Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, 2023)

[yoloswegmaster]

Trailer

[Finch]

I so want Godzilla Minus One to be great.

[pianocrash]

I so want Godzilla Minus One to be great.

[Finch]

The Boy and the Heron seems to be #1 at the box office right now, with Godzilla Minus 1 close behind it. While it's surprising and heartening to see two foreign films, let alone Japanese films, top the North American box office--neither are any good!

What's wrong with Godzilla Minus One?

[Finch]

Like a lot of very sincere, very earnest movies, it’s a pile of schmaltz. Trite, manipulative, eye rolling.

That's a pity. What did you make of the 2016 film (which I liked)?

[Mr Sausage]

Like a lot of very sincere, very earnest movies, it’s a pile of schmaltz. Trite, manipulative, eye rolling.

That's a pity. What did you make of the 2016 film (which I liked)?

Haven’t seen Shin Godzilla, tho’ I plan to at some point.

Also, I gather I’m in the minority re: Godzilla Minus One. People really seem to respond to its drama (and it is mainly an historical drama). It didn’t do much for me, tho’. The Host is a much better example of this kind of thing, the heartfelt drama disguised as a monster movie.

I’m probably in the minority re: the Miyazaki, too.

[vsski]

Like a lot of very sincere, very earnest movies, it’s a pile of schmaltz. Trite, manipulative, eye rolling.

For me this is a great succinct summary of how I felt about the movie as well. I can’t for the life of me understand why Godzilla Minus One gets so many positive reviews both here in Japan where I currently live as well as in the US.
For me it was an overblown historical soap opera where the music pushed so hard to try and force me to feel a certain way, the actors overacted emotions that you never see among the average person and in many ways it felt as if a Japanese studio tried to make a blockbuster Hollywood movie with all the typical emotional exaggerations and storyline shortcomings to appeal to oversea audiences for maximum profit (which by the look of it seems to work beautifully).

Even Sakura Ando an actress I typically like a lot, felt completely wasted in this movie. If I compare her role here with the one in Koreeda’s Monster it’s like day and night. Then of course so are the movies.

That is not to say that the movie has no merit at all, as some of the creature effects were nice and I especially liked the rampage through historical Ginza with the nod to Honda’s original Godzilla with the train line.

[Michael Kerpan]

I quite liked Kaneko's Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001) -- albeit not as much as his (neo-) earlier Gamera trilogy (especially the third movie).

[jbeall]

So, keeping in mind that it's supposed to be a monster movie, and that's generally not my thing...

I loved it.

It's no easy thing to balance the competing demands of telling a compelling story where you're actually invested in the characters on one hand, and monster destroy stuff real good! on the other.

For me, the American remakes of Godzilla (and the recent King Kong movies) have been colossal bores because the narrative and characters are so hackneyed that there's no way Godzilla's infrequent appearances can compensate for the former's shortcomings. If anything, I spend the last hour vaguely hoping Godzilla will just destroy his own movie.

"GMO," on the other hand, is an affecting drama that weaves a story about individual and collective/historical trauma; a meditation about our obligations to others, and what constitutes meaningful self-sacrifice; and a satisfying amount of on-screen time for the Big Guy; and it does all this on a budget of $15 million!

Yes, some of the characterization operates in a recognizably melodramatic mode, and that's not to everyone's tastes. In other films, I often find it off-putting. But all of the dramatic points of Shikishima's situation--not wanting to die in a war when the outcome is already decided; PTSD; not able to open up to people around him, not even to the obvious romantic interest--are all believable. The mechanic Tachibana, who first deduces that Shikishima's plane is okay at the beginning, provides a more understated, realistic response to Shikishima's more melodramatic characterization.

The only false note for me occurred at the very end. No one survives that blast.

Anywhoo, this convinced me that only Toho Studios should be allowed to make a Godzilla film from now on. Again, I thought it successfully wove the original symbolism of Godzilla, the individual traumas of its protagonists, and the collective trauma of Japanese society into a very affecting drama that also happens to be a monster movie. Perhaps a Japanese viewer will tell me why I'm misreading it, and I'll accept that criticism, but for me this was the best Godzilla movie ever.

[yoloswegmaster]

Takashi Yamazki is returning to direct the next Godzilla film