‘Godzilla Minus One’ (2023): Death is the Enemy

Directed by: Takashi Yamazaki || Produced by: Minami Ichikawa, Shūji Abe, Kenji Yamada, Kazuaki Kishida, Gō Abe, Keichirō Moriya

Screenplay by: Takashi Yamazaki || Starring: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki

Music by: Naoki Satō || Cinematography: Kōzō Shibasaki || Edited by: Ryōji Miyajima || Country: Japan || Language: Japanese

Running Time: 125 minutes

In the memorable, highly entertaining yet often criticized seventh season of Game of Thrones (GoT; 2011-2019), one of my favorite exchanges of dialogue occurs between series main castmember Kit Harrington and recurring character actor Richard Dormer:

• Harrington: What’s the point of serving a God if nobody knows what he wants?
• Dormer: I think about that all the time. I don’t think it’s our purpose to understand, except one thing: We’re soldiers. We have to know what we’re fighting for. I’m not fighting so some man or woman I barely know can sit on a throne made of swords.
• Harrington: So, what are you fighting for?
• Dormer: Life! Death is the enemy, the first enemy and the last.
• Harrington: But we all die.
• Dormer: The enemy always wins, and we still need to fight him. That’s all I know. You and I won’t find much joy while we’re here, but we can keep others alive; we can defend those who can’t defend themselves.
• Harrington: … ‘I am the shield that guards the realms of men.‘
• Dormer: Maybe we don’t need to understand anymore than that. Maybe that’s enough.
• Harrington: Aye, maybe that’s enough.

You’re gonna need a bigger boat. The movie’s first sequence with the fully formed Godzilla is my favorite, where our main characters attempt to stall the beast’s progression to Japan with their minesweeper watercraft.

I’ve written before how much of what I personally (re: subjectively) connected to in the premiere HBO show of the 2010s was its multilayered, overarching treatise on the meaning of life despite how shitty life often feels and the importance of human perseverance despite the consequences of our mortality. As flawed as the series’ conclusion was, GoT never abandoned those core themes on the importance of living to fight another day both for the sake of others and oneself.

Enter Godzilla Minus One (Gojira Mainasu Wan in Japanese), the latest Godzilla feature released in any industry until Godzilla x Kong (Godzilla multiplied by Kong? Godzilla times Kong? Godzilla and Kong?) by Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures releases this spring (2023) and likely the last Toho Studios installment in the venerable kaiju (giant monster) franchise for some time. The previous Toho-produced Godzilla feature, Shin Godzilla (“True Godzilla”; 2016), was a dark, dialogue-driven science-fiction drama that satirized contemporary government responses to natural disasters (e.g. the 2011 Fukushima nuclear incident) and forwent a protagonist in one of the ballsiest moves against blockbuster formula of any high-profile film intellectual property (IP) in recent memory (see also: The Invisible Man [2020]). Perhaps as a sort of counterbalance, writer, director, and special FX supervisor Takashi Yamazaki’s Minus One goes in the complete opposite direction by embracing the character-driven hero’s journey format endemic to blockbuster storytelling. Where Shin Godzilla was cold and calculating, Minus One is warm, humanist, and emotional, flaunting its unabashed commitment to its character’s arcs proudly and treating their lives as the most precious commodity of its screenplay.

Accentuating that focus on character mortality is Minus One’s period setting near the end to just after World War II in contrast to Shin Godzilla’s modern day premise. Lead actor Ryunosuke Kamiki portrays a kamikaze pilot who narrowly escapes death in service thanks to his avoidance of duty and a surprise encounter with a smaller, unmutated incarnation of Godzilla in the film’s banger prologue. The remainder of the narrative explores both Kamiki’s survivor’s guilt and the slow, arduous recovery of Japan following their empire’s defeat by Allied forces in the late 1940s in painstaking detail; much of the first act outside the prologue features no mention of the titular monster, but his presence and the eventual reveal of his larger, nuclear-powered mutant form paces the action of Acts Two and Three. Throughout these later parts of the story, Minus One contrasts postwar Japanese cultural sentiments with the Imperial Japanese mindset in regard to their opposite treatments of human life.

Godzilla Minus One’s humanist focus extends to its cinematographic style and direction. Yamazaki’s visualization of his characters is patient, allowing for long scenes built around intimate ensemble blocking and frequent medium shots where the cast can act without editing interruptions. Music is notable and charismatic unlike the minimalist soundtrack of Shin Godzilla, building throughout its set-pieces and even referencing Akira Ifukube‘s iconic franchise theme by Act Three. As for those action-packed showstoppers (there are three confrontations with Godzilla not counting the prologue), they range from Jaws (1975)-esque chase sequences at sea to an almost classical yet horrific scene of Godzilla destroying the Ginza district of Tokyo; their computer generated imagery (CGI) is seamless, demonstrating again that Japanese filmmaking remains the only commercial film industry besides Hollywood whose digital FX are of consistent acceptable quality.

Top: Female lead Minami Hamabe witnesses Godzilla’s first landfall in the Ginza district from her train seat. Bottom: This incarnation of Godzilla’s iconic heat ray (atomic breath) is most notable for how its impact resembles a nuclear explosion’s mushroom cloud. Its power is awesome.

That even Godzilla Minus One’s CGI-heavy action sequences emphasize the human cost of a kaiju rampage shows the viewer where the film’s heart lies (for the opposite tone, see Man of Steel [2013]). From its intense prologue to its cathartic epilogue, this latest Toho Godzilla production emphasizes the human perspective above all without skimping on the impressive monster spectacle that made the IP famous in the first place. Minus One’s humanistic optimism may contrast with the dark pessimism of Shin Godzilla and the original Godzilla (1954) in particular, but I’d argue that’s to the former’s benefit given its retrospective focus and the quality of its characterizations. As much as Godzilla movies are about destruction, Takashi Yamazaki demonstrates how powerful — and cinematic — the human will to survive that destruction can be.

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SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATION: While the earlier Legendary Pictures MonsterVerse (2014-) flicks attempted to humanize the Godzilla formula for international audiences (e.g. Godzilla [2014], King of the Monsters [2019]), Godzilla Minus One is the lone installment in the IP’s recent history to focus on the arcs of its non-monster characters successfully. It rivals Game of Thrones in terms of the seriousness with which it takes its cast’s mortality and how it manages to earn its positive ending.

— However… I found the sequel tease just before the end credits unnecessary, and the cast’s multipart plan to defeat Godzilla, well, a little convoluted.

—> RECOMMENDED; no matter how down and depressed you may feel, Godzilla Minus One will fill you with cinematic vigor.

? Could female lead Minami Hamabe not have dove into that same alleyway along with Kimiki?