Editor’s Note: Who is up for some Godzilla mania? Freeline Media critic Mike Fried always is, and he shares his thoughts on the latest Godzilla adventures. Read on!
By MIKE FRIED
Since his debut in 1954, Godzilla has appeared in 40 feature films and has made many other appearances, including several Americanizations of the older films, such as Godzilla, King of the Monsters, 1963’s King Kong v. Godzilla and 1985’s, well, Godzilla 1985 (no points for naming, right?).
Godzilla is without a doubt the greatest movie franchise ever made. He’s been a bad guy, he’s been a good boy, he’s been an antihero, he’s been a hero. But whatever he has been, carnage rules the day. He’s the big swinging tail of Tokyo. And it is destruction of the most glorious kind. From the early special effects of Eiji Tsuburaya which involved such detailed and well thought out miniatures that made you feel that Tokyo was being destroyed to the CGI spectacles of the Legendary Monsterverse, we watched because of the destruction. And you gotta give it to the big guy, he never gave up. It may have taken him until he was 70 years old but the Big G finally won an Oscar, in 2024 for Godzilla Minus One.
While the Legendary Monsterverse has dominated the box office since 2014, Japan hadn’t produced a Godzilla film since 2004’s batshit crazy Godzilla: Final Wars. But they reversed course when they rebooted the franchise in 2016 with Shin Godzilla and then the 2017 & 2018 animated Godzilla Earth trilogy and finally the aforementioned Godzilla Minus One.
In anticipation of this year’s Godzilla Minus Zero, the sequel to the Oscar winner and 2027’s Legendary Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, I wanted to take my final look at the two live action Godzilla films.
SHIN GODZILLA
5/5
This is hands down the best Godzilla movie since the original in 1954, ties for second with GMO. An origin story like no other.
Tokyo has a problem. There’s some thermal venting going on under Tokyo bay causing the shutdown of a tunnel. Rando Yaguchi, a deputy minister, thinks it is something else. Some video posted to social media indicates it’s some sort of creature. He is dismissed by the PM and other officials- until a slithery creature comes ashore. This is not the Godzilla we know but almost a tadpole with hind legs. Rather than take action the government decides to wait to see what happens. The creature’s legs grow and it comes ashore causing damage. Still the government is indecisive, even when the monster starts to walk. An attack is called off because there isn’t 100% evacuation. The monster goes back to sea and the government breathes a sigh of relief. Two days later their worst dreams come true- Godzilla comes back in full form, invincible. It is up to Yaguchi to defeat the monster.
Yes, this is a Godzilla movie but it is so much more. It is a searing indictment of the Japanese Government’s failure to respond quickly to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and the resulting Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster. In fact Yaguchi has been likened to plant manager Yoshida who disregarded the government’s and corporate orders not to use seawater to cool the reactor. Had Yoshida not done this, the nuclear damage would have been much worse. The same goes for young Mr. Yaguchi.
Yet, this is a Godzilla movie not a screed about bloated, paralyzed, inefficient government bureaucracy.
And it delivers. This new Godzilla is the stuff of nightmares. Whereas the 1954 Godzilla was 165 feet tall, Shin Godzilla is close to 400 feet tall. While both are men in rubber suits, the new version is layered over by special effects to show radioactive blood pouring out of it – and while Godzilla 1954 had his atomic breath, this Godzilla not only has atomic breath but the ability to shot multiple atomic rays out of its dorsal fins to shoot down incoming missiles. So, pretty much unbeatable.
Therefore it’s up to Yaguchi and his ragtag bunch of lower level government employees (nerds and geeks, they are called) to come up with a solution to destroy Godzilla.
I think this film is great. It gets back to basics. It’s Godzilla versus humans. There are no space aliens or metal monsters or three headed monsters to deal with. It’s us or Godzilla.
The special effects are outstanding. The script is above average for a monster movie and the score is a throwback to the original. And the acting is excellent. There’s real emotion in this film. And Yaguchi’s group shows it while the higher Cabinet ministers are incapable of pulling the trigger.
If I had one criticism of this movie, it is the character of Kayoko Ann Patterson. The character is supposed to be an up and comer in the US State Department and the daughter of a US Senator and a Japanese mother. One would think that she would have less of a Japanese accent when speaking English, having been raised in the United States. It’s a minor criticism that does not detract from the film at all and could have been addressed through a bit more backstory.
