Since Godzilla Minus One released in the UK on the 15th of December, I've watched it five times, four years ago, that would have been normal for me as I would spend entire weekends at the cinema, binging films. Then all the cinemas shut for a year and when they finally reopened, I'd lost interest and no films were coming out that got me back into the habit, but Minus One has me that excited that I will happily watch it again and again and again. Part of this excitement is what I explain as being the change you want to see; I want more Godzilla to be released and to that end, I will support Godzilla in every way I can. This is made a lot easier for me by the film's quality, as Minus One is a genuinely amazing masterpiece of a film and I think people who don't take this chance to see it are robbing themselves of easily the best film of the year. You might dismiss this as the ramblings of a guy with a massive amount of bias, and that's true, I do have bias, but the people I went to see Minus One with on its opening weekend didn't, in fact if anything, they had an anti-Godzilla bias, they weren't expecting to take the film seriously or enjoy it, and yet they all did. And though I wrote a full review of the film in which I called it a masterpiece and a must watch, there is still so much I want to discuss about Minus One that I couldn't before for fear of spoiling the film. Said spoilers will be the topic of today, so that's your warning, I'm going to be talking about the film's story here, and I can't urge you enough to just go and see it and not let me spoil it for you, with that said, let's end this war.
It does help to know things about the history of the Pacific War when you enter Minus One. The film opens on Odo Island, the same fictional Island where Godzilla first appeared in the original film, in the final days of World War II in 1945. Koichi Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot lands at a repair base on the island. The film expects you to know what a Kamikaze is already, but does make it clear to the audience just what the duty of a Kamikaze is. Tachibana, the lead mechanic on the base suspects Koichi's lying about the mechanical problems on his plane, but another mechanic later approaches Koichi and sides with him, questioning the reasoning of dying with honour when defeat is inevitable. In 1944, the Americans captured Saipan and were now using it to launch bombing raids on Japanese cities. The Tokyo Air Raids were the deadliest of the War, killing over one-hundred-thousand people and leaving over a million people homeless. In April 1945, the Americans invaded the island of Okinawa, three-hundred miles south of the Japanese Home Islands, and were planning to use the island to launch an invasion of the Home Islands later in the year. It was in these final months of the War, after Japan had lost most of its best pilots and as the Americans were closing in on Japan, that the Kamikaze was unleashed, with the goal of slowing down and demoralising the Americans with devastating airborne suicide attacks. Koichi's mission would have been to crash his plane into an American ship, killing himself, but hopefully crippling or sinking the ship, and being a Kamikaze was seen as a great honour, an honour which Koichi abandons for the very human reason of not wanting to die.
As the mechanic says to him on the island; the outcome is clear, so what's the point in dying for a doomed cause, what difference will it make, and is it worth the cost. Koichi doesn't have long to ponder this before he notices strange fish floating up along the water's edge, which becomes a unique and ominous calling card of Godzilla throughout the film. Very unceremoniously, we cut to that night, as the sirens begin to blare and the mechanics on the base mobilise to repel an American attack. Except when a guard tower shines a spotlight on the nearby beach, rather than illuminating a squad of American Marines, it illuminates a massive dinosaur that immediately attacks the guard tower and smashes it to pieces. Godzilla Minus One really doesn't waste any time getting to the monster, as not even five minutes in, the Odo Island mechanics are facing down an enormous, snarling beast. Tachibana, the lead mechanic, tells Koichi to get in his fighter plane and fire at the monster with his 20mm guns. Koichi agrees to the plan and gets into his plane, but as the monster passes, Koichi is frozen with fear, and can't bring himself to fire on the creature. As the other mechanics begin to panic, one of them fires at the monster, sending it into a frenzy. The next thirty seconds are among the most violent in the Godzilla series as the dinosaur mauls everyone; biting them and throwing them around, slamming them with its tail and crushing them underfoot.
