“Godzilla Minus One” is an ambitious reset of the famed Japanese movie monster, a reboot of the franchise and the character introduced in the 1950s as an allegory of Japanese victimhood in in the nuclear age.
Writer-director and effects supervisor Takashi Yamazaki (“The Fighter Pilot”) gives us hints of the parable he’d like this new film, set much sooner after World War II, to be. It’s a tale told on the cusp of the moment when Japanese guilt for a war that country’s government started and prosecuted with fascist barbarity for a dozen years would morph into a populace that embraced victimhood as easier to swallow.
“Tokyo! I don’t want to see it in flames again!”
This film’s characters have moments where they speak to the modern Japanese audience, a top-down culture compliantly led into in economic stagnancy, declining population and unaddressed war guilt, racism and the like.
“This country never changes,” a character mutters, in Japanese with English subtitles. “Perhaps it can’t.”
The effects are terrific, even if the assault of ravaged post-war Toyko looks a lot less firebombed than it should, even if the marauding monster marauds less on land than on sea despite amble evidence of Godzilla’s dislike of trains. The sea battles are borderline awe-inspiring.
But change in emphasis and subtexts aside, Yamazaki’s film lurches into “Same old Godzilla, same old response to her/him” silliness, with old grievances barely sublimated, silly science and old themes such as self-sacrifice watered down for modern consumption.
In the last days of the war, a kamikaze pilot (Ryunosuke Kamiki) abandons his mission on the pretext of equipment failure. Koichi Shikishima lands on an island where he and the locals face a new threat, a monster who shows up who Koichi has a chance to fight, and again he shows cowardice.
Meek Koichi returns to Japan and forms an informal “family” with Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and a little girl. But American nuclear testing in the Pacific has awakened the beast the folks on far off Odo Island called “Godzilla.”
Koichi and the ex-Navy crew he serves with on a wooden trawler used to clean up Japan’s seaborne minefields, and a plucky scientist (Hidetaka Yoshioka) will be among those called on, in a demilitarizing Japan, to save Tokyo and the country from this new threat.
The Americans? They’re taking their lumps further off in the Pacific, but they’re worried about stirring up the Soviets (who had nothing resembling a real navy, and didn’t yet have The Bomb). So Japan will have to use its cultural cohesian and communal knowhow and bravery to save itself.
For long stretches, “Godzilla Minus One” concentrates on relationships and conversations, which despite their intent, do little to advance the plot or illuminate simply-drawn characters.
The acting is affecting, not helped by an unemotional script. Whatever human stories are attempted here, they’re never more than distractions in what still is “just” a “Godzilla” movie.
The coward must redeem himself. The scientist must use his out-of-my-lane expertise to save the country, not arm it. Assorted Navy veterans must move on from years of hubris followed by humbling defeats to rally against a new foe.
Self sacrifice will be called for.
We get it.
But it’s all a tad less satisfying as this and new take lowers the stakes in many ways, ones that rob the picture of much of its potential pathos.
I like what Yamazaki was trying to do. But his timidity in themes he might introduce to the film’s native Japanese audience shows and it muzzles his monster movie.
The country’s mired in a spiral that generations have found no answers and shown no will to correct. Comment on that.
And that matters a whole lot more than the “direction, script and effects by” credit he collects on this production. The biggest question any new “Godzilla” movie has to answer after 70 years of such films is “Why?” I think he had an answer and lost his nerve.
Rating: PG-13 (Creature Violence and Action)
Cast: Minami Hamabe, Ryunosuke Kamiki, Kuranosuke Sasaki,
Sakura Ando and Hidetaka Yoshioka
Credits: Scripted and directed by Takashi Yamazaki. A Toho release.
Running time: 2:05
Movie Nation 
I think Yamazaki had plenty to say with this one, and I think Moore misses some of the Japanese-centric cultural context here. The movie explores the themes of self-sacrifice and duty that pervade Japanese culture — and in particular are core to Dr. Sarazawa’s arc in the original film — but ultimately rejects them as unfair to the individuals and their loved ones. This isn’t “losing his nerve,” it’s rather a core theme, this idea of self-forgiveness and how living for one’s self allows you to live for your loved ones. That idea might be a little more obvious/sentimental to the western audience but in rooting the film in Post-WWII Japan I think it comes across loud and clear all the same.