Overall, giving up some action scenes in exchange for showing how government worked – or didn’t- was the right move. This movie told a great story ( winning the Japanese Best Picture Award) and you should WATCH IT
GODZILLA MINUS ONE
5/5
Okay, so I am going to be the first person to say upfront that I am a Godzilla fanboy. I make no excuses for it and while I recognize that there have been shitty entries in the franchise (and, no, I’m not talking about 1998 Godzilla) Big G is absolutely the greatest franchise that was ever created – including its Mothra, Rodan and Ghidorah spinoffs.
So when I heard that there was a new live action Godzilla movie as part of Toho’s 70th anniversary celebration after the totally banger SHIN GODZILLA from 2016, I could not wait for the day to arrive. And it did not disappoint.
Well I’m not going to make you wait for my conclusion, but this was one hell of a motion picture and another terrific Godzilla origin story that has as much of the human element as the original motion picture did back in 1954. To those of you who want to know, no-this movie isn’t as good as the original. But to be frank, what movie could be? In addition, I think that it was exceeded by Shin Godzilla, because that movie was a criticism of the Japan’s bureaucratic inefficiency in light of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. The original Godzilla movie was very much a take on the threat and the future threat that nuclear war had the potential for and that original Godzilla story was an allegory for that potential because the original Godzilla was born out of the nuclear testing.
Godzilla Minus One is different in that it speaks to a nation that believes that its leaders have forsaken them in the pursuit of war. Something that I had not seen in prior films were the veterans and citizenry openly complaining about how the Japanese leaders plunged the nation into chaos.
When the story first opens, it is mid-1945 shortly before V-J day. A kamikaze pilot, Koichi, lands his plane which he claims to be faulty at a navy detachment post on Odo Island (the island from the original movie). He is accused of cowardice by the head mechanic on the island, Tachibana, because nothing could be found wrong with his plane. Miniature Godzilla – Tyrannosaurus rex size – appears on the island killing all but two of the men, Koichi and Tachibana. Tachibana had ordered Koichi to fire his 20mm cannons at the beast but Koichi is too frightened to do so. A few months later as Koichi returns home, we see the city of Tokyo is in ruins from the many air raids conducted by the allies. His parents have been killed in the air raids and he runs into a woman, Noriko, who is taking care of a baby she took from the arms of a dying mother. Time passes and Koichi gets a job on a minesweeper to get rid of the many mines both US and Imperial forces have laid in the waters off Japan. Here he meets three men who will figure prominently into the story later on. But, because of his survivor’s guilt, Koichi cannot commit to Noriko and is still believed to be a coward. There is despair layered upon despair.
We fast-forward a year and the Bikini Atoll nuclear test takes place and in that fire we see Godzilla growing from the nuclear blast and not long after that a reborn Godzilla emerges and destroys the city of Ginza in a spectacular action sequence and many of the parts in the sequence harkens back to 1954. (As a coincidence (??) the current Apple TV series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has a scene in which Bikini Atoll figures prominently)
It is up to a ragtag group of scientists (Koichi’s minesweeper buds) and extra Japanese Navy men to come together to rid the world of Godzilla. Most of the action in the film is not Godzilla driven, but, rather, Godzilla preparation. It is the story of these men who band together to try and find a way to beat Godzilla that powers the story. In addition, it is the story of a kamikaze pilot who has a chance for redemption.
The special effects in this movie are seamless and thoroughly well done, deserving of the franchise’s first Academy Award. The visual effects, as well as the screenplay and direction of the film were done by one person, Takashi Yamazaki. And to me that was a wise decision. The singular vision that was held through writing and filming was carried through for its final – and, let’s face it, most important – discipline. Yamazaki pays tribute to Akira Ikufube by using a lot of his music from 1954 within the film – and it works, because it gives an emotional attachment.
Unlike 2016, where the actors were much more modern and relaxed, and even somewhat robotic in their characterizations, this movie goes back to characterizations that were prevalent during the Showa era, with grand soliloquies, shouted, full of emotion. However, this does not look like a Showa era film. While the earlier color films were a bit faded, this movie had excellent cinematography, and the colors on the screen were absolutely crisp.
All three films are worthy, the first tackling nuclear war, the second tackling bad government and this one tackling the despair of war.
I haven’t figured out my new ranking of Godzilla films, but 1954 is still the hands-down champion and this ties with Shin Godzilla as number two.
Yet, like its predecessors Godzilla Minus One earns the rare 5/5
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
