Godzilla Minus One (2023)
Last month I noted in my review of Invasion of the Astro-Monster that Godzilla did a jig in what should have been a “Curse you, Red Baron”-type of moment. Godzilla Minus One is not that kind of movie. Oh, no. It’s about getting back to basics but doing it in a really fresh way.
Our audience character is Koichi, a young pilot who is sent to this island called Odo late in the Second World War to have his plane repaired. While on the island he and the mechanics encounter a giant lizard-dinosaur creature the natives have named Godzilla. Koichi and a mechanic, Tachibana, are the only ones who survive, and Koichi is racked with guilt because he froze when he should have fired on the monster.
Koichi returns home after the war to find his home destroyed, his parents dead, and disgrace on his head, because his aunt Sumiko says that if Koichi had sacrificed himself, maybe their family wouldn’t have suffered so much. He also finds a young woman, Noriko, and Akiko, a baby Noriko saved, and takes them into his home, albeit reluctantly at first.
Time passes, and Japan slowly rebuilds. Koichi has survivor’s guilt and PTSD, but he and Noriko have cobbled something of a family together with Akiko. He takes a job blowing up old mines in the ocean because it pays well and allows he and Noriko to buy Akiko proper food. He also notices a certain creature he first met on Odo is back and bigger than before. We all know where things go from here. Among other things, Koichi finds ways to redeem himself and face his demons. He also flies a funny little plane with an afterburner but no rudders. More on that in a bit.
Godzilla Minus One is a great piece of storytelling, and I certainly didn’t expect it to go into such detail about Koichi’s problems readjusting to life back home after the war. The film does this very effectively, showing Koichi having nightmares about the Odo mechanics and asking Noriko if she’s a ghost.
Refreshingly, no one makes the Americans out to be the bad guys; any mention of the Yankees is fairly pragmatic, acknowledging the tricky politics of the Cold War. It’s been said Godzilla Minus One panders to Japanese audiences, which is a no-brainer because it’s a Japanese film, but it’s not done ham-fistedly. In fact, both the American and Japanese governments are looked on as necessary to a point, but when it comes to disposing of big, scary creatures, the average folks have to get in and do it themselves.
Godzilla really brings it, though, and the movie’s stakes, which I won’t spoil, are nicely packed. Put it this way: Godzilla goes from flinging the poor Odo mechanics around like Frisbees to shooting atomic rays out of his mouth and healing himself right in front of the horrified humans who may be next on his hit list. He might be the enemy, but he’s a deftly drawn one.
One part of the movie that I thought was a little weak was Koichi getting so much flack for being a kamikaze pilot who survived. While it was the honorable thing for a kamikaze pilot to sacrifice himself, not to mention it was the whole point of kamikaze, there had to be pilots late in the war who never got to that point for whatever reason. It’s as if the movie’s implying these guys were just supposed to expire instead of return to their families. I find that hard to believe.
Plus I have questions about the plane Koichi flies at the end of the film, because there’s no record of Japan having any kind of a plane like that during the Second World War, not even in prototype. The closest one I could find was the Kyushu J7W Shinden, but that plane was never flown in combat and showed serious weight and balance issues during its few test flights. It only exists today in prototype.
It’s also laughable that Koishi’s plane has an afterburner because the first time afterburners appeared on combat aircraft was the Lockheed F-94 Starfire. Yep. An American plane. The first prototype flew in 1949. Oops.
To be fair, though, Godzilla isn’t supposed to be based in reality. These movies are about a murderous dinosaur-lizard creature that shoots heat rays and stomps on everything in sight. Reality is merely a footnote, if that. As we’ve seen, some of these movies are weaker than others, but Godzilla Minus One definitely does not fall into that category.
Godzilla Minus One is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.
My grade: A-
Principal Cast: Minami Hamabe, Ryunosuki Kamiki, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuki Sasake, Munetaka Aoki, Yuki Yamada, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Michael Arias, Yuya Endo, Kisuke Iida, Miou Tanaka, Ozuno Nakamura, Sae Nagatani, Goshu
Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki.