Today is Thursday, January 18, 2024.    Elliot and I spent this cold day seeing the new Godzilla film at the Regal UA Kaufman Astoria Theater at 4:10. The name of this latest Japanese horror film is called Godzilla: Minus One.   I reluctantly went with Elliot to see it since I was not too eager to see this latest iteration of a franchise that is 70 years old this year.     I thought there could be no new luster to this hoary horror franchise, but I was mistaken. 

This new version returns us to postwar Japan where the focus this time is not the titular monster, but rather failed kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) whose first encounter with the beast leaves him haunted by the ghosts of the attack on a Japanese base on Odo Island.    Upon his return to Tokyo, the city is shown in all of its postwar destruction, with families destroyed, with no hope left for the future.   Shikishima begins working as a minesweeper, while helping to support Noriko Oishi, a young woman whose family died in the war, and the orphaned child she rescued from the rubble.  As the years pass, however, it becomes clear that what Shikishima saw of Godzilla was only the beginning. 

For those of us who are Godzilla fans, there are the usual thrilling action sequences involving the fearsome monster, starting with the nightmarish late-night attack on Odo Island to the unforgettable Ginza set piece that sees trains flung across the city and buildings obliterated in brutal fashion, which will have you clutch your armrest in terror.

But what really sets this new Godzilla film apart from all of the rest is the amount of focus it places on its human characters, as opposed to being only solely monster centered, with no one achieving prominence in earlier efforts except for Raymond Burr in the original American production as the characters in this film do.  Instead of reducing the humans to nothing but cannon fodder here, they are all injected with a poignant humanity like the fellow minesweepers who form a bond with the conscience-stricken Shikishima.  His inner battle as a disgraced kamikaze pilot dealing with a lifetime of guilt takes center stage as his revenge against Godzilla becomes the end goal of his redemption; a deeply emotional arc that acts as the beating heart of the movie.   

This reboot of the ageless franchise owes its provocative new take to writer-director-visual-effects-guru Takashi Yamazaki.  In Yamazaki’s hands, Godzilla feels almost entirely new, both as a terrible force of nature and destruction and as an all-purpose metaphor that can change with the times.    Throughout the film, it seems as if the Japanese government is criticized for engaging in a failed war against the United States and its allies, as well as its inefficiency in battling this new threat to a postwar Japan.   

Wherever the characters stand ideologically on the just-concluded war, they ultimately set aside their differences and unite to defeat the existential threat presented by Godzilla and its atomic breath.  Yamazaki celebrates both unity, and more importantly, collective action – free of bothersome government interference, no less – when Koichi, his minesweeper chums, and ex-navy men agree to participate in an ingenious plan concocted by Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), a brainy ex-navy engineer and one of Koichi’s minesweeper compatriots. 

The concluding battle takes place at sea, with a motley assortment of decommissioned ships, merchant vessels, and tug boats that serve as the last defense against a rampaging Godzilla.    Koichi also takes to the air in a newly refurbished bomber; he gets his nerve back in his final battle against a destructive force of nature.    

After seeing this film, I make no apologies in making the analogy that just as Japan had its rampaging monster in the form of a giant prehistoric lizard known as Godzilla, America now has its own version too – in the form of Donald J. Chump.  He’s our American version of the Japanese cinematic beast.    Think of the comparisons:  Godzilla was a rampaging monster with no guilt about destroying Japan, Chump is our version of the monster with no guilt about destroying democracy; almost everything brought to bear against Godzilla did not result in its destruction, the same thing could almost be said about Chump who seems to suffer no consequences as metaphorical missiles are aimed toward him and he’s still standing, with four federal cases, and 91 criminal charges filed against him, and he is now desperately trying to dodge all of them and thus avoid the scales of justice.   At the end of the film, Godzilla is seemingly destroyed, but there is a moment at the end where it’s apparent that he survives this latest attack against him.    Let’s hope that this does not apply to Dump as well.     This is where the analogy ends between the Japanese Godzilla and our version of him here in America. 

Looks like I have to finish typing my blog since I have a cat here who is putting his paws on the monitor thinking he’s seeing something there that’s appropriate for him to strike at.

I kid you not about Atticus being here with me.    He’s staring at the screen right now. 

So have a Good Friday; let’s hope we don’t have another snowfall tomorrow.

Stay safe and be well. 

  Here’s the little fur baby staring at the screen.

Here I had to move Atticus off the keyboard in order to finish typing.   Isn’t he so cute?