A new film featuring the iconic character of Godzilla was released at the end of March this year, and it has been pretty successful in the box office. I intend to watch it, as well as the rest of the MonsterVerse cinematic universe. I love a good spectacle.
However, another film has achieved its own box office milestone: Godzilla Minus One, written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, just broke into the top 100 all-time highest grossing films in Japan’s box office. This was one of my favorite movies of 2023. Yes, I’m late to the discussion again, even though I watched this movie twice in theaters last year because I loved it so much. (Hooray, AMC A-List!) I’m getting around to discussing it now merely because there has been so much to talk about with all the great art I’ve been watching and thinking about lately. I highly recommend this film to anyone who hasn’t seen it yet who might at all be interested. The performances all around are magnificent. The visual effects and sound design are outstanding.
Sadly, I don’t believe the film is in theaters anymore, at least not in most theaters. I also don’t know when it will come to home media. I hope it is released soon, so film watchers who haven’t seen it yet will be able to see and enjoy it. I know once I have a copy at home, I’ll rewatch it many, many times.
Spoilers follow, so please feel free to come back once you’ve seen it!
So much has been said about this film already, and I will probably end up repeating some of the opinions of viewers. I will try to approach this discussion through my perspective as a writer and lover of horror. I think kaiju films fit into the family of horror; it’s a large, welcoming family in my eyes. In my discussion of The Babadook, I mentioned how horror relies on obvious metaphors that are no less powerful for their lack of subtlety. In Godzilla Minus One, the titular creature functions as an obvious metaphor on two levels. I think these layers of related meanings within the central creature powerfully and beautifully work with the larger themes of the film.
We love discussing films, and he really admires Godzilla Minus One as well. Our discussion helped me clarify my thoughts.
On one level, Godzilla represents the personal demons of the protagonist Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki). In the opening moments, which take place in the final days of World War II, Shikishima lands his fighter plane on an island base for repairs. He is a kamikaze pilot, but he tells the mechanics that he can’t carry out his mission because his plane is malfunctioning. Soon, the head mechanic, Sōsaku Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki) confronts him upon finding no problems with the plane. The reality becomes clear: Shikishima has abandoned the suicide mission that he had been expected to complete.
Before Shikishima faces any punishment by the armed forces for his abandonment, a greater force comes for him. Godzilla, a large creature that lives in the waters near the island, attacks the base. Shikishima is ordered by Tachibana to fire on the creature using the gun on his plane. Shikishima gets into the cockpit, but he freezes and can’t fire. Godzilla devastates the base, killing almost everyone. By dumb luck alone, Shikishima is knocked unconscious instead of killed. In the morning, he sees Tachibana, the only other survivor, laying out the bodies of the dead. Tachibana blames Shikishima for the deaths.
In the creature’s first appearance, Godzilla is a compounding of Shikishima’s guilt and shame over his perceived failures. The consequences of his abandonment are not in front of him, in the way that the dead soldiers are. The confrontation with the creature is tangible proof of his deficiency as a person, in his mind. If there was any doubt in his mind that he was a coward, Godzilla’s attack on the island eliminated them.
After Japan formally surrenders, Shikishima returns to Tokyo, which has been bombed to dust. His parents are among the slain. His neighbor Sumiko Ōta (Sakura Ando), filled with grief over her loved ones who have also been killed, recognizes Shikishima, remembers that he was supposed to be a kamikaze pilot, and tells him that if he hadn’t failed in his duty, all their loved ones wouldn’t have been killed. Her grief and pain are so heavy; how could she not try to find someone to blame? At the same time, her blame is misplaced, but that doesn’t make things any better for Shikishima. Here, he is at his lowest point. Full of despair, he doesn’t think that he deserves to live.
Other people ultimately give him a reason to live. Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe) suddenly finds him and thrusts a young infant, Akiko, into Shikishima’s arms. He later learns that Noriko and Akiko aren’t related, but are both orphans as a result of the bombing of Tokyo, just as he is. They all live together out of necessity; Noriko tells Shikishima that her parents’ last words to her were the command to live. But, what starts as a situation based on survival soon becomes something that resembles a normal life for Shikishima. He, Noriko, and Akiko become a found family of sorts. Sumiko also warms to Shikishima when she learns of Akiko and shares her food supplies with her.
Gradually, as these four people rebuild their lives, so too do all the survivors of the bombings. Shikishima eventually finds a well-paying, albeit dangerous job. He has to help sweep the ocean floor of mines that have been left from the war and detonate them. Here, he meets his fellow members of the small crew, who will become akin to friends. This job is also where he encounters Godzilla again, which has now been powered with greater destructive capabilities due to tests of nuclear weapons by the United States in the Pacific Ocean. This encounter, though, is nothing like the one on the island. No one on the crew dies, and Shikishima is able to fire their vehicle’s gun on the creature this time. Working together, the crew members injure Godzilla and escape.
If Godzilla represents Shikishima’s guilt, shame, feelings of deficiency and unworthiness, and every other source of his despair, then the creature’s defeat in this scene perhaps represents Shikishima surmounting his feelings of hopelessness. What is different about him, this time? I submit that the people in his life, along with their love, support, care, and forgiveness, are why he can resist his inner demons. His coworkers support him, Sumiko has forgiven him, Noriko cares for him, and she and Akiko love him.
Yet, just as Godzilla isn’t completely vanquished at this point, neither is Shikishima’s despair totally surmounted. His personal pain prevents him from fully loving Noriko and Akiko. He never asks Noriko to marry him, and he keeps telling Akiko that he isn’t her dad.
