Godzilla Minus One

Godzilla Minus One (2023)
Toho Studios / Robot Communications Inc.
Director: Yamazaki Takashi, Shibuya Kiyoko (special effects)
Also known as: The posters and trailers styled the title as “Godzilla -1.0” or just “G -1.0”. A black-and-white version was created in post-production and commercially released a few months later as Godzilla Minus One / Minus Color (“Godzilla -1.0 / C”, 2024).

Reminder: This blog contains plot spoilers, possibly in the main body as well as in the plot summary section. Read on at your own risk!

The anime trilogy came and went, while over in America the Legendary Pictures series rumbled on, but Toho did continue to produce a very small amount of live action Godzilla material. Having launched an annual “Godzilla Fest” in 2017, they filmed a very short metafictional piece for the 2020 event that featured a man in a Godzilla costume acting out a scene of urban destruction. This was well received, and each year since has seen a new short film produced for Godzilla Fest. These sequels also used the old “suitmation” special effects but switched to presenting straightforward dramatic scenes of combat between Godzilla and a succession of classic kaiju adversaries.

In 2021, the Seibuen amusement park near Tokyo launched a new Godzilla-themed motion simulator ride. Godzilla the Ride: Giant Monsters Ultimate Battle featured a 3D animated fight between Godzilla and King Ghidorah which was scripted and directed by Yamazaki Takashi, with visual effects by Shibuya Kiyoko based on Yamazaki’s creature designs. Yamazaki had a couple of dozen credits to his name by this point, including a live action remake of Space Battleship Yamato (2010), an acclaimed three-part live action adaptation of the ongoing manga series Sunset on Third Street and a couple of 3D animated franchise films. Of greatest relevance to Toho, he’d included a fantasy sequence at the start of Always: Sunset on Third Street 2 (2007) in which one of the protagonists, a struggling writer, imagined Godzilla attacking his neighbourhood. Shibuya produced the special effects for that, too.

By the time the amusement park ride launched, Toho had already offered the multi-award-winning Yamazaki his dream project, the next full-length Godzilla film. Once again Shibuya joined him to work on the special effects sequences. Among a distinguished cast, Yoshioka Hidetaka (playing the science boffin character Noda) was the only actor Yamazaki brought across from the Always: Sunset on Third Street trilogy.

Like Shin Godzilla (2016) and Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017), Godzilla Minus One doesn’t just put aside all previous sequels to the 1954 original but ignores that too, creating a new continuity from scratch. Unlike the other films, it doesn’t modernise Godzilla with a new contemporary or near-future origin story, but instead pushes his first appearance further back into the past, to the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The film’s trailers presented this setting as the key to understanding its title – if Japan had been knocked down to nothing by its defeat and surrender, Godzilla would reduce it even further, from zero to minus one. Toho’s marketing campaign in the month before the title was revealed, by contrast, listed out the previous 29 live action Godzilla films in reverse order, effectively counting down to the new film placed numerically at “-1” before the first in the series. Although it was a year early for it, the production was officially labelled as celebrating Godzilla’s 70th anniversary.

Shikishima Kōichi, a Japanese fighter pilot, lands at a small airfield on Ōdo Island in the last days of the Second World War. He complains of a fault in his plane, but the chief engineer Tachibana tells him there’s nothing wrong with it; it’s clear that Kōichi has lied about the fault to avoid a kamikaze mission, although Tachibana doesn’t blame him for it. The waters around the island are ominously full of dead fish, and later that night an enormous creature wades ashore and attacks the airfield. The native islanders call it Godzilla. (Godzilla looks much like the stocky CG version seen in Legendary’s Monsterverse movies, but with pronounced and slightly more protruding dorsal plates. More about those a little later on.) As the mechanics run for cover, Tachibana shouts at Kōichi to get into his plane and use its machine guns against Godzilla, but as soon as he gets inside the cockpit, Kōichi freezes up. Godzilla smashes the base up and kills all the soldiers except for Kōichi and a furious Tachibana. The two are picked up by a ship and transported back to mainland Japan; during the voyage, Tachibana forces Kōichi to take a bundle of the dead soldiers’ family photos, to remind him of his failure.

Kōichi returns home in the wake of Japan’s surrender. His neighbour Sumiko angrily tells him that her children and his parents were killed in the bombings and berates him for coming back alive. The whole neighbourhood is a mess, his family home little more than a shell. A few days later, he’s in the local market when a woman, being chased as a thief, pushes a baby into his arms on her way past. She finds him again later and joins him for dinner at his house. Her name is Ōishi Noriko and the child, Akiko, isn’t hers – Akiko’s family and her own are dead, and she’s effectively adopted Akiko. She moves in long-term and Sumiko begins to take a familial interest in Noriko and the baby.

