Godzilla Minus One Review: The Outstanding Kaiju That Conquered Hollywood

On a relatively tiny budget of $15 million, it won the Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects this year. It won eight awards (including Best Film) at the 47th Japan Academy Film Prize. It’s the highest-grossing film of its franchise and the third-highest-grossing Japanese film of 2023.

I guess Godzilla Minus One‘s success has been as big as its title character.

I’m not sure how old I was when I first watched Godzilla. I think I was fairly young, but I do recall feeling scared of, yet weirdly captivated by, that huge, strange monster. After the (way too many) Hollywood releases of films that “belong to the franchise” (or so they say), films that were much more publicised and widely distributed than any of their Japanese counterparts, my mother and I switched off from the Godzilla franchise as we couldn’t really find its soul anymore.

One of the only saving graces of the film series in the last ten years, however, was the release of the excellent Shin Godzilla (2016). Shin Godzilla lived up to its title: it breathed new, fresh air into the franchise. Its leads, Hiroshi Hasegawa and Satomi Ishihara, brought life to the screen, and its markedly political tone, inspired by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, proved how Godzilla can successfully be brought to the present without losing any of its original spirit.

Now, by the time Godzilla Minus One received a theatrical release here in Europe, my mother hadn’t yet seen Shin Godzilla. So when I invited her to the cinema, she was understandably sceptical. Luckily, the trailer was enough to persuade her, though: Kamiki Ryunosuke, Ando Sakura, and Sasaki Kuranosuke are, after all, some of her favourite actors.

So off we went, on a cold evening in early December, to the cinema. To my absolute joy, it was packed —the Godzilla franchise and the hunger for Japanese films are still very much alive.

And two hours later, all we could talk about was Godzilla Minus One.

Godzilla Minus One is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the best — and now, one of our favourite — Godzilla films.

The following review contains spoilers. Read it at your own risk. You can also pin our (spoiler-free) summary at the bottom!

What’s Godzilla Minus One about?

There’s so much that can be said about this marvel of a film, flawlessly directed and written by Yamazaki Takashi. You might know him from — and you might even notice, in Minus One, shades of — 2013’s The Eternal Zero. Yamazaki’s take on Godzilla is a Kaiju film that is impeccable as a whole.

The premise is fairly straightforward: Shikishima Koichi (Kamiki Ryunosuke), a kamikaze pilot, comes back home after the war to find that he has lost his family. Carrying the shame of returning home alive when his job should have been dying for his country, he ends up supporting a young woman, Oishi Noriko (Hamabe Minami), and Akiko (Nagatani Sae), an orphaned baby, in a Tokyo that is trying to put itself together again in the aftermath of WWII. Even though Japan had already lost pretty much everything, the situation reaches “Minus One” level when Godzilla makes its way to the island to destroy the bare minimum that survived.

What Makes It Perfect: a Kaiju With a Heart

There’s a very real human heart beating throughout the entire story of Godzilla Minus One. And this beat gives rhythm to the plot, gives depth to the characters, and keeps our eyes glued to the screen. Godzilla, here, isn’t simply an almighty being that destroys everything and everyone — he’s the visual representation of the pain that these characters carry. He isn’t simply an outside enemy that needs to be defeated; he’s a monster within that needs conquering.

Two hours fly by because every scene has a very clear purpose, and we, as the audience, are taken by the hand and led throughout these different moments in which we feel the characters’ pain, trauma, fear, misery, and determination.

This isn’t a film about Godzilla. It’s a film about men and women coming together to fight against it. It’s not just a smash-bang-wallop barrage of ROAARRs and ARRGHHHHs. We actually have a dramatic plot that never becomes overly melodramatic. The dialogue is simple, straightforward, and most importantly, poignant. There are no cheesy lines or overexposure. There is only a clear balance between darkness and lightness.

The script is marvellously written. It includes shades of friendship, romance, and history that never overshadow the main plot. They complement each other, as if pieces of a puzzle, giving colour to the story and making its characters much more rounded. Most importantly, I found that two main themes permeate this Godzilla tale. They are the ones that bring a new perspective to the good ol’ Godzilla-is-a-consequence-of-the-war idea: the trauma that war survivors carry and how Japanese culture connects sacrifice to honour.

The Two Themes that Make This Godzilla Unique

War trauma is felt, seen, and talked about constantly in the film, and it motivates characters to act. Shikishima’s trauma is more or less behind everything he is and does. It also comes to the surface when, reacting to the government’s inability to act, the citizens see themselves once again being pushed into solving a problem that they didn’t create. Forced to risk their lives to protect their land.

Back then, there was no PTSD diagnosis, no talk of therapy. Those people struggled to come to terms with what they had been through. They handled that struggle on their own or with the help of whoever stuck by them despite their wounds. They had to wake up every morning and carry the pain, fear, and sometimes shame (as in Shikishima’s case) with them, wherever they went, whatever they did, whomever they met — and those feelings would limit their ability to love and let themselves be loved, to live and let themselves experience life.

Both the script and Ryunosuke’s performance bring this theme so clearly to life, translating it beautifully into a visual language that adds to that human heart that beats throughout Minus One’s two-hour run.

Does sacrifice really equal honour?

