IMG via Toho
Seven decades removed and some nearly forty sequels later, it’s perhaps all too easy to forget just how absolutely incendiary Ishir? Honda’s original 1954 Godzilla truly is. A prescient and all too vivid depiction of the horrors wrought upon the people of Japan by the nuclear warfare of World War II, Honda’s film is a palpable distillation of pure bone-rattling terror. In the years that followed, Honda himself would turn Godzilla, as a character and a franchise, into something distinctly more genre-centric. This shift led to an immense and long-lasting legacy befitting the king of monsters, but one that perhaps partially obfuscates the sheer impact of that initial film.
The latest Godzilla film from the iconic Toho Co., Godzilla Minus One, seeks to return the character and franchise to these initial roots. Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, the film is both a literal return to WWII-era Japan as a setting and a distinct attempt to replicate Honda’s original film’s tone, mood, scale, and (at times) even its narrative. While Yamazaki’s efforts are massively ambitious and deeply admirable, the results are decidedly mixed, as Godzilla Minus One struggles to ever not feel like it’s simply living in the shadow of Honda’s original 1954 film.
TOP 5 THINGS ABOUT “GODZILLA MINUS ONE”
5. Minus One: The Story Structure
One of the things that so profoundly works against Godzilla Minus One is its narrative structure. The film opens with a whiz-bang opening setpiece that gets things off to a high-octane start, but ultimately does the film as a whole few favors. The sequence, which immediately introduces audiences and the main character of the film to Godzilla, feels like the film playing its hand too early in a great many ways. Visually, its spectacular, but it both sets a precedent the rest of the film is not entirely equipped to keep up with and leads to the story having to bend over backward to subsequently move characters into the right place and time for later chunks of the story.
The result is a stuttering effect for the first act of the film, as it spends its opening thirty-to-forty-minutes just rearranging its characters like pieces on a chessboard. It ultimately just feels messy, convoluted, and takes away precious screen time from the central characters of the film in ways that dilute and weaken later emotional beats. This is all the more befuddling as Godzilla Minus One so openly borrows so much of its structural frame from Honda’s original Godzilla, which is a pretty perfectly structured film. In shoving so many new ideas into the picture but so steadfastly trying to cling to the shape of the original, Godzilla Minus One suffers, with swaths of the story feeling overstuffed and underbaked.
4. Plus One: Godzilla Himself
Writer and director Takashi Yamazaki’s authorship of the film extends well beyond traditional means, as Yamazaki is also the primary creative force behind Godzilla Minus One’s visual effects. And while we’ll speak more about that in a broader sense in a later category, one thing that must be singled out and praised is how succinctly and vividly Yamazaki and co. have brought Godzilla himself to life.
The visual effects are stunningly articulated, as the creature’s movements are deliberately designed to evoke the man-in-a-suit movements of Honda’s original film. The ultimate result is that Godzilla feels so much more present here than he does in a great many of his other filmic incarnations from across the decades. With Yamazaki behind the wheel, there’s intention and motivation behind each and every movement, and it makes Godzilla’s role in the film play like a bona fide performance, full of distinct choices and selective movements.
3. Minus One: The Tone
One issue which Godzilla Minus One faces in replicating so much of the tone and feel of Honda’s original Godzilla is that of tone. Being made so freshly in the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Honda’s Godzilla was a raw and subversively intimate emotional affair; one that felt akin to reading someone’s own personal diary entries of the time. Now, nearly seventy years later, Godzilla Minus One lacks the potent immediacy of the original and loses something in translation.
The film deals with incredibly heavy subject matter (often very well!) that makes for harsh juxtaposition against the film’s more goofy elements. Having a film which features multiple character struggling against the urge to commit suicide, but whose master plan for defeating Godzilla is to essentially strap an inner tube to him makes for an occasionally incongruous viewing experience. Similarly, the treatment of Godzilla himself does also contribute to this tonal waffling. On the one hand, Godzilla Minus One wants its audience to be taken aback in how just one blast of the titular character’s atomic breath can bring about a literal nuclear holocaust. On the other hand, Godzilla Minus One also wants its audience to think it’s super cool and cheer as Godzilla gets ready to emit that blast.
Again, the desire to so wholly emulate Honda’s original film clashes with Yamazaki and co.’s own creative choices rather than coalescing with them, and Godzilla Minus One is weaker for it.
2. Plus One: The Themes
One element of Godzilla Minus One that does absolutely soar in though in every conceivable way is the way in which Yamazaki’s writing handles the themes of the work. In drawing such a clear line between the idea of post-war trauma, both of the society and the individual, and tying this PTSD and form of survivor’s guilt directly into the emergence of Godzilla, Yamazaki delivers a work that is not only wholly satisfying in its own right but also beautifully engages in conversation with Honda’s original Godzilla.
Where so much of Minus One’s elements meant to allude or reference the original film feel more like rote regurgitation, the themes on display here utilize the foundation of Honda’s work and build upon them in lasting and meaningful ways. By internalizing the post-war terror of Honda’s film and developing upon it to take an unflinching look at the ways in which one’s own personal war doesn’t necessarily ever end, Yamazaki gives Godzilla Minus One some real emotional and meaningful heft.
1. Plus One: The Visuals
Somehow, Godzilla Minus One was made for fifteen million dollars. Given just how fantastic the film looks, how extensive the visual effects work is, and the sheer specificity of the painstakingly period-accurate sets, it is absolutely bewildering that this film was accomplished on such a budget. In a time where Hollywood blockbusters are plentiful and increasingly buffoonishly expensive, Godzilla Minus One is a visually concentrated, motivated, and exacting delight. With Yamazaki at the helm and being the primary artist behind the film’s visual effects, the result is a blockbuster that feels distinctly anchored in its own perspective and singular vision.
It would be a massive filmmaking achievement any way you slice it, but with that miniscule budget in mind, it’s outright jaw-dropping.
RGM GRADE
(C+)
I wanted so badly to adore this film. But for me, its greatest accomplishments were often undercut by baffling narrative structural choices and inconsistent and jarring tonal shifts. Godzilla Minus One is a massively monstrous blockbuster with plenty of thrills and a lot of heart, but one that routinely seems to trip over its own big feet.