As I might have mentioned in a different discussion, one definition of despair is the belief that there is no future. If there is no future, then why love others? Why build a life?
Now I bring in the second level of the metaphor that Godzilla embodies in this film. The creature not only represents Shikishima’s despair, but also stands in for the despair of the people of Japan who have survived World War II. Ever since the character’s first appearance in the 1954 film Godzilla, the creature, powered by nuclear fallout, has been a metaphor for the devastation that the atomic bombs inflicted on Japan. The creature has taken on additional layers of meaning throughout numerous subsequent appearances, but this initial meaning hasn’t been lost, I don’t think. In this film, which I believe chronologically takes place before the 1954 film, the character’s metaphorical association with the destruction Japan faced in World War II is at the forefront. This movie interrogates what comes next, in the wake of what feels like the end of the world.
Godzilla causes large-scale catastrophe and devastation about halfway through the film when the creature attacks Ginza. This sequence is horrifying and harrowing. The operatic score by Naoki Satō gives the scene an apocalyptic sense, augmenting the tragedy. Buildings crumble. Crowds of people run for safety. Many are crushed under Godzilla’s monstrous feet and the falling buildings. Shikishima arrives to save Noriko, but believes he has failed when she is swept away in a blast after pushing him to safety. One of the most haunting scenes in the entire film happens right here, when Godzilla launches a nuclear blast from its mouth at tanks trying to stop it. The creature is pitiless as it roars into the sky. Shikishima is on his knees and cries in agony as ash falls over him.
His monster has now become the monster for the survivors in Ginza, too. It has only been a year or two since the horrors of World War II ended, and now this new horror has appeared. By repeating the destruction, Godzilla represents the immense pain and difficulty of moving on in the wake of war.
In a way not unlike how Shikishima and his crewmates worked together to evade Godzilla, the people unite to come up with a plan. I admire how these scenes emphasize community and voluntary collaboration. Many people are rightfully terrified, but the leaders of the community meeting assure them that anyone is free to leave. This is not going to be the way it was during the war, when people were forced to join combat and some were expected to sacrifice themselves.
I appreciate how these scenes of people who have survived horrifying circumstances do not possess the same feelings of unreflective patriotism or the jingoistic attitude one would see in, say, Roland Emmerich’s 1996 alien invasion movie Independence Day. In that film, the President of the United States declares that the world will fight its Independence Day against the aliens, imposing U.S. patriotism on a global scale. Here, the characters emphasize how the government has put them in danger by keeping secrets and how it refuses to help them because of postwar agreements with the United States. On the eve of the people’s operation to stop Godzilla, one character criticizes the value systems promoted during the rule of the imperialist government that brought the country to war, systems that did not value human life. He tells his allies to spend the night with their loved ones. Friends insist on someone dear staying back: one friend says, to you we leave the future.
To me, these scenes illustrate how despair, hopelessness, and trauma on a large scale can perhaps be grappled with when people come together in service, kindness, and support. Furthermore, the film seems to critique nationalism and, in contrast, lifts up the ideal of community built on voluntary care instead of demands of sacrifice.
Tragically, while everyone else unites in their plan, Shikishima is more isolated than ever. His despair has reached a level deeper than he has ever known. He comes up with his own plan: a suicide mission. Now wanting to die, he tracks down Tachibana, who is still furious with him, to equip a plane with explosives, which Shikishima plans to fly into Godzilla’s mouth.
Tachibana agrees to help. However, he doesn’t provide Shikishima with the means of self-destruction, but instead offers life. The best scene in the movie happens when Tachibana explains his alterations to the plane that Shikishima is supposed to fly. He reveals that he installed an eject button. When Shikishima seems surprised, Tachibana simply tells him, live. This is the same command Noriko’s parents had given to her; it is the mantra against the darkness, the shout against despair.
Tachibana has forgiven Shikishima. Forgiveness seems also to be an essential element of the journey to heal and work through tragedy.
The film ends on a happy note, with the creature defeated, and Shikishima hitting the eject button before his plane hits the creature. Shikishima learns that Noriko is alive and unites with her at the hospital. As much as I adore this movie because of its craft and its powerful message about the resilience of humans collectively rebuilding from devastation, I have my one significant point of criticism that applies here. Noriko was fridged. Her revival doesn’t change this because she seems to come back as a reward for Shikishima’s triumph over the monster. She is such a poignant character earlier in the film, and there’s a heartbreaking scene in which she shows love and support to Shikishima as he tries to confess his guilt and shame to her one evening. Her removal from the final act of the film sadly reduces her character to a device that serves to propel Shikishima’s arc. I wonder if a better alternative might have involved a parallel plotline of her recovery in the hospital that could have coincided with Shikishima’s plot. That way, her character agency could have allowed her to have her own journey of recovery and her own fight with monsters. Plus, a parallel plot line could have generated powerful dramatic irony for audience members as they witness Shikishima falling into despair over Noriko’s death while she is alive and continuing to follow her parents’ wish.
All in all, that one critique aside, this is an exciting, moving, tremendous film. The greatest spectacle here isn’t the titular Godzilla, though the creature is a force of nature. The spectacle is the human spirit, full of resilience, able to conquer horror through community, support, forgiveness, and love. The struggle is by no means easy. It never is. But, I have faith that the human spirit, on the whole, in one way or another, always triumphs.
Really good point about why the second fight with Godzilla, on the minesweeping boat, was more or less successful!
Extremely insightful analysis. Bravo!!!