On December 1st of 2023, the foreign movie company ToHo Studios released one of the best movies of 2023- “Godzilla Minus One”. This movie was created in celebration of Godzilla’s 70th anniversary of the Giant Kaiju being around, but this movie is very unique in its own way because it has a very interesting story.The story of godzilla minus one is about how Japan after the war was at a state of zero,until this terrifying new take of Godzilla shows up and wreaks havoc, leaving Japan at a state of “minus one”.
In the past Godzilla movies, the directors add very boring and uninteresting humans that we don’t really care for in the plot.. We just want to see the giant radioactive lizard fight other giant monsters. But in Godzilla Minus One, it makes it to where we actually care and sympathize for the characters. For example, the main character of this story is a WW 2 kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima, and he met Godzilla at the beginning of the movie at Odo Island in a pre-evolved state where he attacks the crew members. Although Shikishima had an opportunity to shoot him with the guns on his plane to save the others, he was consumed by fear, causing him to freeze. lead to Godzilla sparing him and killing the others. Shikishima and the leader of the crew that were killed, Tachibana, survived, even though he survived he blames himself for the death of the crew members. Later in the film Godzilla returns and Shikishima dedicates himself to get revenge and kill the monster before it does more harm.This is what made me interested in the character because he acknowledges that he messed up but he wants to redeem himself and make up to do what he couldn’t back then.
Godzilla minus one is one of my absolute favorite movies because of its amazing plot, interesting story, and Incredible take on Godzilla. One of the main reasons that I love this version of Godzilla is because in newer movies, such as “Legendary’s Monster versus Godzilla”,they kind of portray him as a hero because he stands a force to maintain order amongst the other monsters, but in “Minus One”, he’s just a monster that actively goes out of his way to destroy things and assert his dominance. Another way of saying this, is he doesn’t want peace.. problems. Godzilla in this film is really just a menace to society, and is just a destructive force that needs no motive to destroy and cause havoc amongst the people of Ginza.
Overall Godzilla minus one is a very good movie for those who want to enjoy a modernized version of an amazing classic character with a nice plot, it has interesting characters and a Spectacular Giant kaiju.