Godzilla Minus One [2023]
Whether you’re simply picking up or rebooting a long-running franchise, it’s never an easy thing to do. Do you appease the old guard who know its ins and outs and are sure to rail against anything that doesn’t fit the classical box? Do you shoot for a new crowd with fresh takes on tired concepts? Something in the middle? It seems that you lose no matter which road you take, and that’s what writer/ director Takashi Yamazaki was faced with in the 2023 [insert your favorite word for “starting over” here], Godzilla Minus One.
Post WWII Japan is in shambles, as is the political climate of much of the world. When a colossal monster appears out of the ocean, the survivors of an all too fresh conflict are thrust back into battle with something that simply should not be, and no allies to help them.
Allow me to preface the criticisms this review makes with the fact that I partially learned how to read by watching subtitled Godzilla movies as a kid. I’m now a 32-year old “adult”, have my way-too-large collection of Godzilla figures on full display, and got visibly excited every time that big lizard roared in this film… So, I’m not just some hoity-toity snob. Godzilla is, unironically, a super big part of my life.
That said…
Godzilla Minus One is a strange mix of everything that makes classic Godzilla films good… and nearly unwatchable for anyone not already indoctrinated. The G-Man’s action scenes in Minus One? Bar none: incredible. The execution of the dramatic parts of the plot? Also bar none: some of the most anime nonsense I’ve seen in a live-action film. Like all throwback Zillla, he’s only actually in the movie for a handful of scattered minutes, with the rest of the runtime padded out with human drama. It’s a Godzilla formula that, if you’re a fan of the franchise already, you’ll hardly balk at but, if you’re new, will feel like the title of “Minus One” is referring to how relevant the titular character even is. On top of that, while Godzilla plots and the actors within them have always been… let’s say “silly” [1991’s Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah anyone?], they haven’t usually been quite as painful as parts of Minus One. Goofy melodramatics and comically insistent pieces of music make this feel like an anime more than a film a lot of the time [A quick glance at Yamazaki’s IMDB page explains that at least]. While there are some genuinely interesting plot points within the film [the examination of Japanese cultural bias towards Shikishima’s abandonment of his duty as a Kamikaze, for instance], the writing often seems to feel stuck between the need to bring back the big atomic lizard… or developing anything in a meaningful way. More on that in a bit.
While pacing is something most Godzilla films struggle with in one way or another, it’s particularly poignant in Minus One. The beginning of the movie feels almost like it was shot by several different directors and then cobbled together by an editor that never talked to any of them. Nearly the entire first quarter of the movie could have been recut [or tossed out entirely] to make this journey much snappier and leaner. We get several “beginning” type scenes that all feel like fine places to start on their own but, edited together in sequence, feel striated and jittery. I had flashbacks of Rogue 1’s rocky beginning when we’re suddenly given a location and date chapter marker followed by a loud and bright nuclear bomb blast, which immediately cuts to another location and date marker — complete with voice over and an Indiana Jones style “dashes on a map journey” this time — showing Godzilla chasing a United States Navy ship… which then cuts to our lead and his new buddies looking at the wrecked Navy ship in real-time where more plot then ensues. This was… 40-minutes into the film. Forty, whole, minutes in… and we’re still doing plot introductions. It’s an absolutely bonkers way to write a story, especially when starting the film with the above sequence would have served perfectly and allowed us to experience a previous Zilla action scene as a flashback with absolutely no issues. These pacing problems do largely alleviate themselves after the opening, but are also compounded by my aforementioned lack of meaningful development throughout the film.
There’s a lot happening in Minus One, but there’s not a lot happening with Minus One. What I mean by that is: there’s a lot of actors on screen who all say and do things, but it’s almost all entirely inconsequential because, by the end, none of it really carries any sort of weight [or consequences]. The most interesting plot element is effectively passed off with a tidy bow during the final action sequence… and then crudely explained to the audience as if we’re all tiny babies only seconds later, despite a horrendously lazy edit basically telegraphing the moment several scenes prior anyway. Godzilla Minus One is not a movie that particularly respects the audience’s ability to pay attention or connect dots to form an interesting and complex plot, but it also doesn’t quite respect itself enough to turn into something outlandish and comical like Shin Godzilla’s train traps and freeze-juice cranes, or King Caesar and the monkey aliens from Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla. It’s not quite self aware enough to poke fun at its own insanity like Final Wars, and it isn’t confident enough to be an adrenaline fueled action movie like Godzilla vs Kong either.
So, what we end up with, is a movie that wants to point fingers at everything that came before it and say, “I’m more meaningful than that,” but never commits enough of itself to developing a plot that carries the same weight as the original Godzilla or even the campy-but-intentional ending of Godzilla 1985. It has action [destruction] scenes that are downright incredible [one is lifted almost wholesale from Jurassic Park… which is not a criticism], but it never leans on them enough to want to be an action film, and so allows only single digits of its exorbitant 125-minute runtime to these exultations. It’s plenty camp… but it doesn’t mean to be the way a character like Jet Jaguar seems to, so it kind of just comes off as obnoxious. The whole thing suffers from a lack of commitment to any given lane, leaving the entire piece feeling a little incongruous in several different ways.
Look, I get that complaining about plot in a Godzilla film is like complaining about it in… well, a Godzilla film. In the end, Godzilla Minus One is going to be something you should make time for if the onomatopoeia “Skreeonk” gets your juices flowing [as it does mine], but isn’t going to win anyone over who either isn’t sure if they’re into the big man, or who strictly has no taste and doesn’t know what’s good for them. I’ll revisit this as soon as it’s streaming and I look forward to pulling clips of the destruction scenes from YouTube once they’re uploaded, but Godzilla Minus One is nowhere near dethroning any of my already favorites within the franchise.
