Godzilla Minus One

It is deserving of the praise its been getting. Godzilla Minus One is a rare movie pulling off earth shattering spectacle with a dramatic, intimate story involving characters that you really feel for. It’s something that American movies can’t seem to get right — making the human element believable as the CG FX.

This Godzilla movie opens at the end of WWII in the dying embers of the Japanese empire. The main character is a kamikaze pilot who chickened out and finds himself face to face with Godzilla. He chickens out again and Godzilla ends up slaughtering his fellow soldiers. The main character is a survivor with PTSD from the war as a well as survivor’s guilt.

With a return to Japan post war, this film reminds us on the malevolent force that is Godzilla. Cribbing a few notes from the previous Godzilla film, Shin Godzilla, it makes the big one an unstoppable, dangerous monster. He just washes up on the shore and demolishes Tokyo like the first film. In the end, they have to stop Godzilla. They do via some plan, but he’ll be back.

Surprisingly, this film really hit you in the feels. I think it’s because we’re rooting for the humans and not the kaiju. You feel for them and hope they survive. It’s a good film and probably will be the best I’ve seen this year. We’ll see.

4 of 5 stars.

• Category: Critique
• Tag: movies, review