Tom Salinsky

My knowledge of and enthusiasm for Godzilla movies is scanty. As I understand it, some time in the mid-1950s, Japanese filmmakers mashed up King Kong and post-Hiroshima science fiction tropes about radiation-created mutations and came up with a suitably thrilling monster movie which spawned endless sequels and imitations. But more recent American attempts to recreate the appeal have foundered, and part of the problem I think is that the monster has always been the star. Thus it’s very tempting to want to make your 100 foot title character, with rizz to spare, in some way the goodie, which means you need another monstrous antagonist, and before you know it, all the human characters have got lost in the shuffle.

Takashi Yamazaki’s new film nimbly avoids all of these problems. His Godzilla is nothing less than an elemental force, a devastating force of destruction which needs to be eliminated at – almost – any cost. He’s also smart enough to sketch in a roster of appealing, but very killable, plucky humans to go up against it – and crucially gives one of them a personal connection to the monster. And the structure really couldn’t be any simpler, breaking neatly into four acts of about thirty minutes each: Godzilla exists, Godzilla returns, Godzilla on land, final confrontation.

Set in the immediate aftermath of World War II, this positions the action prior to the making of the original Godzilla film. (Hence “minus one” I guess. A black-and-white version is on the way, dubbed “Godzilla Minus Colour”.) But, whether with a view on the home or international audience I couldn’t say, this is also a specifically Japanese version of the story, deeply connected with themes of how war in general wastes lives and how the Japanese involvement and tactics in the Pacific Theatre specifically wasted lives. And while it briefly seems to be celebrating those tactics which it earlier seemed to be condemning, this is little more than a tissue-paper-thin action movie feint.

Add to this preposterously convincing effects throughout – whether Godzilla is rising from the ocean, shuffling through buildings, tossing railway carriages through the air in its teeth, or blasting death rays from its jaws – and you have a hugely entertaining, if occasionally slightly leisurely, kill-the-monster movie. My only qualm is that I’m not quite certain who it’s for, being too slender for grown-ups, and too intense for kids, but it seems to have made a bunch of money, so maybe there’s enough margin between those two points for it to recoup all of its costs and set us up for what will presumably be Godzilla Zero in 2026.