Time passes, and in 1946 Kōichi secures a well-paid job working on a minesweeper. The work is dangerous but Kōichi and his found family need the money. The crew of the minesweeper, a small wooden boat, consists of Captain Akitsu, the junior crewman Mizushima and former naval technician Noda Kenji. Working in concert with another boat, they bring undetonated American mines to the surface of Japan’s coastal waters and blow them up safely by firing a machine gun at them. Kōichi proves adept at the work and is able to support Noriko and Akiko and pay for repairs to the house. He also suffers from terrible nightmares about Godzilla and has difficulty accepting the potential happiness and stability his new situation offers.

In July of that year, the first American nuclear weapons tests in Bikini Atoll disturb Godzilla. (It’s possible the radiation causes him to mutate as well, although I don’t think that’s conclusively stated – just because we didn’t see him firing his breath ray or regenerating after an injury on Ōdo Island, doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t already have those capabilities. He’s certainly larger when we next see him, but that could just be natural growth.)

In 1947, Noriko finds a job in an office; Sumiko babysits Akiko while she’s out at work. Kōichi and his crewmates are sent to the Ogasawara Islands to track down Godzilla, who’s been destroying ships on a path from Bikini Atoll towards mainland Japan. Although the casualties include some American naval vessels, the United States hasn’t sent more military ships in response for fear of escalating tensions with the Soviet Union. The Japanese government, meanwhile, is trying to suppress any news about Godzilla because of the panic it would cause. The Takao, a heavy cruiser handed over to the British authorities in Singapore after the war, has been sent to confront Godzilla, but the small boats are expected to stall him until it can arrive, collecting and using mines against him. When Godzilla appears, he makes short work of one of the boats, and Kōichi and the others are horrified to see that a gaping wound in his face caused by an exploding mine quickly regenerates. The Takao arrives in the nick of time and batters Godzilla with gunfire, only to be utterly destroyed from below by his breath ray. The minesweeper escapes back to Japan, and an injured Kōichi is taken to hospital.

A day or two later, Godzilla reaches Tokyo, coming ashore in the Ginza district where Noriko works. Kōichi goes to find Noriko as Godzilla stomps through the city and some hastily mobilised tanks fire at him. It’s here that we get our first proper look at this version of Godzilla firing his breath ray: his dorsal plates pop up one by one along his spine, glowing bright blue, then simultaneously hammer down as he lets rip. The destructive force seems to harm even Godzilla himself, although his ruptured skin quickly heals. The blast vaporises the tanks and creates the effect of an atomic explosion in the heart of Tokyo, with the shockwave levelling several blocks of the city. As they try to flee, Noriko pushes Kōichi to safety in an alleyway but is herself swept away by the shockwave. Kōichi is traumatised again as the fallout from the blast starts to fall around him and Godzilla roars triumphantly.

Although Godzilla returns to the ocean, the authorities worry that he will attack Japan again. As before, the American government is unwilling to intervene for political reasons – the Japanese are on their own. Noda devises a plan to attack Godzilla and enlists the help of several citizens, many of them former naval personnel. He theorises that if Godzilla could be trapped in a belt of Freon gas canisters and sunk to the bottom of Sagami Bay, then immediately driven back up to the surface by rapidly inflated weather balloons, the sudden changes in pressure would kill him. Kōichi privately suggests a modification to this plan: if Noda can get hold of a fighter plane and pack it with explosives, Kōichi will fly it into Godzilla’s mouth as a last resort if all else fails.

Noda sources an experimental fighter that wasn’t completed in time for use in the war, but it’s in need of repair after two years sitting in its hangar. Kōichi has a mechanic in mind – he tracks down Tachibana. Tachibana is still furious with Kōichi, but agrees to bring in a team to work on the plane when he understands that Kōichi sees the mission as a way of atoning for his failure to act against Godzilla on Ōdo Island. As Noda’s plan nears completion, he gives a rousing speech to all the volunteers in which he laments the way the Japanese military threw away lives during the war and expresses his hope that no lives will be lost now.

The next day, Godzilla lands in Kanagawa. Kōichi, flying the experimental plane loaded with two large bombs, corrals Godzilla back towards the water and into position for Noda’s plan to be put into effect. Two unmanned destroyers are launched at Godzilla to draw his radioactive fire; as before, he also suffers injuries and has to pause to regenerate. This allows time for two more ships to drag a string of Freon canisters tightly around him, and Godzilla is propelled into the depths of the water as planned. When the second part of the plan is enacted, however, Godzilla manages to damage the balloons and halts his journey back to the surface. The destroyers, assisted by tugs, pull him the rest of the way up, and it’s clear that although Godzilla has been badly injured by the decompression, he isn’t dead. Before Godzilla can fire his breath ray again, Kōichi flies his plane into Godzilla’s mouth, and the explosion of the bombs blows off the top of the monster’s head.

In a flashback, we’re shown that the design of the experimental plane included an ejector seat, and that Tachibana, inspired by Noda’s pep talk, ensured this was fitted and working. Having apparently forgiven Kōichi, Tachibana explained the mechanism to him, and having apparently decided to live on and raise Akiko, Kōichi successfully ejected before impact. Godzilla’s body is flooded with the unexpended energy of his breath ray and he collapses into the water. Kōichi is recovered and, back on the shore, is met by Sumiko who has received a telegram reporting that Noriko is alive and was taken to hospital after the attack in Ginza. Kōichi goes to visit her, but fails to notice a strange discoloration on her neck that our attention is drawn to. At the bottom of the bay, Godzilla’s remains start to regenerate.

