'Godzilla Minus One' Spoiler-Free Review
Image Source: The Film Stage
Godzilla as a franchise has been one of the most fascinating IPs to come out of Japan since its inception by Toho Studios in 1954. Beginning as an allegory of the cost of nuclear warfare on Japan thanks to World War II, Godzilla has stood the test of time with dozens of movies and a cast of colorful monster characters to accompany him. Minus One strips Godzilla of all that, restoring it to the roots of what made this horrifying monster truly a legend to be feared.
Set directly in the aftermath of World War II, Godzilla Minus One follows the tale of Kōichi Shikishima, an ex-kamikaze pilot trying to come to grips with his country’s defeat. Throughout the film, we see him unable to cope with the end of the war as he feels that he has a lot of unfinished business to deal with, and he meets others struggling with this. His world and country are shaken even further when Godzilla comes out from the sea and attacks Japan as punishment for being hit by atomic testing in the Pacific Ocean.
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Image Source: Indie Wire
Godzilla Minus One is not just a fun monster destruction fest, but also a deeply personal character study of those who had suffered during World War II, and those who tried to overcome it. This film tackles issues of not only how the Japanese people treated others during the war, but also how others treated them, including how their own government valued them as nothing more than pawns in a lost cause. The film also has a great message of coming together and finding family as several ‘broken’ individuals are able to create something new out of the rubble that was the Second World War. No spoilers, but the movie deals with certain aspects of Japanese life very pertinent to that specific era in their history, and how choices made during the war very much affect how our characters deal with its aftermath. This is a film about the scars of war and how each character needs to heal those scars in their own individual ways, and how in many ways Godzilla is the catalyst for many of them to heal said scars, and maybe even find a cause truly worthy of fighting for.
It’s amazing how director Takashi Yamazaki managed to capture this story with beautiful imagery and emotional storytelling while bringing back to its roots a franchise and a character who has been around for at least 60 years, and was still able to do something fresh and new with it. This film truly shows the variety of Godzilla as a character and a fictional franchise, illustrating that even something that stays very faithful to the original source material can still give you a fresh new perspective on both the ideas behind the character and the character itself. The horrors of the atomic age are still very much here, and show that even after almost a century later, Japan is still dealing with the legacy of the Second World War.
In conclusion, Godzilla Minus One is the purest remake of the original 54 film ever told, touching upon the many themes and ideas of the original but updating them for a modern audience and showing them in a new way. This is truly one of the best, if not the best entry in the franchise since the original, and it will be hard to top moving forward. Hopefully, Godzilla continues to embrace the experimental and the weird while never losing what made it special in the first place.
Rating: 10/10
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