As I’m piecing together my personal Best Films of 2023 list in these last few weeks of the year, I’m becoming increasingly self-conscious of how many of my favorite new releases are shamelessly nostalgic for the toys & kitsch collectibles of my youth.  Even without a new Godzilla film juicing the numbers, it’s been a great year for films about Furbies, Barbie dolls, Ninja Turtles, and tokusatsu superheroes like Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and The Power Rangers.  My Best of the Year list is starting to look like a 1998 Toys”R”Us TV commercial, which is somewhat embarrassing for a man of my age.  I am approaching 40 years old, and I still don’t wanna grow up.  Thankfully, Godzilla Minus One‘s inclusion in this year’s throwback-toy-commercial canon is at least helping to class up the list a little, as it’s a much more sincere, severe drama than most movies that have excited me lately.  It’s just as openly nostalgic for vintage tokusatsu media as Shin Ultraman, Shin Kamen Rider, and Smoking Causes Coughing, announcing itself as an official 70th anniversary celebration of the original 1954 Godzilla film that started it all.  However, it’s the only film in this year’s crop to hit the same notes of deep communal hurt as the ’54 Godzilla, which is a much more ambitious aim than reviving the goofball slapstick antics of the child-friendly kaiju & superhero media that followed in its wake.  Godzilla Minus One‘s sincerity is incredibly rewarding in that contrast, to the point where it’s the only Godzilla movie I can remember making me cry.

To commemorate that 70th anniversary, Godzilla Minus One dials the clock back to the widescale destruction of post-WWII Japan, covering the first few years of national rebuilding after nuclear devastation.  The giant primordial lizard of the title is once again shaken awake by the human folly of the atomic bomb, a great sin against Nature echoed in the creature’s flamethrower-style “atomic breath.”  The film’s limited budget means that Godzilla gets limited screentime, but the monster is deployed wisely as an unstoppable, unfathomable horror whose atomic power is so great that it burns away the flesh of its own towering body.  Godzilla is scary again, more of a harrowing extension of war survivors’ PTSD than a rollicking hero to children everywhere.  The cleverest move the movie makes, then, is by limiting the scope of its drama to match the limited scope of its monster attacks.  We feel the fear Godzilla stirs in just a few cowering citizens’ lives, even though both the monster and its victims represent large-scale national grief in metaphor.  It’s a small-cast wartime melodrama that’s occasionally interrupted by kaiju-scale mayhem, the same way a soldier who survives war is supposed to go through the motions of normal life in peacetime despite frequent, violent reminders & memories of the atrocities they’ve witnessed or participated in.  The “Minus One” of the title refers to people struggling to rebuild their lives from Ground Zero, only to be reset even further back by the grand-scale cruelties of life & Nature, through the monster.  It’s tough to watch.

The drama gets even more intimate & insular from there.  Most Godzilla movies dwell on the city-wide chaos of the monster attacks, depicting thousands of victims scattering away from Godzilla’s path like helpless insects.  In contrast, Godzilla Minus One zooms in to assess the value of just one, individual life in that mayhem.  Its mournful protagonist (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is a kamikaze pilot who dodged his suicidal mission during the war and now suffers intense survivor’s guilt, convinced that he morally failed in his duty to serve his nation.  The sudden appearance of Godzilla offers the self-hating young man a second attempt at wartime valor, to the point where he’s disturbingly excited by the prospect of facing off against the monster instead of experiencing healthier responses like fear & grief.  In a more proudly nationalistic action thriller, this sentiment would go unchallenged, and his self-assigned self-sacrifice would be celebrated as traditional macho heroism.  Instead, Godzilla Minus One is about the community of people around the pilot—each having survived their own war atrocities & personal shortcomings—convincing him that his life is worth living, that he has value beyond the damage he can cause as a lone soldier in a war that’s officially over.  The honor of serving his country through death is no nobler than risking his life de-activating leftover explosive mines to put food on his family’s table; it’s sad & disgraceful, and it should be treated as a worst-case scenario.

The dramatic beats of Godzilla Minus One are just as predictable as the rhythm of its monster attacks, and just as devastatingly effective.  I cried with surprising frequency during the final twenty-minute stretch, even though I saw each dramatic reveal coming from a nautical mile away.  Maybe it’s because I vaguely related to the communal struggle to rebuild after multiple unfathomable catastrophes, having remained in New Orleans through a series of floods & hurricanes.  Maybe it’s because I more personally related to the pilot’s struggle to learn a foundational sense of self-worth, the toughest aspect of adult life.  Maybe it’s because composer Naoki Satō’s gargantuan score drummed those sentimental feelings out of me through intense physical vibration.  Who’s to say?  All I can confidently report is that the drama is just thunderously affecting as Godzilla’s roars, which is a rarity in the series.

-Brandon Ledet