Worth: $17.00
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Cast:
Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki
Intro:
… adds to the mythical monster’s legendary modern track record with a heartfelt and even uplifting story of post-war perseverance.
The past decade has been very good for everyone’s favourite giant atomic lizard. The awe-inspiring mythic smackdown of the MonsterVerse films, the satirical deconstruction of Shin Godzilla, the philosophical space opera of the animated Netflix trilogy; not only are these all certified bangers, but they each attained that status by exploring different facets of the kaiju-to-end-all-kaiju.
However, while there has been no shortage of success in recent years in making compelling cinema about the king of the monsters, they haven’t always been so engaging when it comes to the human characters. There have certainly been some interesting inclusions, like Haruo from the Netflix trilogy, and seeing Millie Bobby Brown’s Madison have a roar-off with King freaking Ghidorah in Godzilla: King of The Monsters is all kinds of badass. But for stories that involve the fate of entire worlds, even those exceptions stand out only because they contract with the scattershot representation of everyone else.
Godzilla Minus One feels like a course correction. Taking things back to the genesis of the franchise on the eve of World War II, the story follows Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot who has been branded a coward after the war for both failing to live up to his initial job description and being fearstruck behind a gun turret, which lead to him being one of the only survivors of Godzilla’s initial attack. Kamiki pours his entire soul in this performance, channelling palpably heart-breaking survivor’s guilt and PTSD to create a nexus for the overarching depiction of life post-war. His supporting cast, like Minami Hamabe as his impromptu domestic partner Noriko, add immensely to that effect.
From there, writer/director and VFX lead Takashi Yamazaki applies the same level of technical detail that went into his The Great War of Archimedes to not only flesh out the depictions of aerial and naval combat, but also to ground the story and Godzilla’s place within it. Returning to his status as the monsterification of nuclear holocaust, the monster takes the form of a scaly, spiky spectre of death, under whose shadow the people of Japan adamantly try to rebuild both their surroundings and themselves. Godzilla is particularly scary here, both thematically and in how eerie it is to see him shrug off gruesome battle damage, to say nothing of the damage he inflicts in turn.
And with Godzilla as the embodiment of death and fear, the emphatically human story being told unfolds into one of life and courage; of standing together because it’s the right thing to do, of seizing hope from the sharpened jaws of despair, and of overcoming the existential void that is believing we can only improve the world by sacrificing ourselves for it. Of survival, not as shame, but proud and glorious victory.
Godzilla Minus One adds to the mythical monster’s legendary modern track record with a heartfelt and even uplifting story of post-war perseverance. It taps into dark emotional wells to deliver the kind of personal storytelling that highlights how absent the human variable has been in the other stories. If you’re a fan of all things giant monster, it should go without saying that this is worth checking out, but those who have felt the absence of real human connection elsewhere, will especially find merit with this one.
