Streaming Thoughts: Godzilla Minus One
Jun. 18th, 2024 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerPositive comments about Godzilla Minus One collected where I could notice them to the point that when I picked up the movie was now available on Netflix my interest was well piqued. The nagging thought that I’d kept paying for a Netflix subscription without having watched anything on it for some months got pushed back. At the same time, starting into the movie I remained conscious of a thought that nags in different ways, namely how my interest in “drawings from Japan” has never quite transferred into a similar interest in live action from that country. That always seems to hint at just how I “see” those drawings but leaves attempts at articulating the whole matter further feeling too indelicate to make a big deal about.
I suppose I’ve been aware of “Godzilla movies” for quite some time. There were books on monster movies down in the children’s section of my home town library. For that matter, there was a copy of The Fifty Worst Films of All Time up in the adult section that I’d gone through at a precocious age to see Godzilla versus the Smog Monster included there. However, I don’t think I ever quite happened on any Godzilla movies at a formative age. On thinking about it, I have recollections of flipping through a “Godzilla manga” translated by Dark Horse in my university’s book store years before I saw two of the movies at last, but through the peculiar lens of Mystery Science Theater 3000. After that I did manage to get a Criterion DVD of the very first Godzilla; it remains the only disc from Criterion I have. With that watched, though, it took Hideaki Anno’s new interpretation of the franchise Shin Godzilla to get me seeing another part of it.
Godzilla Minus One was talked up as another reinterpretation, this one rewinding the clock back further than the first movie and having the monster attack Japan just a few years after World War II and the initial atomic bomb tests in the Pacific just following. It might not be quite the same as the awareness that science fiction’s “Golden Age” lies that far back or farther and there’s been a lot of history since to provide a sort of commentary, but it was still interesting. I’d been aware of certain comments about the movie having the occupying Americans beg off trying to fight Godzilla and indeed just about stay out of sight, and wondered if this might be a monster movie that skipped “our best weapons are useless against it!” and got straight to more creative solutions. As it turned out, though, there was still just a bit of that familiar stake-setting. For a moment or two I did wonder what a movie where Godzilla crushes American naval cruisers and Sherman tanks on screen would be like, but that just might be another thing that delving too far into seems indelicate.
In any case the movie impressed me in general. I can recall certain cautions in other places about the risks of trying to claim “this genre work is about the people,” but this movie did find a way to get the main character tangled up with the monster from the start while also providing a take on World War II and its aftermath easy for me to digest and accept. As a period piece I suppose I have to accept that its female characters played more limited roles as the conclusion approached; in fact there was a bit of a void there by that point. In a certain way I do want to try and get back to the other two “serious” Godzilla movies I have access to; wanting to do that and finding the time are different things, of course. With that said, in reflecting on the movies I saw via Mystery Science Theater I am inclined to think that in an age where an awful lot of popular entertainment seems to be trying to sell “serious takes” on things people saw when they were kids, it’s almost refreshing to remember something that got sillier with time.
I suppose I’ve been aware of “Godzilla movies” for quite some time. There were books on monster movies down in the children’s section of my home town library. For that matter, there was a copy of The Fifty Worst Films of All Time up in the adult section that I’d gone through at a precocious age to see Godzilla versus the Smog Monster included there. However, I don’t think I ever quite happened on any Godzilla movies at a formative age. On thinking about it, I have recollections of flipping through a “Godzilla manga” translated by Dark Horse in my university’s book store years before I saw two of the movies at last, but through the peculiar lens of Mystery Science Theater 3000. After that I did manage to get a Criterion DVD of the very first Godzilla; it remains the only disc from Criterion I have. With that watched, though, it took Hideaki Anno’s new interpretation of the franchise Shin Godzilla to get me seeing another part of it.
Godzilla Minus One was talked up as another reinterpretation, this one rewinding the clock back further than the first movie and having the monster attack Japan just a few years after World War II and the initial atomic bomb tests in the Pacific just following. It might not be quite the same as the awareness that science fiction’s “Golden Age” lies that far back or farther and there’s been a lot of history since to provide a sort of commentary, but it was still interesting. I’d been aware of certain comments about the movie having the occupying Americans beg off trying to fight Godzilla and indeed just about stay out of sight, and wondered if this might be a monster movie that skipped “our best weapons are useless against it!” and got straight to more creative solutions. As it turned out, though, there was still just a bit of that familiar stake-setting. For a moment or two I did wonder what a movie where Godzilla crushes American naval cruisers and Sherman tanks on screen would be like, but that just might be another thing that delving too far into seems indelicate.
In any case the movie impressed me in general. I can recall certain cautions in other places about the risks of trying to claim “this genre work is about the people,” but this movie did find a way to get the main character tangled up with the monster from the start while also providing a take on World War II and its aftermath easy for me to digest and accept. As a period piece I suppose I have to accept that its female characters played more limited roles as the conclusion approached; in fact there was a bit of a void there by that point. In a certain way I do want to try and get back to the other two “serious” Godzilla movies I have access to; wanting to do that and finding the time are different things, of course. With that said, in reflecting on the movies I saw via Mystery Science Theater I am inclined to think that in an age where an awful lot of popular entertainment seems to be trying to sell “serious takes” on things people saw when they were kids, it’s almost refreshing to remember something that got sillier with time.