Like a giant monster suddenly emerging from the ocean and crush you like a worm before you could run to safety, Godzilla Minus One surprise-dropped on Netflix. And it’s about damn time we can watch it at home, as its six-month theatrical-to-streaming window was significantly longer than most – and, for us kaijumongers, felt like six years. Despite being the scariest depiction of Godzilla ever, the film, from Japan’s Toho studio, became one of 2023’s most heartwarming success stories: Modestly budgeted at $10-$12 million, it grossed $115 million worldwide and became a holiday-season hit in the U.S., significantly boosting the career of talented writer/director Takashi Yamazaki. It also not only boasts visual effects that made Hollywood superhero films with 20 times the budget look like the dreckola it too often is, but also won the Oscar for best visual effects. Two things I should also mention: The movie is titled such because it takes place prior to the events of the original 1954 Godzilla (and anyone who starts poking holes in timelines, remember, there’s a special level of hell reserved for continuity nitpickers). Also, the human characters achieve something we’ve never experienced before in a Godzilla movie: we love them and don’t want to see them get stomped or obliterated by the big guy’s radioactive garlic breath. All this adds up to a great movie – and here’s why you should fire it up, pronto.
The Gist: It’s 1945, the waning days of World War II. Fighter pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is alive, and not very happy about it. Sadly, that’s how it is for a kamikaze pilot, honor-bound to sacrifice his life for his country. He lands his plane on an island, pretending it’s damaged and therefore sidestepping his responsibilities. The repair crew shames him, pointlessly, I might add – he feels enough shame for his sense of self-preservation, perceived by many as cowardice. But before anyone can rat on him, the air-raid siren goes off, except it ain’t no air raid. No, American planes don’t make that SKREEEEONNK sound. Godzilla begins tearing through everything and Koichi gets to the gun on his plane even though he’s not convinced the bullets would hurt Godzilla – note: he’s right, bullets don’t hurt Godzilla – he freezes up in terror and watches as almost all the men on the base get chomped ‘n’ stomped. So now we can add that to poor Koichi’s growing pile of PTSD and guilt.
Next, an odd scene for a Godzilla movie: Tokyo in ruins, and Godzilla didn’t do it. Bombing raids have rendered far too many people orphans, like Koichi is now. So are Noriko (Minami Hamabe), who he meets amidst the rubble, and baby Akiko, who Noriko found and is caring for. They hole up together in a leaky shack next to Sumiko (Sakura Ando), who shames Koichi for not dying in the war like he should’ve, but eventually comes around to him and gives him a bag of rice so the baby doesn’t go hungry. They scrounge for months, and become a makeshift family. At this point, we’re so involved in these people’s well-being, we almost maybe kinda aren’t totally hankering for Godzilla to show up and break things in spectacular fashion. Compelling human drama. In a Godzilla movie. Wonders. Will they never cease?
Don’t worry, though, the plot meets our needs when Koichi finally lands a regular ordinary everyday job: finding and blowing up underwater mines left over from the war. Seems dangerous, but we’re pretty sure poor traumatized Koichi’s nursing a death wish. He works alongside Navy vet Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), crewman Mizushima (Yuki Yamada) and former Navy weapons specialist Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), who go out on the open water where I was 100 percent certain it was totally safe and there weren’t any Godzillas farting around at all, except I was wrong. The beast emerges and they shove a mine in his mouth and blow it up and he seems dead for a second, but heals really fast. This is trouble. Big trouble. For them, and for Tokyo, and for everyone they love.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Big Guy in Godzilla Minus One has the dead-eyed expression of a wild animal, the likes of which we’ve never seen from the many, many iterations of him. No celebratory dances or high-fives for his monster buddies here – my fave of the Goofy Godzilla era is Godzilla vs. Megalon; Jet Jaguar 4-ever, yo – so it’s in line with the creepy, beady-eyed version we saw in Shin Godzilla, and of course the 1954 original. (And let’s do the just barely forgivably stoopid recent American outing Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire a favor and not bring it into this conversation, beyond asserting that its box-office success certainly drafted on the goodwill and hype surrounding Minus One.)
Performance Worth Watching: The acting here is a uniformly keen balance of quiet, thoughtful moments and amplified melodrama (and, of course, expositional declarations when Godzilla is in the scene). Kamiki, Hamabe and Yoshioka bear the burden of many contemplative moments here, and do so impressively and effectively.
Memorable Dialogue: The braintrust assembles to discuss a plan to take down Godzilla – and ask far too much of the volunteers on hand:
Random man: This plan – does it mean certain death?
Noda: Of course not.
Random man: Then it definitely beats wartime.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Hasn’t Tokyo been through enough? And Koichi and his coworker friends and his pseudo-family? The specter of the war still lingers over the populace, and now they have to deal with a pest so big, a million-zillion Orkin men couldn’t eradicate its big toe. Godzilla Minus One finds significant thematic and dramatic traction in the collective trauma of the Japanese citizenry, who are wounded and reeling on multiple levels after being on the losing end of a conflict that was even more awful and destructive than arguably any war, ever. Now feel free to turn up some subtext about the cruelty and madness of Japan’s dictatorial leadership, which ordered its own soldiers to commit suicide, or in the OG Godzilla themes about atom-bomb anxieties – it’s all here in the screenplay, which is deep and rich, and sublimely balances human empathy and anti-war sentiment with the silly spectacles of giant-monsters-go-stomp movies. It’s a major achievement.
Case in point: The American and Japanese governments don’t engage their militaries to battle Godzilla, citing tension with Russia. So the onus is on civilians to defeat the beast, which is as logical as it is ridiculous. And Yamazaki makes the most of this development, with WWII veterans reluctant to risk themselves yet again, but coming together in the service of the greater good to execute a So Crazy It Just Might Work plan, which, not to give too much away, is essentially hey let’s give Godzilla a major case of the bends. Like I said, sublime and silly – and original, at the same time paying homage to the 1954 film, where scientists innovated beyond bullets and bombs and came up with the infamous Oxygen Destroyer. That’s one of a few different levels on which Minus One is a smart variation on themes established by the original classic.
In macro, the film is a case of Yamazaki doing the absolute most with very little. It looks tremendous, whether it deploys CGI, practical effects or – in solidarity with the old movies – miniatures. The screenplay integrates political and scientific threads into its story of human perseverance and redemption, backdropped by one of the more poignant existential symbols in cinema history, which just so happens to be a towering dinocreature that spews atomic laser-puke. Can you say there are points where the plot is contrived? Yes, but if you actually say it, you’re a heartless galoot; the plight of Koichi and his damaged-but-not-broken quasi-family is deep and meaningful, rooted in classic Japanese melodrama (and when Koichi finally ruminates on his mental state and admits, “My war isn’t over yet,” our hearts shatter). Yamazaki makes many seemingly disparate elements fit together seamlessly. Godzilla Minus One is an action movie, a postwar drama, a monster epic, a character study – and a likely classic.
Our Call: Best visual effects? Sure, it deserves the accolade, very much. But there’s a big part of me that wanted Godzilla Minus One to win best picture too. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
