Godzilla Minus One

The new Toho Godzilla film opened this weekend. I watched it on Sunday afternoon, and although I tried avoiding reviews, trailers or reading much about it, I couldn’t help but notice all the hype and praise it was getting. After having seen it, I can say that damn, the hype is real. The story begins in 1945, towards the end of World War II. Kōichi Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot, lands his plane on Odo Island, claiming to have technical issues. That night, a mutated dinosaur appears and kills everyone on the island, except for Shikishima and Sōsaku Tachibana, a plane mechanic. Shikishima returns home to find his town destroyed, his parents having died in air raids. He meets a woman named Noriko Ōishi, who is with an orphaned baby. He lets them stay with him, and they inadvertently form a family. Although still plagued with nightmares and survivor’s guilt, Shikishima does his best to find work and care for his newfound family. Meanwhile, Godzilla is mutated by nuclear tests and grows even larger, eventually heading to Japan. The citizens must now work together to find a way to defeat Godzilla before he causes more deaths and destruction to an already ravaged Tokyo.

Anyone going into this film expecting a big budget action movie will most likely be disappointed. Instead, we get a beautifully told story about trauma, PTSD and human resilience. The cast are all fantastic, and the script takes its time to flesh out all the characters and make you care for them. I found myself completely invested in their story, and I didn’t mind the scenes when the title monster wasn’t appearing on screen. Just like the original 1954 movie, Minus One is an anti war film that shows the scars left behind by those who survived it. The scenes of Godzilla are fantastic and terrifying, showing him as a vicious, scary threat. This is probably the most horrifying Godzilla ever seen on screen. But the real heart of the film are the characters and their determination to work together to fight the threat, despite all the tragedy they’ve endured.

Godzilla Minus One is a stunning, emotional film that succeeds in showing the humanity amid a world gone mad. All the praise it’s getting is well deserved. After almost 70 years, Toho shows that they still have great stories left to tell. This film is a stunning triumph, and absolutely one of the best films in the franchise AND of 2023.

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