Like Shin Godzilla, Godzilla Minus One focuses on its characters and isn’t simply an effects-driven action movie. But it goes back to the franchise’s roots in the melodramatic cinema of 1954, or (probably more to the point) the heartwarming emotional fare of Yamazaki’s Always: Sunset on Third Street trilogy. The characters aren’t satirical cyphers but are recognisable dramatic types whose psychology plausibly reflects the mood of postwar Japan. Notwithstanding the fantastic elements, I would say this is the most “realistic” Godzilla film to date, not only in its characters but in the real-world science used in Noda’s counter-Godzilla plan and in the incidental details that deviate only slightly from actual history (if this ship hadn’t been scrapped a year before... if more of those tanks or those planes had rolled off the production line...).

The realism in Kōichi’s characterisation is most obvious, and the film pulls no punches. The welcome he gets from his neighbour on his initial return home is probably one that greeted many Japanese servicemen, and we can see clearly how it compounds Kōichi’s survivor’s guilt. His PTSD, from his experiences of the war itself and of Godzilla’s 1945 attack, comes through powerfully in the scenes of his night terrors. The tension between this and the hopeful new life that starts to build itself around him means that the film’s emotional ending feels well earned, not simply another bit of melodrama.

About that ending though... It is perhaps a bit pat that things should work out as neatly as they do, and the fact that we’re initially baited with what looks like the expected tragic ending before being given more information in flashback makes it very easy for me to offer a more cynical interpretation. It looks a lot like Kōichi really does die at the end, and everything after that is some kind of last-second fantasy on his part. At least, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Yamazaki had perhaps tried out the tragic ending, been given notes by the producers or from a test audience and added on the happy ending.

Then again, it would have been quite a comedown after Noda’s rousing “Nobody dies today” speech, so perhaps not. The overall tone of the film is certainly one of hope, of rebuilding after a catastrophe, which I’m sure would have been welcomed by Japanese audiences even a decade after the Tōhoku earthquake. This is also a film that places a high value on life, condemning the tragic waste of war and particularly the Japanese experience of the Second World War. It could fairly be described as a feelgood Godzilla movie.

A couple of months after its cinematic debut, Godzilla Minus One was rereleased to Japanese cinemas in black and white. This wasn’t the first experiment of this type: back in October 2023, there’d been a monochrome rerelease of Shin Godzilla, screened alongside a handful of earlier Godzilla films selected by Yamazaki as part of the buildup for Minus One. I don’t know if this was done as a way of testing the waters for the later release of Godzilla Minus One Minus Color or if the latter film was created because of a good response to it. Either way, I’m not entirely sure why Shin Godzilla got the treatment – Minus One at least has the excuse of being set in the 40s, an era of monochrome film.

It’s interesting to contrast this with how another extremely long-running franchise, Doctor Who, has been interacting with its past lately. (My sorry-not-sorry apologies for bringing Doctor Who into this, or indeed any other conversation.) In an effort to bring the series’ earliest episodes to the attention of today’s audience, off the back of its 60th anniversary, the present showrunner of Doctor Who has had heavily edited, colourised versions of two pivotal 1960s stories rereleased to the general public. The evident rationale is that the slow pacing, designed for one-off transmission over several weeks, and the black-and-white-ness are barriers to a contemporary audience engaging with the material. I’ve no idea if this stratagem has had the desired effect, or merely created something else for existing 20th century Who fans to collect. “G -1.0 / C”, meanwhile, hasn’t touched its 1954 ancestor but has reshaped itself, presenting another way for an older generation of fans who care deeply about the original to get on board with what the contemporary audience are already watching. I’m honestly not sure which of these is the more effective approach for a franchise to take, assuming either is effective at all.

In the final analysis, Godzilla Minus One is a perfect reboot, an excellent stepping-on point for new Godzilla fans and a good indicator of the concept’s viability heading into the future. Astonishingly, it won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects – the first Godzilla film to win or even be nominated for an Academy Award. (Not quite the first giant monster movie to win an Oscar, since Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong (2005) won Best Visual Effects and a couple of others, although I’m sure that can be partly put down to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ well-known fetish for films about film-makers.) The win also made Shibuya Kiyoko, as the creator of the visual effects, the first woman of colour to win that award. And it didn’t hurt the film’s reputation that those effects were put together on a fraction of the typical Hollywood blockbuster’s budget.

At time of writing, Yamazaki has confirmed that he’s working on a sequel to Godzilla Minus One. (It’s rumoured to be set in the 1960s, which would make it a narrative contemporary of his Always: Sunset on Third Street films – in other words, he has form in successfully depicting that time period in his films.) I think Godzilla’s future is in safe hands.