Godzilla Minus One was easily my favorite movie of the past year.
I remember seeing the TV campaign for the peculiar US release of Godzilla vs. Megalon in the mid-70s, but I think the first ones I sat down and watched were the original King Kong vs. Godzilla, and Godzilla vs. Monster Zero (aka Invasion of Astro-Monster), both of which are pretty goofy films, but still kind of epically goofy.
I saw the US cut of the original with Raymond Burr sometime in the 1990s and wasn't that impressed. It was only when I saw the original 1954 Japanese cut, at a showing at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, that I realized... this is a good movie, possibly a great movie. Very dark, with the metaphor of Godzilla as the Bomb worn on its sleeve.
Minus One definitely gives me those feelings. But its emphasis is different. There's a through line about the cruelty and pointlessness of valorizing heroic death that isn't present in the original. Its hero's evolution from an elite suicide pilot who bears the shame of abandoning his mission, to a man whose redemption is in survival rather than self-annihilation, is something new, and almost diametrically opposed to Dr. Serizawa's sacrifice in the '54 Godzilla.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2024-06-23 02:43 am (UTC)I remember seeing the TV campaign for the peculiar US release of Godzilla vs. Megalon in the mid-70s, but I think the first ones I sat down and watched were the original King Kong vs. Godzilla, and Godzilla vs. Monster Zero (aka Invasion of Astro-Monster), both of which are pretty goofy films, but still kind of epically goofy.
I saw the US cut of the original with Raymond Burr sometime in the 1990s and wasn't that impressed. It was only when I saw the original 1954 Japanese cut, at a showing at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, that I realized... this is a good movie, possibly a great movie. Very dark, with the metaphor of Godzilla as the Bomb worn on its sleeve.
Minus One definitely gives me those feelings. But its emphasis is different. There's a through line about the cruelty and pointlessness of valorizing heroic death that isn't present in the original. Its hero's evolution from an elite suicide pilot who bears the shame of abandoning his mission, to a man whose redemption is in survival rather than self-annihilation, is something new, and almost diametrically opposed to Dr. Serizawa's sacrifice in the '54 Godzilla.