Review for Godzilla Minus One

Introduction

I’m not one for Kaiju movies; certainly not to the level at which they are released, re-made and revisited. Giant beasts on screen rarely appeal to me, and my experience with Godzilla would have begun and ended with Hollywood adaptations were it not for review discs. I started off watching the Godzilla cartoons as a kid, and off the back of that, I wandered into a cinema to watch the Matthew Broderick movie adaptation. You can tell my age by the fact that I called the baby Godzillas in Madison Square Garden, Godzookies... For twenty-odd years, I’ve had the original Godzilla DVD in a pile of newspaper free discs somewhere, still unwatched, but it was the review disc for Shin Godzilla that got me paying attention to the Japanese giant beast genre.


It was supposed to be a reboot, Hideaki Anno of Evangelion renown reinventing the man in a monster suit for the modern age. I’ve since seen a Mothra movie and a handful more, and it’s enough to appreciate this unique Japanese take on disaster movies, for that is what they are, where the people that are victimised by the beasts are more important than the special effects themselves. But I had my issues with Shin Godzilla; the film felt cold and impersonal, and the characters meant less than the political commentary. But it was enough to get me interested when Godzilla Minus One was released, and even more so when the positive reviews started rolling in. This is the first time since the Matthew Broderick Godzilla that I’ve actually spent money on a giant beast movie.


As the Second World War drew to a close in the Pacific, Koichi Shikishima was picked as a kamikaze pilot, but when push came to shove, he had second thoughts, taking his ‘faulty’ plane to Odo Island for repairs. Sosaku Tachibana who led the engineers there had some sympathy for Shikishima, but that vanished when the outpost was attacked by the beast that the locals spoke off in legend, a large reptile called Godzilla. Only Shikishima and Tachibana survived.


The war ended, and Shikishima returned to a ruined Tokyo to learn that he had lost everything, family and home. When he encountered Noriko, a thief stealing to care for an orphaned baby named Akiko, the three formed an unlikely family unit, and started rebuilding their lives, with Shikishima getting a job clearing mines from around the coast. All this time, Shikishima is haunted by his moments of cowardice. Meanwhile, the Americans are testing nuclear bombs in the Pacific. Shikishima’s trauma reawakens when news comes of a destructive beast heading for Tokyo. It’s Godzilla, but now immeasurably larger than the beast he encountered on Odo Island.

The Disc

Godzilla Minus One gets a 2.40:1 widescreen 1080p transfer on this disc, with Dolby Atmos Japanese with English, French, and Italian subtitles depending on which menu you choose when you insert the disc. Choose the English menu, and you’ll also access a DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround English dub track with a signs only subtitle stream translating the on screen text. The audio options are locked during playback. It’s a great transfer of a recent film, clear and sharp with consistent colours, excellent detail and strong contrast. The film gets a slight sepia tint to reflect the period storytelling. The audio too is impressive, with impactful action sequences, supported by an effective music score, while keeping the dialogue clear throughout; the subtitles accurately timed and free of typos. What really impresses in this film are the visual effects, Hollywood quality visuals achieved on a Japanese film industry budget.

Extras

You get one disc in a BD Amaray style case, which boots to animated menu screens, English, French or Italian.

If you want extra features for a budget price, you’ll have to import from a territory that offers the film with a second, bonus features disc. We don’t get it with the Blu-ray in the UK. The UK does get a 4k UHD release of the film though, also barebones.


However, if you are in the mood to shell out for the Limited Steelbook 4k UHD release in the UK, you’ll get the bonus disc alongside the UHD and the BD. If you go for the 4- disc Deluxe release, you’ll get these three discs and a fourth disc with Godzilla Minus One Minus Colour, i.e. Black and White. Given how popular this film is, and how limited the Steelbook and Deluxe editions are, they’ll be most likely sold out by the time this review goes live. Hurrah for capitalism!

Conclusion

Godzilla Minus One does something that I wish Hollywood movies had been doing for years at this point; it goes back to the ethos that special effects serve the story, and not the other way around. We get a shot of the monster at the start of the film, although not as we expect it, just to remind us why we’ve shelled out for this movie, but then, as in the Hollywood disaster movies of old, we spend half the runtime telling story, developing characters, setting the scene. So when the time comes for proper Godzilla to make an appearance, we’re less interested in the monster than the people it affects. That’s another thing that Godzilla Minus One has in its favour compared to Shin Godzilla, this is a film that’s really about the characters, that concentrates on personal stories against the background of something bigger, rather than trying to keep its eye on the bigger picture and losing an emotional connection. The critical and audience response to Godzilla Minus One is warranted and very much deserved.


This is Shikishima’s story, a man traumatised by his failure to act as the war was ending. You can see why someone would think twice, ordered to die in the name of his country, even while defeat seems inevitable. It could be a seen as a futile gesture. But when he fails to act in the face of an imminent threat, with people dying as a result, that compounds the trauma. That survivor’s guilt follows him home to Japan, where he doesn’t get the best reception as a kamikaze pilot who refused to kamikaze. His own personal trauma, his PTSD plays out against the backdrop of the national trauma of a defeated nation, a Tokyo that has been razed to the ground, families destroyed or torn asunder.


He encounters a thief named Noriko in the market, stealing to feed an orphan whose dying mother passed to her. Where people have lost their families, it seems to make sense to just make their own, and we get a two year montage as they begin to rebuild their lives, as the city rebuilds too. And then the monster appears, Godzilla, first attacking shipping, and then heading towards Tokyo. For Shikishima, it’s like rubbing salt in an open wound, seeing once more the monster from Odo Island which he had froze before, at the cost of a dozen or so lives. But now, nuclear testing has so mutated it, that it’s killing by the thousands. It’s a chance for him to work through his guilt. It’s the same on the larger scale too. As the monster approaches, the government fails the people, resorting to platitudes and saving face. America chooses not to get involved to avoid antagonising the USSR, and it falls to the private citizenry, most of them retired military, to come up with a plan to defeat the monster. Now they have a cause worth fighting for, a righteous battle with honour and with no ambiguity.


There’s also a fair bit of ingenuity on show too. This is a Japan that has been rapidly demilitarised at the end of the war, so they can’t fight the monster with big explosions; they have to try science instead. It certainly makes for an interesting story. In many ways, Godzilla Minus One is a classic disaster movie with modern special effects. Just as in those early epics, the disaster actually plays second fiddle to the characters and their stories, which makes Godzilla Minus One one of the best disaster movies in many a year. As mentioned, Godzilla Minus One is available in standard Blu-ray, 4k UHD, and DVD, but if you want bonus extra feature goodness, seek out the Steelbook and the Deluxe Editions. They’ll be sold out most places by now, but you can still try at Anime Limited, Anime on Line, Terracotta and mainstream retailers. Incidentally, Terracotta still has the Deluxe and the Steelbook in stock at the time of writing.