Yes, it almost speaks to Japan today. And tries to speak to the past. But only in a whisper, in ways guaranteed not to offend. He wimped out. See the utterly wussy finale for the exclamation point on that.
What I took from the movie was, “Don’t wait for the government to solve the problem. WE need to do it.” Tug boat drivers, fisherman, broken men… And to do “it” (whatever the big “it” may be) takes more than just sacrifice. It takes a strong will to band together and to LIVE (literally) together. Those things require forgiveness; both of ones self and of ones neighbor. This idea gives us hope… And hope is something the world needs now, with the suicide rate at its highest since WWII… Interestingly enough. That may not be the answer you want but it is an answer and, in my opinion, one the modern world needs a reminder of.
Their government failed them was easy to read into it. The script still has a “brush over our guilt” feel, and as “Godzila” was really about Japanese victimhood as the world’s first to suffer an atomic bombing — “Never mind WHY it happened to us” — that’s a cop out.
Wow.. Interesting perspective. One with which I respectfully disagree. I think you missed the mark on the director’s intent. But that’s fine. I suppose unanimous critical acclaim is almost impossible to attain since most films aren’t perfect, and this one certainly isn’t, and it’s a good, healthy thing some disagree with general consensus.
I don’t agree with the dismissive sentiment of it being “just a Godzilla movie.” Mainly because there’s no metric behind it other than the negative connotation planted on by yourself. What is “Just a Godzilla movie”? Why is it something that seems to lack merit?
Is it just referring to the lowest lows of monster movie shlock that the series has ever reached? If so, then this absolutely isn’t “Just a Godzilla movie” because this is nowhere near the plenitude of scenes across films where Godzilla propels himself across the Earth with his atomic breath, or shoves a tree down King Kong’s throat, etc.
A common criticism for most Godzilla films are that the human characters lack agency and completely detract from the monster we want to see, but the characterization and decisions made by the human cast are directly tied with it, both narratively and thematically, even if you were disillusioned with the themes.
I have other things to say about this review, but I dont want to write a thesis in your comments on my day off. That was just a line that irked me. I think overall your review is much more coherent compared to the other negative reviews I’ve found (found you through Rotten Tomatoes, but I feel it’s a little disingenuous of them to label yours as negative when its a hard 50%. Not many places where that’s an objective negative outside of school. Perhaps you label it as such yourself. I admit my ignorance to that part of the process.) Usually, when the consensus on all ends is positive, reviews like this get the hounds unleashed on them, but I’m glad that there’s a lot of civil discussion in the comments, especially for a new addition to an iconic media franchise like Godzilla. I’m here in “negative” reviews that I normally dont bother with because I think this movie is great and I want to talk about it. I want to keep developing my analysis as that deepens my enjoyment, and hopefully a lot of fans visit this review with the same mindset.
Read that back to yourself, and repent.
It’s cheese, chief. Seventy years of cheese, monster movies for an infantalized culture, here, there and everywhere.
The point of making this “Godzilla” a period piece is making a comment on Japanese culture then and now. And what’s the one “message” that we can all agree is here? That 70 years into this series of monster-as-science-run-amok fantasies, “sacrifice” is pointless and unneeded. That’s comfort food for folks and fans who’re OK with “It’s somebody else’s problem/fault” — the very obsessive, escapist target audience of these movies.
Sorry you’re under the impression that this is great art, it isn’t. It’s a junk genre that occasionally scores points on culture, history and the warnings of science, etc. These movies — I’ve seen maybe a dozen — are almost instantly forgettable, and a little attempt at period detail here doesn’t suggest this one will be any different.
And if you think the third act in this one was anything but a not-funny-laughable cop out, you need to broaden your horizons a little bit, maybe watch the new Japanese drama “Monster,” for starters.