Synopsis: Sea Monster fucks with Japan...again
Godzilla is a cultural icon, a staple of post-nuclear war Japanese mysticism. He was created by radiation from nuclear bomb testing in the Marshall Islands and his atomic breath is a metaphor for the destruction wrought by Little Boy and Fat Man. Godzilla attacking Japan is a metaphor for a country permanently besieged by nuclear threat.
Like most of my friends, I don't remember the last Godzilla movie I watched. It's been a very long time since I had any interest in this monster or the 32 Godzilla movies that have graced the big screen since 1954. That's a movie every two years for 70 years. To say the genre should be tapped out is to understate it by orders of magnitude.
Naturally, I was shocked when G-1 was getting hugely positive reviews. 98%/98% on Rotten Tomatoes. My sons invited me to watch this movie in a theatre and I said yup, anything with a 98% RT score is worth a watch. A week later we watched it a second time. In a packed theatre. Jeebus, I haven't been in a packed theatre since 2019. Why are American audiences supporting a subtitled foreign film about a monster that's been featured 32 times already?
The Good
Surprisingly, Godzilla is a second tier character in this movie. I was not expecting that. I assumed a modern day monster movie would feature an overblown CGI-heavy montage of monster doing monster shit with the thinnest of plots tying action scenes together. This story is more about the human characters and their attempt to heal from WWII. They are reconstructing society, culture, hope, national identity, and it's complicated at every level. They are a neutered country, their military weaponry having been stripped by international treaty. How do you fight a fire-breathing monster without military-grade weapons? How do you define national pride when you just lost a war?
I found myself caring deeply about every character in the movie, even minor characters. Their stories are compelling and their journeys are beautifully shown through circumstance and conflict. I never felt like the movie "told" me what to think or feel. Scenes were constructed to demonstrate character development and the director nailed it with stark precision. I'll draw a comparison to the last Marvel movie I watched, Dr Strange and The Multiverse of Madness. There was so much shit happening all the time I didn't care what happened to anyone in the Multiverse. I was never given time to care about Doctor Strange or his alter persons. They were two dimensional props moving linearly through an overloaded plot full of contrivances. This Godzilla movie, however, does a great job of letting its story breathe. It is nearly perfectly paced.
The practical effects team in G-1 does a stellar job of aging the characters. I didn't notice this on my first viewing but the second time I was shocked at how immature the characters looked at the start. Paying attention on the second viewing, I was impressed by how well the characters matured in appearance, mannerisms, even speech patterns. Writer and director Takashi Yamazaki knows his shit. I can't believe he made this movie with only $15 million.
The musical score is top notch, especially the choir movements during the third act. Simply masterful.
The Bad
Occasionally, the actors over-sell strong emotion. This is rooted in Japanese culture in a lot of ways. If you're familiar with Anime or other forms of Japanese performance art, you won't find it strange. I still found it mildly grating even though I understand why they do it.
The Ugly
The last three minutes are a deliberate setup for a sequel and it detracted from the tone of the movie up to that point. Didn't quite ruin the movie for me, but came close. It's that bad.
