Godzilla Minus One is the Greatest Prequel Ever

I had wanted to see Godzilla Minus One from the start, but I don't go to theaters and when I had a Vudu gift card for $5 it wasn't available for rent--then the Movie House app ran out of gift cards for anything.  The movie ended up on Netflix, which I don't have.

Last Sunday I finally just said "fuck it" and rented it for $6 from Amazon--I don't have a Prime subscription anymore but I guess I can still rent and buy stuff.  Anyway, pretty much every blogger/social media person in my feeds said it was good.  And they were not wrong.

The movie starts in 1945 near the end of the war. Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is a kamikaze pilot, but he can't bring himself to go through with it, so he ditches on Odo Island, which is a tiny place to fix damaged kamikaze planes so they could go blow themselves up.  The crew examine the plane to find it has no damage, which is pretty awkward.

That night, a bunch of dead fish from deep in the ocean pop up.  And then...Godzilla!  At this point Godzilla is not really big.  He's kind of like a T-Rex in the Jurassic movies only with spines on his back.  He rampages around, killing most of the people on Odo Island.  One mechanic wants Shikishima to use the gun on his plane, but again he chickens out and is knocked unconscious.

He wakes up later and there's a boat to take him and others back to Japan.  The mechanic gives him some photos from the other mechanics so Shikishima can remember who he failed.

Shikishima goes to Tokyo, which has mostly been turned to rubble by American bombs.  He meets a young woman, who hands a baby off to him as she runs from cops.  Shikishima holds on to the baby and when the woman returns, she questions why he didn't leave the kid.  They go off to a damaged house where the woman introduces herself as Noriko and the baby as Akiko.  What becomes clear soon is that Akiko is not Noriko's baby, just an orphan she found.  They find an older woman who helps them feed the baby.

The movie jumps into 1946 with Shikishima and Noriko still together with the kid.  Shikishima gets a government job working on a wooden boat being used as a minesweeper.  The idea is two wooden boats drag a blade to cut the mines loose and then someone uses a gun to blow them up.  Shikishima gets that job when his military training proves to make him a better shot than the sailors and enigmatic Mr. Noda.  (The boats have to be made of wood because the mines are magnetic and would attach to a metal boat and blow it up.)

Meanwhile, a nuclear bomb is tested on Bikini Atoll and the implication is this causes Godzilla to mutate.

Noriko gets an office job in Ginsa and with the money she and Shikishima are pulling in, they can fix up the house and start thinking about the future--but not so much about marriage.  That's just another thing Shikishima is chicken about.

And then of course Godzilla returns!  This Godzilla is more like the one fans are used to with the taller build, but not maybe as tall and the plates maybe not as big and without the fire breathing yet.  The Japanese defense force has little left to throw at him while the Americans won't help because any buildup of ships, planes, etc could be seen as an aggressive action by the Soviet Union.

The two wooden minesweepers are recruited for a mission to stall Godzilla with their guns and some of the unexploded mines until a battle cruiser can show up.  This of course does not go well.  The other minesweeper is turned to splinter while Shikishim's boat is able to drop a couple of mines that don't do much good--until one rolls into Godzilla's mouth.  Shikishima shoots it with the machine gun and the mine blows up a chunk of Godzilla's face--but it quickly starts to heal. (Fun Fact:  that part of Godzilla's face is discolored the rest of the movie.)  The battle cruiser shows up to do some damage, though mostly it just pisses Godzilla off.  He starts ripping it apart, but after taking another couple of shots goes underwater to use his ultimate weapon, which we don't get to see yet.  Then he swims away.

Some time later, Godzilla shows up again.  After Godzilla breaking through the puny defenses to Ginsa, he can basically do whatever he wants, which is mostly to smash buildings with his claws and tail.  Shikishima and Noriko try to flee, but then Godzilla evolves his most devastating power:  the nuclear breath!  His spikes turn blue and he starts spewing nuclear fire all over.  In the devastation Noriko disappears and Shikishima is knocked out.  Godzilla has left for whatever reason and Noriko is seemingly dead.

Shikishima mopes around until he's recruited for a mission to destroy Godzilla once and for all.  With Japan's defense force in such sorry shape, a ragtag group of former military personnel get some old destroyers and retrofit them with cranes and special launchers for a weapon designed by Mr. Noda and some other scientists.  Shikishima gets a prototype fighter that's in pretty bad shape so he has to recruit an old enemy in the mechanic from Odo Island.

To kind of turn things full-circle, Shikishima has the mechanic plant bombs in the plane so if the plan fails, he can try to fly into Godzilla's mouth and set off the bombs to kill him.  So before he rejected being a kamikaze pilot but now he's embracing it for the good of his friends and family.

Really the whole thing here is kind of like the original Star Wars where the motley crew of the Rebellion launches a fairly crazy attack on the Death Star to destroy it.  And like that things don't go so well at first, but maybe the tide will turn.

The entire movie is in Japanese with subtitles, but it didn't matter a whole lot to me.  I think what really made this better than other prequels is that it's basically made as a stand-alone movie.  The changing design of Godzilla is supposed to tie into the 1954 movie and later ones, but mostly this tells its own story that focuses primarily on Shikishima finding the courage to do what's right and also his relationship with Noriko and their sorta adopted daughter.

Some of the supporting characters are a little goofy, like the other sailors on the minesweeping boat, but Mr. Noda is pretty awesome as the not-quite-mad scientist.  Unlike most Godzilla movies from 1954 to today, the human story isn't just there to eat up screen time and maybe introduce some plot point; it's actually interesting enough to hold the viewer's attention.  Probably because the characters have an actual emotional journey, so they do more than point and shout, "Oh no, it's Godzilla!"  There are actually dramatic stakes involved in a way none of the other movies really achieves.

But for fans of the King of the Monsters, there's still plenty of Godzilla wrecking shit.  He eats people, he body slams ships, he smashes buildings to rubble, and of course he eventually uses the flame breath--which comes with the iconic roar.  In a way he has his own journey too, becoming more and more powerful as humans create more and more powerful nuclear weapons.  This isn't really said, but if you think about it, this was a period where we went from the A-bomb to the H-bomb and nuclear weapons were spreading to the Soviet Union and other countries.

Anyway, I thought it was an amazing movie.  It's not perfect, but hands-down it's the best prequel ever.  It's definitely worth a stream or rental and then a purchase.  I watched the regular color version, but the black-and-white version is also available.

RAWR!!!!