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).