My Review of "Godzilla Minus One"

Godzilla Minus One is the latest Godzilla movie to come out in 2023. It's not the Godzilla that we know in North America though. This is a Japanese Godzilla movie. Yes the nation that started Godzilla in the first place. Going into this movie I was expecting something similar to the ones that we got from Hollywood but boy was I wrong on that assumption.

The movie starts off at the end of World War II. There's a kamikaze pilot named Koichi, that lands on Oda island. He's already kind of a disgrace because he didn't sacrifice his life during the war. Still the war is over so there's nothing they can do about it. On the island they try to pick themselves back together after knowing they lost the war.

All of a sudden a giant monster storms the island and they tell Koichi to shoot it with his fighter jet while he can. Koichi freezes when he has the opportunity to kill the monster. What happens next will never get erased from Koichi's mind forever.

Somehow Koichi lives from the gigantic monster massacre and finds out that Tokyo has been decimated. Everyone is dead and there's a woman, Noriko, and a baby girl, Akiko, that somehow just move in with him in his dingy apartment. All of Japan is rebuilding so it's nice to have the company.

After a few years this makeshift family bonds with one another and eventually Tokyo starts to rebuild itself. Things are getting back to normal and then Godzilla rears his ugly head again. This time he's twenty times bigger than Koichi had remembered him. He's on a tear and will destroy everything in his path.

Now that Tokyo has been rebuilt and Koichi has built a family for himself he can't let this happen. The problem is how do you stop an unstoppable monster? Every time they try to kill Godzilla he somehow regenerates himself and gets even angrier!

I love how they give Koichi the added burden of his guilt from the past and the post traumatic syndrome that he suffers from the war. All of the characters have very believable backgrounds and motives behind all of their actions. It's pretty fun and they focus a lot on the human elements rather than the giant monster.

When they do focus on the monster they make him terrifying. He really comes off as an unstoppable beast. It's frightening because you really don't see a way how these ordinary humans from the late 1940s can stop this thing. That's part of the appeal to this movie too. It's an underdog tale that really pushes us to root for our heroes. They build enough backstory for us to really get behind them and feel tension when their lives are in danger.

The film also makes a lot of great homages to its lineage as well. The Godzilla theme song is ever so menacing and grandiose in this movie. It really helps bring terror to the audience when Godzilla is about to shoot flames out of his mouth. They also made the monster somewhat similar to the original Godzilla. His movements are similar as well.

This old school love also extends to the way they filmed the movie as well. You have very silent scenes which I didn't know were rare until I saw them in this movie. It felt weird because I'm so used to Hollywood white noise in the background at all times. This movie isn't afraid to be silent and take it's time to pull in facial expressions just like the olden days. They also have slower cut to black transitions for scenes. The acting is also very old school where we have actors diving and overacting to convey emotions. To some of you that are used to North American acting it's really quite a sight.

Again this is a Japanese made movie so there are also subtitles. Don't worry they don't speak super fast and again they use a lot of physical acting that really push their point around. You won't get lost at all. I imagine if you don't read it you'll probably still understand what's going on just from watching the physical acting.

Overall, I really enjoyed this movie. It was a very big surprise to me and it was really fun. Yes there are certain things in this movie that I thought were quite cheesy but I know what they were trying to do with it. It's a throwback to the olden days. Luckily for us this formula still works in 2023. I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10.