Tachibana watches on in despair as his men are slaughtered, while Koichi freaks out and runs, being knocked out when the monster blows up his plane. When Koichi comes to, he finds only himself and Tachibana alive, and Tachibana blames Koichi for the massacre, later giving him a wallet full of family photos taken from the dead mechanics, put a pin in that wallet because it comes up again. Upon returning to Tokyo and finding it in ruins, he meets and is scalded by his neighbour, Sumiko, who blames him for the deaths of her children, compounding his guilt. He soon runs into Noriko and Akiko, who he agrees to help and ends up forming a family unit with, eventually getting a well paying job as a Minesweeper to provide for them. Something I didn't go into a lot of detail on in my review was the film's positive portrayal of a traditional family. Despite not being related to Noriko or Akiko, Koichi finds himself in a fatherly role, and takes it upon himself to provide for and care for them. I really meant it in my review though when I said Koichi and Noriko were the sweetest part of this film, genuinely, I love them. Like Koichi, Noriko and Akiko are broken people, victims of the war who lost everything and have now found something in each other, a reason to keep going and to rebuild, a light in the darkness, and Noriko is that light in Koichi's life. When Koichi's co workers learn that Koichi and Noriko aren't married, we get a nice comedic moment as they try to get their heads around it, and it's so unbelievably sweet. But in among the sweetness is some darkness too, as Koichi tells Akiko that he's not her father in front of them, and tells them he doesn't want to marry Noriko. The scene ends on a wonderful shot of Noriko stood doing dishes as Koichi's co workers ask him why not in the background.
We don't find out why he apparently doesn't want to marry her until much later, but the film leaves you on this depressing note of Koichi having his life back, but preventing himself from embracing it, we learn later that it's because he doesn't think he deserves it. Even with how good his life appears on the outside, Koichi's still suffering from the trauma of the war, at night he dreams of being back on Odo Island, watching as Godzilla slaughters the mechanics, when he wakes up, Noriko tries to comfort him, but Koichi breaks down, pleading with her to tell him that he is back in Japan with her, and isn't already dead, Noriko pushes Koichi away, looking on with pity as he sits in the corner and mutters to himself. For Koichi, the nightmares are very real, and we begin to understand why he refuses to embrace his newfound life. This is also the first time in the film that we see the contents of the wallet, and we see some of the pictures of the mechanics and their families. These photos are Koichi's ghosts; the men who he failed, and the reason he can't accept that he does deserve to live. We get another unbelievably cute moment with Noriko as Koichi comes home to find her in her work uniform, she's got a job in Ginza and Sumiko, the formerly antagonistic neighbour has agreed to look after Akiko while they're both gone. Koichi isn't just concerned about Akiko in this scene though, Noriko tells him that he'll never find a wife with her around, but the film makes no secret that these two have grown to love each other over their two years together.
While Koichi can't let himself accept his love for her, he does a shit job of hiding his fear of losing her in this scene, it's no wonder that Noriko's scenes are among my favourites in the film, and Koichi's refusal to accept their love for each other becomes a driving force for him in the second half. Meanwhile, far away on Bikini Atoll, America detonates a fission bomb, and soon finds itself getting into skirmishes with a massive unidentified sea creature, no prizes for guessing who it is or what the fission bomb has to do with it. As the monster makes its way to Japan, Koichi and his co workers are sent out to intercept it and keep it busy while an Imperial Japanese Warship, the Takao, makes its way back to Japan to kill it. This is where we get our reintroduction to Godzilla, only now he is enormous and even more pissed off than he was before, we get a brief moment of dark comedy as the Captain of the Minesweeper, while in the middle of an impassioned speech about not wanting to see Tokyo in flames again, sees Godzilla for the first time and immediately decides to run. What follows is a tense chase as Koichi and his friends try to outrun Godzilla and blow him up with Mines. After discovering that Godzilla has regenerative abilities, the day briefly seems saved as the Takao arrives just in time, firing on Godzilla with it's 20cm deck guns. However, Godzilla, now even more pissed off than he already was, mauls the Takao, and when another barrage from its deck guns sends him tumbling back into the sea, the monster unleashes his atomic breath on the ship from below, completely obliterating it. He emerges from the smoke, his face and chest severely burned from the blast, he roars in triumph before vanishing beneath the waves again.
