My Thoughts On Godzilla Minus One

     Ever since the film came out nearly a year ago, Godzilla Minus One has made splashes in the film community (which is what I call my movie nerd friends). However, despite always saying that I'd get around to it, I just never found time for it. It seemed like a shame that despite all of the praises and critical acclaim the film received, I never watched it, so this weekend I decided to wake up early and check out what all the fuss was about!

    Immediately off of the opening, I knew that everything I heard about this movie was deserved. I came into this watching experience expecting a monster movie- a good one, but still a monster movie at its core. And the issue you always see with monster movies is spending too much time with two-dimensional boring human characters, since the plot needs to be moved forward by someone who can actually talk. However, this issue isn't present in this film, instead presenting human characters with stories so compelling they could easily carry a non-monster movie. The main character, Koichi, is a disgraced kamikaze pilot that fakes a malfunction in his plane in order to avoid going off to war, landing at a mechanic island where the first encounter happens.

    When Godzilla appears for the first time, it feels like an unexpected interruption (which feels silly to say because you know you're watching a Godzilla movie). As I watched the monster stomp around and eat mechanics, it invoked the best memories of the classic Jurassic Park movies with the T-rex stomping and killing. And another noteworthy detail I noticed- this Godzilla felt... small? At least compared with other depictions I have been seeing recently (see the modern Monsterverse films). It didn't make him any less terrifying- in fact, if anything the creature felt much more grounded and real than a living creature the size of skyscrapers, making the violence feel more gritty, real, and animalistic than the careless destruction of a monster running through several city blocks. Each kill feels personal, and I think that's something that this movie nailed.

    The next segment of the movie goes Godzilla-less for a surprising amount of time, allowing the story to breathe and the characters to develop, justifying their focus on human stories as opposed to the wanton destruction and violence of other monster movies. When Koichi returns home and sees that his city was leveled and his family killed, he takes in Noriko and Akiko, a woman and the baby she rescued from the rubble. Together, they form a sort of haphazard family structure and they begin to rebuild a life for themselves amidst the ruins of the city. I know it isn't what people watch Godzilla movies for, but I was fully immersed in the story of these war survivors building a life together, despite not being a typical family. It also helped the audience warm up to Koichi, who was immediately established as a coward for abandoning the kamikaze mission in the opening of the movie, now showcasing his more sensitive and generous side.

    To support Noriko and Akiko, Koichi gets a risky but well-paying job as a gunman for a minesweeping ship of the coast of Japan, tasked with dismantling the mines left behind by the war. However, unbeknownst to the public, Godzilla has been steadily growing both in power and size after having been nuked, and had begun terrorizing battleships and making its way to Japan in an act of revenge. The minesweeping crew, now tasked with slowing Godzilla's approach to Japan, goes off to stall the beast with nothing but a rickety wooden ship and a few mines.

    Here's where I want to praise the movie for probably the most engaging segment of a film I've watched in a few years. Once again, upon my viewing of the movie I was getting heavy Jaws vibes, due to the rickety ship and crew facing off against a beast they vastly underestimated. The tension, comedy, and action of Godzilla's chase through the ocean legitimately leaves me at a loss for words. And it would be remiss to not mention the astonishing practical effects with the Godzilla head, now scaled up to be absolutely massive. I love everything about the scene, especially the ending, subverting the audience's expectations that the crew was stalling for the arrival of a battleship to defeat Godzilla, only for Godzilla to forget about the crew and go out of his way to absolutely ANNIHILATE the battleship with the first use of the atomic breath. Stunning stuff!!!

(I'm writing the rest tmrw but I'm posting this shit now)