G Watch: Godzilla Minus One (2023)

seriously considering this as a tattoo on my right leg

Watched:  11/03/2026

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  Fifth?  Sixth?

Director:  Takashi Yamazaki

Well, that was a delight.  Again.  

Jamie and I have each seen the movie four times in the theater, and I think we saw it at home at least once, but I can't find the write-up.  Anyway, there is plenty about this movie elsewhere on the site.

Godzilla Minus One (2023) wound up winning the Oscar for FX in 2024.  And, in many ways, the movie likely earned the award for making what looks like a $200 million Hollywood movie on something like $15 million.  But I think we all know - that movie really received an award for being a successful popular-style movie in the mode of a Steven Spielberg spectacular, and people who saw it mostly really liked it.

Like many Spielberg productions, it's a popcorn movie with a crazy premise but with grounded human characters with compelling, understandable arcs.  Godzilla is dealt with as a force of nature more than as a big, goofy monster.  The monster is both the aftershock of Japan losing a war for a Japan carried out based on a hubristic view of their place in the world, and the ghost of the belief our hero carries with him that he had a patriotic duty to die instead of a personal duty to live and his choice to live he's labeled as failure and cowardice.

No, I don't think the 20mm guns would have killed pre-atomic Godzilla.  

The cast is charming and recognizable as tropes, but each character contain layers that ensure each feels somewhat three-dimensional.  

In short - on this re-watch, both Jamie and I noted how tight the plotting and structure really is to this movie, while still working in analogies and metaphors.  Again, this isn't a Peter Greenaway movie, it's popular entertainment, but it's saying quite a bit directly to its intended Japanese audience and to the world at large about the cost of war, and what a *good* battle looks like.  And it's not one that asks men to willingly die for abstractions.

But the movie sails from point to point to point, covering years of time and still feeling like it moves as a rocket pace.  But it does stop to deal with our lead's PTSD - which is the real point of the film, kids.  

Since the movie's release I'd argue a *lot* of the complaining about the movie I've seen had been by dorks online was based in the fact that not everyone understands WWII, Japan, honor culture, PTSD, etc...  Ie:  why couldn't this just be a cool dude who stares down Godzilla and doesn't give a flip?  Gosh.

But before you think this is just a movie where Godzilla barely appears (a) that is always the case in every Godzilla movie, as Godzilla doesn't talk and is an inscrutable force of nature, and (b) when Godzilla does appear, this is S-Tier scary Godzilla.  Images from this movie are indelible and live right there in the easy-access folder for my mind's eye.

I am not objective about this film.  I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but this one punches so many of my buttons, storywise and otherwise, I'm here for it every time.

Now I'm all set for Godzilla Minus Zero.