This scene rocks, but you already know I think that. I can't say I've ever seen Godzilla maul a ship before though, and while aspects of this sequence remind me of the Tasman Sea battle from Godzilla vs Kong, Minus One's first sea battle is intense and violent, and at no point in it do you feel our characters are safe, as much as you want them to be because by this point, you already want Koichi to live for Noriko and Akiko. After returning home from his reunion with Godzilla, we get what might be my favourite scene in the entire film, and one of about four throughout the film that makes me tear up. Noriko confronts Koichi about his past, and Koichi confesses to everything; he tells her that he was a Kamikaze, he tells her about the Odo Island attack and how he blames himself for everyone who died that day, and he tells her about Godzilla, and how terrified he is of him and how useless he is in stopping him. Noriko tries to comfort him but again, he breaks down, beginning to ramble about the value of his own life and question whether he even is alive, or whether Noriko and Akiko are just "the last dreams of a dead man." Noriko grabs Koichi and cradles his head, insisting to him that he is alive and that she is real, while they both cry. I love this scene, I love it so much. No moment in a film has made me feel this bad for a character since Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, and like in that film, the scene doesn't come across as forced or contrived, it feels earned and genuine, like we really are seeing this traumatised former soldier crumble into despair.
And Noriko's sadness in this moment is just as biting, as she tries desperately to pull him back to the light and remind him of what he has and that he deserves to live. It's in this moment that the love these two characters have for each other fully takes shape in the film, and the next morning, when Koichi sees Noriko cooking radishes for Akiko, he looks at the wallet and decides it's finally time to embrace what he has and live again. If at this point, you haven't figured out what's about to happen, you're in for a shock. While Koichi is having his breakdown, Noriko argues with him that those that survived the War deserve to live and that whatever happens, they need to carry on, so when Godzilla makes landfall in Ginza where she works, yeah, this film's about to rip your heart out. The Ginza attack is a shorter scene than you'd think it is, one that builds to the big reveal very nicely, as Godzilla breaks through the defensive line in the bay, and as we see crowds of people running and screaming as trams and buses fly across the street in the background. We cut to Noriko on a train, which is forced to stop when a tram car flies through the air and blocks the tracks, a brief panic on the train is silenced by the boom of a footstep, Noriko and the other passengers look out the window where they see Godzilla for the first time. Not only is this an amazing moment in the film, but it's a god tier example of how to use music in a film, as the view passes through the window of the train and into the street, the Akira Ifukube music booms as the camera pans up to reveal Godzilla in all his glory.
In another moment reminiscent of past Godzilla films, Godzilla decides he doesn't like the train Noriko is on and goes for a walk with it in his mouth, while Noriko hangs on for dear life inside the dangling car. As luck would have it, she manages to fall into a river and live, but is left in shock and barely able to flee the coming danger. But it's ok, right? she's a main character and our protagonist's love interest, she won't die, and sure enough, Koichi arrives just in time to pull her to safety, the Japanese Army open fire on Godzilla with tanks at the same time, drawing his attention away from the fleeing crowd. And now comes not only the most awesome moment in the entire film, but also one of the most shocking and heart-breaking moments in any Godzilla film. In my review, I said there is a moment in the film that makes me hate Godzilla and want him to die, this is that moment. In response to the tanks, Godzilla begins to charge his atomic breath, his spines light up blue and violently jut out of his back while the confused and terrified crowd below begin to scatter. In an instant, Godzilla fires his atomic breath and causes a nuclear explosion that lights up the sky and sends out a blast wave powerful enough to blow away buildings. Seeing the blast wave coming, Noriko shoves Koichi into a nearby concrete alley before it reaches him, but she doesn't make it and is sent flying, disappearing into the chaos.
