do anything else.

Perfectly balancing action and emotion while weaving in the immensely difficult subject of Japan’s involvement in World War 2 and the peoples varied viewpoint, the film is as much about pacifism and a love of life as it is about death and destruction.

It is a true achievement for any character to survive 70 years and still have new stories told let alone one as enthralling and moving as this and Godzilla Minus One, which is by far one of the best films of the year, proves that the legendary monster is as relevant now as it ever was.

Here’s to another 70 years.

GODZILLA MINUS ONE is out now and for more information and to book tickets, please visit godzillafilm.co.uk

Movie Rating:

Godzilla Minus One Trailer