It’s a good time to be a Godzilla fan! His next encounter with King Kong is in cinemas next year, the Monarch tv series is currently showing on Apple TV+, and now we have Godzilla Minus One, already the highest-grossing live-action Japanese film ever in both the UK and the US. Most Japanese Godzilla films are sequels to the original Godzilla (1954), while often overwriting each other, but like Shin Godzilla (2016) this is a complete reboot.
Shin Godzilla, from the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion, was very enjoyable, but it was quite radical in its approach to the monster: for most of the film he wasn't recognisably Godzilla at all, although he did have a spectacularly impressive tail by the end. Most of the fun of the film came from the comedy of a calcified bureaucracy responding to a giant monster attack with a series of ever-growing meetings.
Godzilla Minus One is very different. Though it’s another complete reboot, this is classic Godzilla, red in tooth and claw. The film begins with a sequence set at the end of World War II, in which a young Japanese pilot, Shikishima (played by Ryunosoke Kamiki) lands his plane on an island. We realise that he was a kamikaze pilot who decided not to commit suicide. While he mulls over his entirely sensible cowardice, a local sea monster attacks. Once again, the pilot chooses not to make a suicidal attack. He survives, while all but one of the other troops on the island die, horribly.
The war is soon over, and Shikishima returns home, to find his parents dead and their house ruined in a fire. His neighbour despises him for his cowardice, but no more than he despises himself. A destitute young woman invites herself and the adorable orphan she has been looking after into his house. The months pass. He finds a dangerous, well-paid job on a boat, clearing mines, to support them. He might even be falling in love, but his shame is too great to let marriage be an option.
And then Godzilla heads for Japan. Since the island attack he has been hit with an American bomb, and he’s bigger, meaner and prone to nuclear outbursts. And what better way to stop him than by sending out Shikishima and his colleagues in their little wooden boat? And if they fail, how can Japan, already at zero, devastated by its self-inflicted war of aggression, with its cities ruined and a generation of young men lost, hope to survive Godzilla’s all-out attack?
This film was wonderful. Maybe I’m biased. I’ve loved Godzilla films ever since Channel 4 showed a late-night season of Showa-era films like Invasion of the Astro Monster (1965) and Destroy All Monsters (1968). Then it was VHS tapes for the Heisei era, including Godzilla vs Mothra (1992), perhaps the best Godzilla film of all. And then imported DVDs for the weaker Millennium era, which still ended well with Godzilla: Final Wars.
After watching all those, this was the first Japanese Godzilla film I’ve ever seen in the cinema. That meant a lot to me. I checked the cinema listings every week to see if it’d be on, then kept checking them to make sure it hadn’t been dropped! Just hearing Akira Ifukube’s classic themes played in a cinema would have been a five-star experience for me, even without a film to go with them. So I’m definitely biased.
On the other hand, if you’ve seen over thirty films about the same character, shouldn’t it be harder for a new film to give you the same hit? Godzilla doesn’t even have any monsters to fight in this one. In most Godzilla films the human antagonists have recourse to science fictional technology, like the oxygen destroyer of the first film, or a mechagodzilla, or their own spaceships. There’s none of that cool stuff in this one. There aren’t even any aliens.
And yet, to my surprise, that’s what makes it so brilliant! The beauty of this one is in seeing how people would have fought him with the limited tech at their disposal in the late 1940s. It feels more like Jaws than a Godzilla film at times, and it doesn’t suffer from the comparison. The scientists come up with some really great ideas and a brilliant plan – I thought a Godzilla film without any other monsters might feel a bit flat, but their plan leads to one of the best ever, tensest final battles. I haven’t heard a cinema so silent since the end of The Blair Witch Project.
Another reason it’s so good is because of Godzilla himself. He looks brilliant. He’s more catlike in this one, with a stubbier face, quicker movements, and a tendency to chase after shiny objects. His nuclear breath is the most powerful it's ever been, not just physically – it detonates like a nuclear bomb when focused – but emotionally. It hits the viewer hard every time it's unleashed. The way his spines pop up one by one builds the dread as you know what's coming.
But then I always think the monster stuff in Godzilla films is great, and it's the bits in between that make the difference. I loved the science fiction in Destroy All Monsters, but I was much less into the spy shenanigans and Matrix knockoffs of other films. Godzilla Minus One made me care as much about the people as the monsters: the pilot Shikishima, his housemates, his crewmates, and all the men who bravely volunteer to crew the ships in the final act.
It reminded me of Kazuo Ishiguro's excellent novel An Artist of the Floating World, in that both stories are about post-war Japan dealing with loss and guilt, and having been the brutal instigator of a terrible war that met with a brutal response. I thought this Godzilla wasn't a metaphor for the bomb, but rather for the USA itself. Shikishima didn't shoot at the monster on the island, so it walked past him. But the ground crew did, and met a terrible fate. It’s a film that celebrates bravery, but deplores aggression. Stephen Theaker *****
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