Although Godzilla the Kaiju has been reimagined as a baby, a westernized egg-laying creature more closely resembling a dinosaur, and a shape-shifting terror from the sea, Godzilla as a concept has never truly lost his connection to his original allegorical self. By fully acknowledging Godzilla’s ability to exist both as a literal monster and as a lens through which storytellers can explore humanity’s capacity for monstrosity, Toho has succeeded in giving his iconic creation a kind of immortal life at the center of a sprawling universe to grant franchises.
The recent Godzilla films’ depictions of the present are particularly interesting because modern filmmakers are better able to create spectacular scenes of large-scale destruction. When Minus One opens in 1945, kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) has no idea how imminent Japan’s surrender will ultimately be. But instead of focusing on how far the King of the Monsters has come, writer/director Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One turns to the Titan’s origins and tells a devastating tale that reveals the brilliance of the original myth.
Set at the very end of World War II after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Godzilla Minus One tells the story of how a devastated Japan is mobilized back into action by the sudden arrival of a 164-foot-tall reptilian giant breathing atomic radiation. But from the moment Kōichi decides to land on Odo Island rather than sacrifice himself to the war, he knows that the life he knew has profoundly ended, both because of the conflict itself and because of it Guilt that will follow him to what remains of his home.
Although Kōichi’s survival instinct keeps him alive, the truth of his actions would mark him as a coward in the eyes of other soldiers and civilians whose lives have been turned upside down by the war, which is why he hides this in the opening act of Minus One. But as hopeless as Kōichi feels about the future, he is even more traumatized when Godzilla attacks Odo Island, leaving only deserter and former Marine Sōsaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) as the survivor.
Beginning with the original film, most Godzilla stories portray their titular monster as an embodiment of the nuclear horrors wrought on Japan by the United States during World War II. But because it’s set a little earlier than the original and focuses on the story, like a pilot who hesitates during wartime, then faces the situation where Japan is endangered by a new external threat, “Minus One” feels like a film that is also interested in exploring the complicated feelings of resentment that arise when a nation’s population is drawn into global conflict.
People may have a hard time accepting the idea of a monster lizard killing a platoon of soldiers after crawling out of the sea, but everyone Kōichi meets over the course of “Minus One” knows how they all go through the decisions of their government were pushed to their limits. And while some avoid Kōichi because of his moment of hesitation, others like Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe) understand that working together after tragedy is the only way people can ever hope to truly rebuild their lives. When Minus One adds characters like engineer Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) and captain Yōji Akitsu (Kuranosuke Sasaki) to the picture, one senses how the film emphasizes that the resilience of a community lies in interpersonal relationships rather than in the power of a government or of a military body.
But as Godzilla appears more and more frequently, Yamazaki uses his vast, visceral view of the monster to remind us that nothing unites people like a common, unmistakable enemy. And while the human heroes of “Minus One” deliver a powerful and ingenious battle that is riveting to watch, the film also contains some of the most compelling portrayals of the epic beast in the Godzilla series.
Vivid memories of Godzilla haunt Kōichi throughout Minus One in a way that allows for some excellent close-ups of the monster and is reminiscent of the post-traumatic stress disorder that soldiers often suffer from after war. Godzilla never looks or feels entirely “real,” per se, but rather like an eerily real nightmare made flesh – one whose crushing footsteps leave the camera jarring as helpless people remain in complete fear for their lives run.
Although this Godzilla is huge, Yamazaki places the emphasis on the creature’s aquatic grace and unimaginable physical strength in scenes on the high seas in which countless sailors meet their bitter ends. But it’s only when Minus One’s fully-fledged Godzilla hits the market that one can see how, for all his modern cinematic sensibilities, Yamazaki has still made a spectacular disaster film in the classic Toho style, blending digital, practical and sometimes cheesy effects together , to create a finished product that feels greater than the sum of its parts.
There are so many new, forward-thinking riffs on Godzilla and a pantheon of other titans currently or on the horizon that “Minus One” might, at first glance, strike some as a tamer, less contemporary feature focused primarily on that , to appeal to nostalgia. But as much of a throwback as the film is, it’s worthy of standing alongside the original as a seminal piece of the Toho canon.
Godzilla Minus One also stars Sakura Ando, Mio Tanaka, Yuya Endo, Kisuke Iida and Sae Nagatani. The film hits theaters on December 1st.