"Godzilla Minus One"

   ☆☆☆☆½ 

On my way out of the theater, I ran across a group of kids who had just seen Godzilla Minus One and were humming the pulsating, rhythmic theme music. "That was incredible," one said, to which another concurred, "I want to see it a third time."

And in that little moment, there's some sort of magic, I think.

The business pages say we live in a post-theatrical world, a time when streaming rules all with its incessant pipeline of indistinguishable content. There's every reason to imagine Godzilla Minus One would be right at home on a streaming service, where it could headline for a few days before being rotated into a carousel of "Recommended For You" content for people who like mindless entertainment.

But Godzilla Minus One is not mindless entertainment, and the studio behind it wisely decided it would be best experienced on the big screen—and, best of all, it turns out to be so good that kids, who are a demographic that allegedly doesn't go to movies anymore, not only turns out for it, but goes back to see it again. And again.

This is a movie that deserves such a happy fate, though Godzilla Minus One isn't, generally, a very happy movie. That's not to say it's not a rousing film or an almost ridiculously entertaining one; it's both, but it has some deep and often dark thoughts on its mind—so significant, really, that the only way it can convey these difficult observations about humans and politics and environmental disaster is by being a monster movie, through and through.

There have been a lot of Godzilla movies in the last 25 years, most of which have not been very good. This one comes from Toho, the studio that created Godzilla, and it treats the legacy and history and underlying meaning of its King of the Monsters with respect, even as it breathes new life into the giant old lizard with the sheer force of Godzilla's light ray.

It's the 37th Godzilla film but seems like the first, as it tells the story of Koihchi, a Japanese kamikaze pilot who cannot bring himself to die for the sake of his country. His decision is dishonorable, and fills him with guilt as, following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all of Japan lies in ruin. Fate brings Koichi together with Noriko, a young woman caring for Akiko, a baby left in her care. Koichi's trauma is made worse by having witnessed an attack by the mythical Godzilla—and when he discovers the monster not only didn't die but has grown to gargantuan proportions, he's helpless as Godzilla attacks and lays waste to an already suffering Tokyo.

It sounds dour and heavy, and it would be if it weren't for the sheer spectacle of it all. We may have grown up watching a man in a rubber suit stomp on miniature buildings, but we've also seen the true horrors of 9/11, so when a hyper-real Godzilla destroys this Tokyo, the results are shocking in scope and scale. Godzilla may be a movie monster, but the calamity is all too real.

So, then, is the heroism at the heart of the story, and the real suspense and tension that come with it. Godzilla Minus One is expertly made, not just equal to but far better than the hyperactive CG-driven action films Hollywood pumps out. It has real people with real consequences at its core, and as the characters in Godzilla Minus One race toward their showdown with the epic monster, something happens in this movie that never happens in mainstream films: Our hearts beat faster, we sit forward in our seats, and we actually cheer. The audience I saw Godzilla Minus One with actually burst into applause toward the end of the movie, a spontaneous show of emotion. It's the kind of thing we go to the movies for, and all too rarely get. Godzilla Minus One delivers it.

Viewed January 14, 2023 — AMC Universal 16

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