Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Celebrating his 70th anniversary in 2024, Japan’s biggest movie star, Godzilla, comes roaring back in what may be his most brutal screen outing yet. Godzilla Minus One again reinvents the atomic-powered lizard. This time around, he rises from the ocean to torment a post-World War II Japan already reeling from the devastation caused by the war.

Godzilla Minus One opens in the final days of World War II as kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) attempts to land his fighter plane on a bomb-cratered runway on Odo Island. On the island is a repair station for Japanese aircraft. Head technician Sosaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) remarks to Shikishima that he can’t find anything wrong with his plane. Before his honor can be fully judged by the repair station crew, a large creature emerges from the water and destroys the base. Shikishima climbs into his fighter to use its 20 mm cannons to shoot the monster. He freezes when he has an opportunity to kill the beast. Due to his inaction, the monster slaughters everyone on the island save Tachibana and Shikishima before disappearing into the sea.

After the war, Shikishima returns home to Tokyo and finds his parents have been killed by American air raids. As he attempts to rebuild a life in the ruins of the city, he finds himself taking in a young girl, Noriko (Minami Hamabe,) and an orphaned baby, Akiko. Feeling a combination of survivor’s guilt and PTSD from the incident on the island, Shikishima channels his energy into making a better life for the makeshift family. He takes a dangerous but well-paying job as part of a crew searching for and destroying the remaining mines off the coast of Japan.

As time passes, the United States continues testing atomic weapons in the Pacific. The monster that attacked Odo Island receives a fresh blast of radiation and soon grows much larger and more powerful. When the creature begins attacking ships, Japan sends a patchwork fleet of mine-sweeping craft and an old cruiser that escaped decommissioning after the war to defend itself. Shikishima once again confronts the beast that haunts his nightmares.

Godzilla Minus One combines a surprisingly moving human story with satisfying monster action. Writer/director Takashi Yamazaki pays tribute to previous incarnations of Godzilla while simultaneously adding his own spin. What he does most successfully, however, is take the time to create human characters that an audience can care about and won’t audibly groan when they’re on-screen. Once the human story is solidified, Yamazaki is free to unleash the full fury of Godzilla on Japan.

The monster scenes do not shy away from showing the carnage a creature of Godzilla’s size and power would wreak on a major city like Tokyo. Humans are trampled underfoot. Buildings are flattened like Tinkertoys. Godzilla’s atomic breath unleashes the damage of a nuclear blast. And the creature himself is impervious to conventional weapons. We’ve seen some of these things before but Yamazaki’s version of the creature is depicted as a more swiftly moving, indiscriminate, and angry foe than before. The scars from his radiation burns are more prominent and, dare I say, painful-looking than we’ve ever seen on any previous Godzilla. This Godzilla may be the most terrifying version ever seen to this point.

While Godzilla movies from the past few generations usually contained laughably poor special effects, this new incarnation features much improved computer generated visuals that look phenomenal. When I learned that the film only cost $15 million dollars, I couldn’t believe how good it looks for that amount of money. While it doesn’t quite have the polish of some Hollywood films, it stands head-and-shoulders above any previous Japanese Godzilla movie.

Recommending this film to Godzilla fans is easy but this is the first Godzilla movie I’m going to wholeheartedly recommend to anyone. Previous Godzilla films mostly only appealed to genre fans and any recommendations felt like they needed the disclaimer, “It’s good if you know what you’re getting.” Godzilla Minus One features a strong, involving story populated with interesting and memorable human characters along with amazing effects sequences. It’s not just a great Godzilla movie; it’s a great movie. Period.