This connects to how the Japanese believed, wholeheartedly, that sacrifice equalled honour. Throughout Shikishima’s tale, the film wants to highlight that this belief is nothing more, nothing less than a misconception. Sacrificing one’s life for one’s country doesn’t make one any more honourable. It’s okay to survive. It’s okay to live. The plot states loudly and clearly that sometimes Japanese culture does forget how important life is (and that connects with lots of classic Japanese films, but let’s leave that discussion to later).

Even the original Godzilla, back in the 50s, still reeling from that WWII ghost that was still around, led its characters to death as a matter of course. Godzilla Minus One goes in the opposite direction: it’s the willingness to live and the care towards your fellow men that drives the plot forward.

That’s why Noda (Yoshioka Hidetaka)’s goal is to defeat Godzilla without any loss of life. After all, too much has already been lost. It’s only through their collective (and not individual) effort that they can reach their objective.

That’s why Noda and Akitsu (Sasaki Kuranosuke) ignore (and to an extent, scold) the young and naive Mizushima (Yamada Yuki)’s frustration for not participating in the war. After all, he doesn’t know how war can destroy not only your body but also your soul — and there’s nothing virtuous about it.

Finally, creating the greatest contrast to the old-fashioned view of the world reflected in its original counterpart is why Noriko survives at the end of this Godzilla. Her apparent loss when Shikishima was still drowning in his survivor’s guilt makes the celebration of her return all the more moving at the end. After all, if you choose to live, as Shikishima courageously does, you never know what kind of miracles can come your way.

Yamazaki Takashi’s Direction

The cinematography cleverly serves the story, too. The shots and the colours precisely illustrate this fragile world in crumbles, which unbelievably still has more to lose. They show these characters falling apart but finding strength from within, or from each other, to keep on moving, to keep on fighting.

The now Academy Award-winning VFX team managed to do much within its limitations. It’s actually incredible to see how far Japanese cinema has come in the past few years. The entire film is fascinating, but I have to mention that some shots of Godzilla coming towards the camera are truly frightening.

Godzilla Minus One steals your attention and pulls you inside the story in a way that very few films do. I could see and hear people reacting to the film all around that cinema room, their hearts beating alongside the story. It was like a huge group of strangers was transported to post-war Japan, and we were walking and fighting side-by-side with the characters.

The Cast of Godzilla Minus One

And what a cast! Ryunosuke Kamiki brings strength to a man who is broken inside — the duality of his existence (love and loss, guilt and shame, courage and cowardice) is delivered beautifully through his performance. Hamabe Minami brings cheerfulness and hope to an otherwise colourless world. The romance that subtly bubbles underneath adds another layer to the main plot, guiding the characters’ decisions and leading them towards Godzilla.

Minami’s Noriko plays a part much bigger than what a superficial glance would show you: she’s the one who approaches Kamiki’s Shikishima, hangs on to him, and, ultimately, introduces him to the idea that he does, in fact, deserve to live. She’s also the one who changes his perspective of sacrifice: the idea of sacrifice not because of honour but because of love. When in danger, we instinctively protect the ones we love before protecting ourselves. That’s only human. She saves him and tells him he should live on — a visual repetition of her own background story. Her loss adds to the turmoil inside of him that, eventually, leads to his acceptance of Tachibana’s (Aoki Munetaka) forgiveness and urge for him to live. You are alive, and that’s okay. Live on.

Ando Sakura, with a fairly small, limited character, brings a power that only her performance could. To complete this incredible ensemble, Yamada Yuki, Aoki Munetaka, Yoshioka Hidetaka, and Sasaki Kuranosuke all give personality and depth to characters that could very well be merely tropes and cardboard cutouts in a poorly-written script. Instead, here, they shine and fill this world with motion and drama.

The Connection With The Original Godzilla and Why This One Is Just as Memorable

There’s much in this film that creates a thread connecting this instalment to the original one. Much of it is thanks to this beautiful, minimalistic score that clearly originates (and improves on) 1954’s Godzilla. All the praise goes to Sato Naoki: his score resonates, carrying and reflecting the plot and its characters. “Godzilla Suite II” is one marvellous piece of music — both within the universe of the film and outside it.

Some scenes will forever stay with me. For instance, the scene where Godzilla destroys the tram, and we find ourselves hanging on to dear life alongside Noriko. Or the one in which Akitsu confronts Shikishima and asks him why he hadn’t married Noriko when he very well knew how she felt about him. I’ll always remember the scene in which Tachibana comes to find Shikishima after receiving his letter. “Your war isn’t over yet” is one haunting line thanks to the script, the delivery, and the cinematography.

Godzilla Minus One proves one point that I’ve fought tooth and nail to defend: Japanese cinema may not have the budget that big Hollywood films do, but their script can be incredibly strong and engaging — and Japanese filmmakers manage to create much despite those restrictions. It also goes to show that it’s never about the VFX. It’s about the story and the characters, how you create beats, and how these beats connect. That’s what makes a film. If Yamazaki’s goal was to create a human story that goes beyond the Kaiju fights that people picture when they think of Godzilla, he very much succeeded.

No time to read the entire review? Looking for the spoiler-free version? So why don’t you pin our summary? Just click it to pin it!

Okay, so where can I watch Godzilla Minus One now?

Godzilla Minus One is alive and deserves even more than the attention that it has been receiving: it deserves to be watched and rewatched for years to come. You can watch it here:

You can also watch how they put together the VFX for the film below and tell me in the comments what you thought about it!