Ballooning budgets forcing the need for huge opening weekends. Mergers and mistreatment as companies strain to milk everything they can out of their properties and employees. Dilution of prized IPs through constant content that carelessly weaponizes nostalgia. Shelving films for tax breaks. And that’s before strike action!
A shit-show. You’d be forgiven for wondering if there’s any hope left for film.
Fortunately we have films like Godzilla Minus One. Films that can address deep topics with great performances, scary action, and still be massively entertaining.
Following a kamikaze pilot who doesn’t want to die, it shows the culture of a country reeling from their part in WW2. It offers so much commentary; guilt, responsibility, shame, being present, adopted family, bravery. All the while it has a bloody great Kaiju in it!
Praising this style isn’t intended as a knock on other versions. The Monsterverse is hilarious; the cinematic equivalent of taking your toys and bashing them together. I enjoy it! Godzilla looks cool, and the Monarch series on Apple+ was interesting. It’s a world of creatures, with a hierarchy. There isn’t some deeper meaning to it all, it’s just fun.
But this film, the first by Toho since 2016’s Shin, is a very different and truly magnificent beast. My investment in the human story was such that Godzilla was a bonus. And what a bonus! Unlike the almost noble anti-hero of the MV, this one is a force. He (?) is bloody frightening, with a frankly terrifying atomic breath. Watching his dorsal fins shift as he charges up is tense. This is even more astounding when the budget for Minus One was apparently only $15 million.
The cast is fantastic. There is some humour, and even some ridiculousness, but it’s all so earnest and fitting to the characters. I’m glad it wasn’t dubbed over. But there’s something even more impressive. This isn’t just the best Godzilla film I’ve seen, it’s one of the best films I’ve seen this year. I love some mindless entertainment but this is proof that even the most ludicrous sounding idea – a heat ray breathing enormous lizard – can elicit real emotion. Minus One deserves all it’s success. I hope the rest of the world takes note.
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