Godzilla Minus One

I’ve always liked the idea of Godzilla more than any of the films that I’ve seen. I watched the original Godzilla in film class in college, and as a metaphor it worked. As a staple of the early post-war Japanese film era, it was bold. But in the 2000s, the entertainment that sugared the medicine of the message had worn off.

The 98 Godzilla came out in tail end of my high school years and it was every bit as bad then as the media portrays it now. I saw the 2014 film with my friend and (then) business partner Edward. It was fine, but it turned Godzilla into a weird propaganda tool - the good monster - without examining that oxymoron.

So I was prepared to want to like and ultimately be disappointed by the 2023 Japanese reboot.

I was prepared, but I was wrong.

Or, more accurately, I was unprepared. It took me too attempts to watch this. The first time I had to shut it off when a young Godzilla attacked the Japanese island airfield. Blame it on the wine or the war, but Godzilla was effectively terrifying. I rewatched a few days later and was hooked. Yes, the metaphor shifted from a blunt ‘nuclear war is bad’ to a more nuanced take on war and fear and potential and regret, but I’ll be damned if that’s not a more meaningful metaphor.

Oddly enough, this is the third time I’ve watched a film because the trailer for the sequel was released and I didn’t want to spoil things for myself. The first two (‘Den of Thieves’ and ‘Greenland’) left me bitter enough that after I watched the trailers, I couldn’t bring myself to watch the sequel. But this one got me excited. Yes, the stinger at the end felt a little MCU, but it’s an easy argument that the Godzilla franchise paved the road, and the MCU just walked down it.

Regardless, this film worked for me. As a man who’s accumulated more than his fair share of stories, but who hasn’t been involved in a nuclear war, the reframed metaphor worked for me. There was some dicey CGi, but there were other scenes that were viscerally terrifying. Fantastic film that I suspect finally made me the Godzilla fan I always thought I could be.