When Koichi emerges from the alley, most of Ginza has been reduced to rubble and everyone, including Noriko, is gone. Confusion turns to despair as Koichi drops to his knees, unable to cope with the reality that the woman he loves has just died, in the distance, Godzilla looks up at the mushroom cloud he just created, quietly pondering his actions before roaring triumphantly again and leaving. Koichi watches him leave, his confusion and despair giving way to uncontrolled rage as he screams at the monster while a black rain begins to fall around him. On my first viewing of the film, I was shocked when I saw this, I honestly couldn't believe it had just happened, and as the realisation that Noriko had just died began to set in, I hated Godzilla, I wanted to see him punished for killing Noriko, I wanted him to die for it. Except this scene isn't done ripping your heart out because then we get Akiko learning of Noriko's death, in another moment that's very reminiscent of past Godzilla, we get a little girl crying over the death of her mother. In the original Godzilla, in the aftermath of his attack on Tokyo, we get a moment in a hospital where a woman dies, the woman's daughter is sat beside her and as the nurses come to take the body away, the daughter covers her face and begins to scream. Emiko picks the girl up and tries to comfort her, but is also overwhelmed with despair and struggles to hold back her tears as she cradles the screaming child. It is the most heart breaking moment in any film I've ever watched and I honestly can't watch it without crying, even in isolation.
In Minus One, Koichi and his friends are at home after the attack, discussing what to do about Akiko now that Noriko is gone, Akiko asks where her mum is and Sumiko lies, telling her that Noriko is at work, then Akiko begins to cry and Koichi's friends, hardened survivors of the War, sit quietly and awkwardly, not knowing what to do. I said in my review that the film is rough at times, but that was underselling the kind of heartbreak Minus One packs. Koichi survived the War, he is haunted by his own failures and the horrors he witnessed, but made the mistake of starting to believe that he deserved to live, now his world has been torn apart again by the same monster that tore it apart two years prior, and now not only is he responsible for the deaths on Odo Island, he's responsible for the death of the woman he loves as well. This entire sequence effortlessly and brutally presents the cruelty of War in a way that no previous Godzilla film has, aside from the original. It's a rollercoaster of terror, fleeting hope and crushing sadness, like in real life, it isn't fair, and like in real life, it's all over in the blink of an eye. The looming mushroom cloud and black rain further sells what this entire sequence is clearly shooting for. The black rain was a phenomenon that occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the Bombings, ash and vaporised particles from the nuclear inferno riding back down to earth in drops of rain. In my review, I said the film slows down in the second half, this is where it does so.
Doc, who's real name is Noda, has a plan that he thinks will be enough to kill Godzilla, and ex-Imperial Navy personnel have been summoned to hear it, Koichi, Captain and the Kid are among them and along with the rest of the men, meet Hota, an ex-Imperial Navy captain who gets them access to four decommissioned Destroyers. The plan is as insane as you'd expect for a plan to kill Godzilla; they're going to plunge him to the bottom of an ocean trench with Freon gas and crush him. If that fails, they're going to pull him back up and hope the decompression kills him. Koichi is willing to take part in the plan, but doesn't believe it will work, suggesting he use a fighter plane as bait to lure Godzilla into Noda's trap, but he has other intentions with the plane. He manages to lure Tachibana out of hiding, and convinces him to help them restore the plane, an experimental Shinden fighter, and load it with explosives so he can fly it into Godzilla's mouth, realising what Koichi is intending to do, Tachibana agrees to help, but Koichi keeps his true intentions with the fighter a secret, knowing his friends will stop him, he intends to fulfil his duty as a Kamikaze, though this time, not for the honour of his Nation, but for revenge for the death of Noriko, and to protect Akiko's future. Compounding the notion of protecting the future, the Kid, the only one of Koichi's Minesweeper friends who isn't a War veteran, is forbidden from taking part in the mission. Being told that not going to War is something for him to be proud of.
