The Godzilla We Deserve

This year, Santa has blessed us undeserving humans with an unexpected bounty of gifts. They arrive in the form of not one, not two but three heaping helpings of Godzilla, the cinematic lizard king who first appeared on the silver screen in 1954.

The defining subject of kaiju films, a genre of Japanese cinema involving giant monsters, Godzilla is stomping back onto screens as 2023 runs out the clock. What we did to deserve this honour, I’m not sure. Don’t look a gift lizard in the mouth, if you know what’s good for you.

Every generation gets the Godzilla they both need and deserve, and the most recent iteration doesn’t miss. It’s a return to the original concept of retribution for hubris. Godzilla is back to remind us that we humans are not all that. But uniting humanity in the face of gargantuan destruction is only one of the beast’s many gifts.

In addition to the importance of environmental stewardship and social cohesion, Godzilla’s towering height and overall hugeness are good reminders that we are puny little creatures. We might be many, but our overall significance in the universe is minuscule.

Also, if we continue to degrade the natural world by dropping atomic bombs on things, something bad might eventually happen. Godzilla is nature’s revenge, personified (or, technically speaking, lizardified). Born from the disruptive force of nuclear weapons, he rises to remind us of what happens when we mess with things we ought not mess with.

Director Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One, despite its head-scratcher of a title, is a sturdy and sometimes even thrilling throwback to the monster movies of yore. After more than 37 outings since his 1954 cinematic debut, Godzilla is looking pretty good for an old dude. He is still possessed of a desire to smash up buildings and bite commuter trains.

His radioactive heat ray, courtesy of the plates on his spine, lights up with alacrity and his swimming skills remain Olympian level. On land, he’s always been something of a plodder, but he uses it to his advantage, squishing loads of squeaking humans with great efficiency.

After so many different film and television versions of the monster, one question remains: does Godzilla still have the juice? To such a question, I respond with a hell yes. A little awe goes a long way, and Minus One has it in heaping quantities. Godzilla has undergone more career resets than Cher and proves just as fabulous. He is the original survivor. But does Minus One offer contemporary audiences another view of this iconic creature? In short: sort of.

The story begins in the dregs of the Second World War. A kamikaze pilot named Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) fakes plane trouble to get out of certain death. After landing his fighter jet on Odo Island, the small crew of engineers, led by chief mechanic Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), quickly ascertain that there’s nothing wrong with the plane; the fault lies with the pilot. As the assembled engineers look on in disgust, Shikishima slinks away, shame covering him like a shroud.

Later that night, a massive dinosaur-like creature comes ashore. Frozen with terror, Shikishima fails to shoot the beast, who makes quick and deadly business of the men, chomping and stomping, until only Tachibana and Shikishima remain from the rampage.

After this bravura entrance, Godzilla stalks back into the sea and Shikishima returns to the burnt-out hellscape that is postwar Tokyo. The stain of cowardice follows him, but he rallies when a young woman named Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and the orphaned baby girl she has rescued move in. The trio set up house and become a family of sorts. Things take a turn for the brighter when Shikishima gets a job on a minesweeper vessel and proves himself a worthy member of the small crew, composed of a scientist, a hoary old sea captain and young seamen.

But peace does not last. Godzilla, grown massive and even more angered by American nuclear tests, returns and lays waste to Ginza. This scene alone is worth the price of admission. As the bass thunder fusillade that is the great lizard’s theme music kicks into gear, a genuine sense of dread and awe ensues. It is a rare feeling in this cinematic period, when every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie is doing its utmost to foster such a reaction and often proving wildly underwhelming. Here it just works.

Whether it’s the near-obliterating scale of destruction or the fact that Godzilla seems genuinely enraged, something unusual happens in this sequence. The ubiquity and familiarity we have with the character retreats, and we see him for what he originally stood for: a symbol of ultimate destruction unleashed. War itself.

There are plenty of culturally specific details in Minus One, beginning with the film’s title that refers to postwar Japan when reduced to a state of nullity. With the entrance of Godzilla, the country and its people are pushed to less than zero.

References to the failure of the government to support its citizens and the hypocrisy and waste of the war effort, in everything from jet fighters that lacked even the most basic safety measures to the inability to organize a counterattack when Tokyo is levelled, are all marched out with little fanfare. It’s the ordinary people who pull together to mount a resistance, yelling at the top of their lungs for almost the entirety of the action. I love a good yeller of a film, and this one is a corker.

The stage is set for a final showdown between human cleverness and brute strength in the bay of Tokyo. Sacrifice, courage and community all come together to send the beast packing. But the film ends on a strangely ominous note: you may defeat him, but he’s never truly gone. He will rise again until we learn to stop brutalizing each other.

So take your medicine, humanity: a spanking from the bus-sized paw of an enormous scaly symbol, the deified lizard. We deserve a dose of mighty justice and that’s what Godzilla provides. God may be dead, but Godzilla lives.

‘Godzilla Minus One’ is currently playing in major theatres.