I'm not a huge Godzilla fan - I've always had affection for the guy, as he and his friends played in the background a lot when I was a kid. That affection's not enough to feel the need to revisit the films as an adult: I don't really have a lot of patience for '50s-style creature features - Kaiju movies have suits and destroyed miniatures going for them (and that does go a long way) but charm and nostalgia aren't that strong a pull.
I've seen a few of the newer ones, both Japanese and American, but to be honest they kind of run together in my mind. Color me surprised, then, when there would be two stunningly good Godzilla movies in a row. Not just good Kaiju movies, but excellent films in pretty much any way that counts.
Godzilla Minus One is a prequel to the original Godzilla, though it's best not to take continuity seriously in these things. As World War: the Sequel draws to a close Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot chickens out from his ordained duty to kill himself for the emperor, and goes back to land in a base at Odo island (the same island where the first part of the first Godzilla takes place). The ground crew boss, Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) sympathises, as the war is almost over anyhow and he sees that sacrifice would be pointless.
That night, however, a T-rex-sized Godzilla comes ashore and attacks the base. Tachibana asks Shikishima to use the guns on his plane to bring down the beast, but Shikishima once again panics and flees, leaving everyone to die. Only he and Tachibana survive; Awkward!
From there things move to Tokyo. With the war over, The city is a bombed-out, post-apocalyptic hellscape. Everyone Shikishima knew has died except for a neighbour who blames him saying that if he'd done his job properly her children might still be alive. Ouch. Shikishima befriends and forms a family of sorts with another survivor - Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and a young child she rescued. Wracked with survivor's guilt, he gets a dangerous job cleaning up mines from the Pacific. And wouldn't you know it, there he runs into Godzilla again, who's now grown to the size of a tall building, has been snacking on warships, and is eyeing up Tokyo as his own personal stomping ground; Kaiju's gonna kaiju. The boat chase that ensues is a stunning bit of action filmmaking.
From there the movie settles into the usual rhythms of these movies, as the plucky humans ineffectively try to stop the monster until they come up with a clever plan that might just work. What's different this time around is that the very grounded, post-war melodrama between Shikishima, Tachibana and Minami is just as compelling as any of the monster mash. The drama is extremely old fashioned - in fact, it'd fit right into movies made shortly after the movie takes place - but it's well written, well acted, and packs enough of an emotional punch to earn it a pass for its contrivances, common places and manipulative blows.
The drama dovetails nicely into the action, which is thrilling, well filmed, and visceral in a way that no other Toho Kaiju film I've seen has ever been. Writer/Director/FX artist Takashi Yamazaki makes his incarnation of old Gojira vicious; even the act of it deploying its back-plates feels like an act of violence, its regeneration powers seem painful and chaotic, and whenever it blasts its heat ray you can see it burning away its own skin. The monster lays to waste several ships and pretty much the whole of Ginza, kills a bunch of people as graphically as a PG-13 film will allow, and is an all-round public nuisance.
It's particularly impressive because this incarnation of the monster does away with a lot of the modernizations to the face, which is expressive, with very clear lines that feel heavily influenced by traditional Japanese art as much as anything. Gojira also does that thing where he seems to be swimming like a duck, seemingly standing waist-deep in water that's much deeper than that. The movie tactically doesn't show the furious paddling that must be going on underneath, but I got a chuckle out of it.
And of course it's all going to symbolize something; It's impossible to not assign meaning to a character that was created as an attempt to work out a nation's post-nuclear collective trauma. I won't go into any specifics here, as parsing out the messaging is part of the fun, but the human story at the center of the movie fleshes out the movie's unexpectedly rich thematic heft.
The movie runs over two hours, but there's so much happening and it's so well-paced it's never noticeable.
Personally, I prefer Shin Godzilla, as wry satires are more my speed than earnest tearjerkers... but I have to concede this one is the superior movie and an absolute joy.
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