When the crew have drinks together after all agreeing to the plan, Koichi is confronted by Captain, who drunkenly berates him for wanting to throw his life away by avenging Noriko, telling him he should have married her when he had the chance, Koichi finally admits that he wanted to marry her, and admits that he never did because "[his] war isn't over yet." When their Godzilla early warning system alerts them to Godzilla's approach, the team makes their final preparations and Noda gives a fantastic speech that is very on the nose, but gets the job done. He criticises his country for how cheaply it treated human life in the war, and promises the team that this time, not a single life will be lost, telling them that it's not a battle to the death, but a battle for the future. It's not quite as epic as Marshal Pentecost vowing to Cancel the Apocalypse, but it's not trying to be, like everything else about Minus One, it's more subdued, more subtle, and more personal. At home, Koichi thanks Sumiko for taking care of Akiko and comforts Akiko, promising her that he won't leave her too before putting her to bed and leaving her with an envelope full of cash to give to Sumiko. The next morning, Sumiko finds Akiko outside, holding the envelope, realising what it means, she embraces Akiko, promising her that everything will be ok. When Godzilla re-emerges, Noda's plan goes into action, as Koichi successfully lures Godzilla away from the mainland and into the target area, where two unmanned Destroyers are sacrificed to deplete Godzilla's atomic breath.
When the men on the other two destroyers see the atomic breath though, it looks like the plan is about to fall apart, until the Akira Ifukube music kicks on again and the remaining two ships charge at Godzilla, dragging a cable behind them with Freon gas tanks and inflatable life preservers attached to it, the two ships ensnare Godzilla in the cable, and when the Freon gas is released, Godzilla instantly plunges into the sea. The massive increase in pressure severely injures Godzilla but doesn't kill him, triggering phase two of the plan, the life preservers are inflated and Godzilla rapidly ascends, taking further damage from decompression, I especially like the grizzly detail of one of his eyes bulging out suddenly during his ascent. But when Godzilla manages to get free of the life preserver, it seems that the plan has failed, until the Kid arrives with a small fleet of tugboats, further emphasising the message of people coming together to make a difference, and with the tugboats' help, the two Destroyers are able to pull Godzilla back up to the surface, where he is now even more pissed off and visibly in a lot of pain. His body looks like it's about to fall apart; his eyes are puffy and wild, his skin is cracked and gnarled, his hands are trembling, the plan worked perfectly but it still wasn't enough, and the men on the Destroyers prepare for their deaths as Godzilla charges up one final, probably suicidal atomic blast. The use of silence in this scene is incredibly effective as the War veterans, driven by a hope that this time, they can finally make a difference, accept that they have failed.
Then out of the silence comes the roar of the propeller on Koichi's Shinden fighter, Captain and Noda watch in horror as they realise what Koichi is about to do, and as Koichi arms the bomb, he takes one final look at a photo of Noriko before impact. The plane slams into Godzilla's open mouth and explodes, blowing off the top of his head, as the energy from his atomic breath begins to escape, his body crumbles and sinks back into the sea, and Noda is overwhelmed with joy to see Koichi in the sky above. Tachibana let Koichi know that the Shinden had an ejector seat and orders him to live. Back at the airfield, Tachibana begins to tear up after hearing that Koichi survived, and back at the port, the men, now having finally fulfilled their duty and saved their country, are given a hero's welcome. Among the crowd are Akiko and Sumiko who received a telegram before the battle and shows it to Koichi. Koichi takes Akiko and rushes to the hospital where he is reunited with Noriko. Yes, Noriko, who took the pressure wave from an atomic blast across her entire body and got thrown hundreds of feet by it, isn't dead. As Koichi begins to break down again, a tearful Noriko asks him if his war is finally over, Koichi isn't able to respond though, only sob as he falls to his knees and lets her pull him into an embrace. And had the film ended there, it would have been perfect, a happy ending to this two hour rollercoaster of emotions, but no, Yamazaki has to give us one final twist of the knife, as a black, wriggling bruise begins to appear on Noriko's neck. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the trench, a chunk of Godzilla suddenly begins to grow, as the Ifukube music kicks on one final time before credits.
