“Godzilla Minus One” Sets a New Standard

I am an unapologetic Gordon Ramsey stan. I’ll watch anything that blonde British brut puts out for me to consume, both content and food. After 20 years of analyzing thousands of dishes, one of the consistent themes of his feedback can be summed up in one word: elevate. Take these simple ingredients, a familiar recipe, and take it to the next level.

A task simple enough to understand, not so much to pull off. Toho Studios and director/writer Takashi Yamazaki have not only accomplished that with “Godzilla Minus One”, but may have simultaneously set the bar for all future Godzilla properties at almost impossible heights.

“Godzilla Minus One” Sets a New Standard

Godzilla Returns to His Roots

The mainstream, “American” idea of Godzilla that most people are familiar with has become so ingrained in popular culture, that it’s probably what you first think of. Stunt men in big rubber suits crush toy train sets while he fights a big moth or three-headed alien dragon. Actors pointing and screaming before running down the street in waves. 

We’ve gotten the more modern-day interpretation of that version, starting with the 2014 film “Godzilla” and the start of the “MonsterVerse” and most recently with “Godzilla vs. Kong” (2021). These films did exactly what they were supposed to do: take some big badass creatures and let them duke it out. But what those films, along with most of the “Godzilla vs…” films from the ’60s/70s, have in fun and action, they lack in emotional, human connection to the story.

At its purest form, Godzilla is a story about post-war Japan dealing with the fallout from the end of World War II, and doing so in a completely different world in the newly-birthed nuclear age. Godzilla is the physical embodiment of the fear and the trauma from the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is less a monster and more an act of nature lashing out against humanity.

In this latest iteration, Yamazaki pays homage to that original concept of Godzilla, both physically and metaphorically. “Minus One” Godzilla is a slow-moving, clunky yet unstoppable force, reminiscent of the first “man-in-suit” creatures. This deliberate choice provides the movie with the horror undertones it requires to deliver the underlying message of dealing with loss, grief and learning how to allow yourself to continue living your life in the face of both.   

With this in mind, the movie spends a small amount of time interacting with the beast himself, giving us shades of “Jaws,” where the unseen threat is scarier than the creature itself. This opens up a lot of screen time for the humans to fill, and they do it exceptionally, particularly the main protagonists, Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and Noriko (Minami Hamabe). And while these two do a good portion of the heavy lifting emotionally, the rest of the supporting cast do more than enough to hold their own. Truly, there is no wasted character or moment.

Long Live the King

Over this past weekend, Warner Bros released the first trailer for the previously announced “Godzilla x King Kong: The New Empire,” the latest in the American “MonsterVerse” Godzilla movies. We get shots of fancy high-tech spaceships flying through Hollow Earth, a gaggle of new Kong creatures, including a new (apparent) son of Kong and, of course, our big lizard kaiju but now with “new, action pink atomic breath™”!! 

Will I see it? Yeah. Will I enjoy it? I loved “Godzilla: King of Monsters” (2019) and “Godzilla vs. Kong,” so probably. If you’ve read some of my other reviews, you know I am not above a beautiful CGI-monster romp. However, my reaction to watching the trailer for the first time felt muted, and I can’t shake the idea that I would’ve felt much different if I’d seen it before “Godzilla Minus One”. It’s hard to get excited about the new Baconator after I just finished a Michelin-star three-course meal, you know?

At the risk of being hyperbolic, I am a different movie watcher now after watching this movie. “Godzilla Minus One” is a force to be reckoned with and a pure cinematic achievement, especially when you consider it was made for a mere $15 million. Juxtaposition it versus other huge swings like “Napoleon” and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and this can’t be called anything short of a masterpiece.