Culture news Godzilla Minus One takes down Hollywood: this sci-fi film is monstrously perfect!
The most famous monster of Japanese cinema celebrates its 70th birthday in 2024 and arrives for the occasion in cinemas with a brand new film. In France, Godzilla Minus One was limited to two short days of operation in December. Fortunately for French moviegoers, the kaiju is back in mid-January. The JV editorial team was able to meet the creature on the big screen. The face-to-face meeting was monstrously perfect!
The Godzilla Minus One phenomenon
Godzilla has been terrorizing the 7th Art for seven decades now and is taking advantage of the celebrations in his honor to return to the big screen with a brand new adventure that is unique and independent from previous productions, including Shin Godzilla directed in 2016 by Hideaki Anno (The End of Evangelion) and Shinji Higuchi (the Attack on Titan diptych). The most famous kaiju (Japanese term meaning “strange beast” or “mysterious beast”) shook the world of the 7th Art in 2023 and continues its thirst for destruction in 2024 with a much-anticipated detour through France.
Godzilla Minus One is a monster movie directed and written by filmmaker Takashi Yamazaki whose main cinematic feats are Returner (2002), the diptych Parasyte (2014-2015), Dragon Quest: Your Story (2019) and finally Lupine III: The First (2019). This new feature film “Godzilla” shakes up certain habits of the creature by beginning its plot in 1945-1946 in a Japan in ruins and under American supervision. Still scarred by the nuclear bombings that razed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese people must face a new threat coming from the depths of the oceans. Here is the official synopsis for Godzilla Minus One:
In post-war Japan, a new terror arises: Godzilla. Will the devastated population be able to survive… let alone defend themselves? -Godzilla Official by TOHO
Godzilla Minus One is screened in cinemas from January 17 to 31, 2024 in France.
Watch Shin Godzilla on FILMO (Amazon Prime Video)
Godzilla Minus One: the Japanese titan
The first strength of Godzilla Minus One lies in its independence from other films and series featuring the kaiju. There is no need to review 70 years of destruction and entertainment to fully enjoy this monster film which builds a bridge between past and present in the most beautiful way. Even Warner Bros.’ MonsterVerse. Pictures and its billions of dollars accumulated at the box office have no say. The film directed by Takashi Yamazaki plays it solo and does it a lot of good.
Fans as well as neophytes can take part in this devastating epic and discover the new origins of the King of Monsters during a hunt set in post-World War II Japan. It is rare to explore the Japanese archipelago of this period and live alongside a Japanese people surviving among the ruins. This simple post-war premise profoundly transforms the saga and therefore the “spectator” experience by presenting a vulnerable Japan. What follows is the reconstruction of infrastructure and the feeling of guilt that torments those who survived the horrors of war. The actors and actresses who embody this group of characters on screen offer purely Japanese performances worthy of always surprising and prolific cinema.
From the top of its 15 million US dollars budget, Godzilla Minus One manages to hold its own, then overshadow Hollywood productions and their hundreds of millions. The staging as well as the visuals allow Takashi Yamazaki to fill this financial gap with great creativity and know-how. The director and his teams know the creature perfectly, know how to sublimate it, and it shows. The kaiju increases the pressure by accentuating its destructive power with each appearance… until its climax.
These highly entertaining sequences really have nothing to envy of Western cinema and its riot of effects. This sense of economy demonstrated by Minus One exacerbates the talent of the creatives working on the project and forces them to think about monster cinema differently. The fact remains that this Godzilla film gives itself the means to achieve its ambitions. The sets, the costumes… the production as a whole and the attention paid to the smallest detail… testify to this desire to pay vibrant homage to a sacred monster of cinema while modernizing the myth.
Godzilla Minus One is the ultimate monster movie. It’s monstrously perfect… quite simply!
Watch Shin Godzilla on FILMO (Amazon Prime Video)
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