The regenerating chunk of Godzilla is not very ambiguous, how long will Godzilla stay dead, and how long does Koichi have to enjoy the life he finally believes he deserves. Will he even be able to enjoy it though, because what's more ambiguous is that black mark on Noriko's neck. In the film itself, it's simply there as a final gut punch for the audience, an implication that the tragedy of the film's events is still not over. Like how Koichi was punished for believing he deserved to live, now we, the audience are being punished for believing he had the chance to. But the film gives us nothing in the way of what the mark actually is, which has led to some wild ideas. The simplest explanation is that it's radiation poisoning, an explanation that is thematically consistent with the rest of the film, but is lacking the necessary groundwork for me to be completely sure that's the answer. It would be consistent with the film's anti-war messaging however as just like with the real War, it didn't stop for the people who lived through it once they'd gone home. Now Koichi has finally won his war and defeated the monster, he can get on with his life, marry the woman he loves, but now it's her war that isn't over, her fallout, if you will. Another reason I'm not sold on that explanation is that I don't like it. I'm not saying it's bad, just that I don't want Noriko and Koichi to have to suffer any more than they have, and having Noriko miraculously survive, only to slowly rot away from radiation sickness is a bit too nihilistic for me, and like I said in my review, I just want them to be ok.
The other explanation for the mark is rather weird, Noriko has inherited regenerative abilities from a piece of Godzilla that's now inside her body. It would explain how she survived taking an Atomic blast wave to her entire body, but the implications of this explanation are at once disturbing and absurd. There would be a nice irony to Godzilla being the thing that saves her life, but earlier in the film, it's said that the shards of Godzilla that were left behind after Ginza are dangerously radioactive. You could say that the specific mentioning of pieces of Godzilla being left behind after the attack lends credence to this theory, but in a film that plays its story as straight and serious as Minus One, to have a main character seemingly die, only to be 'saved' by a piece of the radioactive mutant dinosaur that has granted her the ability to regenerate, that sounds a bit odd, don't you think. And what happens now, does Noriko start to die as the shard poisons her and attacks her body, or does the shard continue to mess with her genetics, slowly turning her into a nightmarish mutant akin to the Brundlefly. It's also possible that the black mark has no intended meaning at all, apart from messing with the audience and inviting theory and speculation, which it has definitely succeeded in doing. Ultimately, it's something I'm not putting much thought into right now; when the film comes out on Blu Ray and I can take my time to dig through all of its layers, I'll probably come back to this mark and what it could possibly mean, but in the meantime, like Koichi in the moment, it's not a concern, I'm just happy Noriko is alive.
The Last Dreams of a Dead Man
Godzilla Minus One is a one-of-a-kind Godzilla film that, in my opinion, has finally broken through the wall of camp and cheese that has kept general audiences out of this fantastic franchise. And while the moments of Godzilla wrecking shit are every bit as glorious as you'd expect, Minus One's greatest strength is its fantastic story and characters. It's a film that could have been grim and depressing, or overly political, or just been a chance to let Godzilla loose in Showa era Japan for the sake of doing so, instead, it's a perfect storm of potent human drama, gripping war story, and thrilling and terrifying monster movie that fires on all cylinders and flawlessly sticks the landing. It succeeds where Shin Godzilla fails; telling a story that is as powerful as it is universal, and setting that story against an enthralling backdrop of post-war guilt and trauma, but I'll be comparing the two films, as well as the Monsterverse, later. Like I said in my review, the short of it is that Godzilla Minus One is unbelievably good, and unlike Shin Godzilla, it genuinely deserves all the reverence and success. I can see why Gareth Edwards was jealous of this film, because Minus One is the pinnacle of Godzilla and the first true equal to the original film, and again, it's an absolute must watch.
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