The King of the Monsters is busy on this side of the Pacific. The MonsterVerse has spread to the small screen with the Apple TV+ show Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and next year will usher in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, the sequel to 2021’s oversized monster smash-’em-up. To all of the kaiju’s blockbuster American exploits, the director of the newest Japanese Godzilla movie, Takashi Yamazaki, has this to say:
“Man, you guys have a lot of VFX and you guys have the budget for it.”
It’s not said with judgment or disdain. In addition to directing Godzilla Minus One, the 33rd Japanese Godzilla movie (and 37th overall), Yamazaki wrote it and oversaw the special effects. As was the case with the last live-action Japanese Godzilla movie, 2016’s Shin Godzilla, the iconic kaiju is now a computer-generated monster rather than a man in a suit, much like his American counterpart. Minus One, which opens in the U.S. on December 1, admittedly doesn’t look as expensive as multi-hundred-million-dollar, explosion-heavy extravaganzas like Godzilla vs. Kong, but the effects are more than convincing and, besides, Minus One is in the style of Godzilla movies that are about something rather than the many monster beat-’em-ups in the kaiju’s filmography.
“Once you have Godzilla fighting any kaiju, the human story ends up taking a backseat,” Yamazaki explained through a translator. “It’s great to have Godzilla fighting whoever, but my personal challenge would be to resolve that balance. The kaiju can battle, but the human story needs to be there.”
Minus One has no other kaiju but Godzilla, and it takes the monster back to his roots — before that, actually. Whereas the original 1954 Godzilla, a thrilling metaphor for the atomic bomb released just nine years after the end of World War II, takes place in the year it came out, Minus One is set in the immediate aftermath of the war, an era when a demilitarized Japan’s government was in shambles, the cities largely firebombed (or worse) to hell, and its people left searching for new meaning after the disastrous outcome of a war the imperial government started with such ambitious hopes. Japan was at “zero,” and the arrival of Godzilla sets it back to “minus one,” hence the title.
It’s a novel premise for a Godzilla movie. Fans of the giant-monster genre are so used to seeing a bunch of army tanks valiantly and futilely attempt to stop Godzilla and his ilk. What happens when there isn’t an army of tanks available? As Yamazaki explains it, without weapons, “these civilians have to use their knowledge to overcome Godzilla,” even as their country still bears the scars of its recent destruction.
“I think with the 70 years of the history of Godzilla, that metaphor and representation of Godzilla has kind of gotten diluted over time,” Yamazaki said, adding that Godzilla’s origins as a creature created by nuclear weapons — which is not the case in the American MonsterVerse, where he’s an ancient “Titan” who’s just always existed — was important to him in the writing. (Hiroshima or Nagasaki are not directly addressed in the film, however.)
Ryunosuke Kamiki, a major star in Japanese blockbuster live-action roles and voice work like the lead character of Your Name, stars in Minus One as Kōichi Shikishima, a would-be kamikaze pilot who fakes a mechanical problem with his plane to avoid flying to his death after seeing the writing on the wall in the last days of the war. This life-saving act of “cowardice,” combined with an early run-in with Godzilla, haunt Kōichi as Japan struggles to rebuild.
“Personally, the whole concept of going to die, that’s not something I agree with,” Kamiki says. But he understands that “the mentality of that time of these kamikaze pilots was that it was a celebration. They are giving their lives away for their families and to the people of their countries.”
But given that Minus One is a period piece, its relationship with postwar Japan and the ethos of the era is a little trickier — and potentially controversial. It would be easy for Minus One to tip into a darker sort of nationalism, the sort that could encourage Kōichi to have done his duty. It is, after all, about a monster attacking Japan in the wake of a horribly destructive war of conquest that they started. To have a besieged Japan rise from its ashes is perhaps a touchy proposition.
Minus One largely eschews such readings, however. Characters offer differing views on the war, including a young man who laments that he never got the chance to serve and older veterans who angrily inform him that not having fought in war is something to be proud of. Although Minus One is about guilt, honor, and duty, it mostly disentangles the idea of finishing one’s personal war from the context of the actual war.
This is not the first movie Tamazaki has made set in this time period, nor is it even the first movie he’s made with a kamikaze pilot as its protagonist, as Minus One comes a decade after his film The Eternal Zero, which ends with its pilot going through with his duty. Minus One, like Kōichi, ultimately chooses life, and Yamazaki says the film’s anti-war message is relevant. “With world happenings — are we tipping closer to war?” the director explained. “It’s a good reminder of what the aftermath of a war looks like. Just to keep that in mind.”
On the question of whether Japan, which truly did suffer at the end of World War II, is a victim of Godzilla’s destruction, or if the monster is punishment for the horrors the country wrought, Yamazaki has a different perspective.
“Godzilla is more of an undiscerning god,” he said, explaining that the monster was neither punishment nor was Japan a victim. “In Japan, it’s integrated into Shinto belief. All of these negative things in the world have manifested themselves into Godzilla. And, us as humans, we’re not out to kill Godzilla, but we’re able to calm Godzilla and bring ourselves back to peace.”
It’s a delicate understanding, especially in the midst of a movie that, for all its weighty historical themes and human drama, is also a thrilling monster romp. Without a Kong for Minus One’s Godzilla to do battle with, though, these sorts of questions loom as large as the kaiju himself, and the director expects audiences to find different answers.
“I’m really interested in how the U.S. audience will perceive him,” Yamazaki says.
