3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Godzilla Minus One

2023,  Takashi Yamazaki (Lupin III: The First) -- download

I admit, I had been excitedly awaiting for this one to appear on some sort of media so I could download it. I missed seeing it with Kent in the cinema. To Kent's post, its a tempered "I Agree". Suffice to say, I was not as appreciative of the movie as Kent was, but likely for two reasons: I did not see it on the Big Screen, and I am most definitely not as steeped in the actual Japanese pantheon of Godzilla movies as Kent is.

The end of WWII, kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki, XxxHolic) feigns engine trouble and lands on a repair island. The engineers are not able to find any trouble and accuse the pilot of cowardice. That night, as they sleep Godzilla, a local legendary sea creature, walks ashore and kills most of them. Well, a much smaller version of him than we are used to. Shikishima could have stopped the creature by climbing into his plane and shooting it with its guns but he cowers; everyone but him and the lead mechanic die.

Later, he returns to his home in Tokyo to find it all but destroyed and his parents dead. This is not Nagasaki or Hiroshima, but the city did get hit by bombing raids. He ends up taking in a homeless woman (Minami Hamabe, Let Me Eat Your Pancreas) and her child, who is not her child but just another orphan, and despite his PTSD and shame, he builds a life with her. But it is a life held back by his demons. He finds work on a mine sweeping boat, along with some ex-military men, when Godzilla reemerges, right after the test of the hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll. This is the bigger, meaner, lazer-breathing Godzilla we are familiar with, having been mutated by the tests.

The world will not help the Japanese with their "trouble" and since they are not allowed to rearm themselves, their only defense is the civilian fleet and a few "loaned" destroyers. Conventional weapons don't do much against this healing-powers Godzilla, who can even recover from a mine exploded in his mouth. But one of Shikishma's crew, a scientist (Hidetaka Yoshioka, Fukushima 50), devises an ingenious plan. They will net Godzilla with freon tanks, which is heavier than water, and drop the lizard into the deepest trench off Tokyo bay. If the pressure doesn't kill him, then the backup plan is a quick use of inflated balloons hoping the explosive decompression will kill it. The endeavour doesn't go exactly as planned, but they do eventually put down the severely injured Godzilla.

But, as Kent tells, the movie is more about the people fighting the creature than the monster itself. Unlike in Shin Godzilla where we got a bunch of people being ineffective, wrapped up in bureaucracy of governments dodging responsibility, here we have a group of survivors who have no choice but to band together, to save their country. They are not blindly defending an ideal, but saving each other. They know their own country's faults caused the greatest disgraces and failings of the war, and the movie presents that acceptance, without the great apology expected of a defeated country telling their own story, but also without the great blame. This movie does kind of reflect how the country processed their role in WWII and its own self-destruction.

But in the end, it still feels like what I have seen of Japanese Godzilla movies from the past -- the melodrama, the ingenuity, the wonkiness of the monster. While this is purely the CGI stomping monster of current years, it still often feels like a guy in a suit, which is probably because the collective psyche of what he should look like demands that. In that aspect, the latest examples of the American Godzilla and this one do mirror each other. Someday, I need to watch the first American one, and the latest (whatever that will be at the time) and directly compare his depiction.