Movie Review: Godzilla Minus One (Gojira -1.0)

 

Michael's Movie Grade: A-

The best Godzilla movie ever.

While 2021's Godzilla Vs. Kong pushed the human drama to the side to focus solely on spectacle, Godzilla Minus One does the exact opposite. The human drama is front and center here and we get to know who the human characters are and why we should care about them, before getting to the big monster fight. The result is the most heartfelt Godzilla movie yet. These are not the stereotypical and bland human characters that we see in the Monsterverse movies. Instead, these are well defined characters that feel completely real to us. This is especially true of our main character. The story involving this Japanese kamikaze pilot's return to his completely destroyed hometown, being completely unwanted and disgraced is an incredibly moving one. His relationship with a young woman and child, who he takes into his house brings us some of the most touching and heartfelt moments in any of these films. Meanwhile the scenes dealing with our hero's PTSD are often overwhelmingly emotional and poignant. Like the first Godzilla film (way back in 1954), this movie captures not only the physical destruction but also the psychological despair of postwar Japan. In fact, many of the early scenes could have even come from a serious drama about this subject. The result is incredibly effective, and the more serious tone is expertly handled. This is in fact even helped by this film's deception of Godzilla. Like the original movie, Godzilla here is not as much of a character as a sheer force of nature that mercilessly destroys and leaves mankind completely hopeless. This fits the tone of the story perfectly and appropriately for a film about post-war Japan, makes him once again an allegory for atomic weapons. Godzilla has also never visually looked this scary or powerful before.   

Yet none of this is to say that this film is lacking in the action. The action scenes here are incredibly wonderful. The prolonged climatic action scene is possibly the finest in the franchise's history. It is incredibly intense, suspenseful, well-staged and exciting. Though it is a longer action scene, it is never boring and never loses one bit of its excitement. This is simply action filmmaking at its finest. 

Simply a wonderful movie.