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(For Day 4 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was to draw inspiration from the quirky natural phenomena detailed in the 1958 book The Strangest Things in the World, such as “Uganda’s Miniature Dinosaur,” “Enigma of Evolution,” “The World’s Biggest Sneeze,” and “The Forest that Time Forgot.” What could be stranger than a dinosaur in the present day?)

We talk of chickens, geckos, gators
Like they’re mini-dinosaurs,
DNA perpetuators
Winning evolution’s wars.

Look at what they’ve lost, however,
Dwindling to humans’ scale.
Those survivors truly clever
Never would have grown so frail.

Something dodged the diminution,
Surely kept its ancient reign,
Some enigma evolution
Cannot fathom to explain.

The biggest teeth to leave man shaken,
Biggest sneeze and appetite,
The biggest ire none should waken,
Gorged on centuries of spite.

Where this scourge of sighs is lurking,
Deep where time itself forgot,
None can say; its guise is working.
Pray it never leaves the spot.
___________________________________

MPA rating:  PG-13

If someone had told me last year that one of my favorite films from 2023 would be a Godzilla movie, the 37th Godzilla movie at that, I would never have believed it. I’ve only seen a handful of the more modern versions of the beloved monster, including two of Legendary Pictures’ American films and Hideaki Anno’s Shin Godzilla. The latter film was praised by fans upon release, who indicated it was a step above the typical cheesy destruction of the older movies, and while it was good, it still had some cringey effects and lackluster scenes. So when similar rumbles of “dude, this is good” started to spread about Godzilla Minus One, I didn’t fully believe them. Yet as weeks passed, practically everyone who saw it seemed to be singing its praises until I finally relented and caught a late screening of the black-and-white rerelease, Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color. And I must admit, dudes, it is good.

In contrast to the worldwide monster-hunting organizations of other Godzilla movies, Minus One goes back to the creature’s roots, representing the threat of nuclear destruction in Japan shortly after the end of World War II. Yet allegory and disaster porn can only carry a film so far, and this film finally manages to tell a compelling human story in the shadow of its titan. That story belongs to Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot who bears the shame of having survived what should have been glorious death for his country. After yet another close encounter saddling him with even greater survivor’s guilt, he returns to civilian life, trying to pick up the pieces of his hometown devastated by the war. With time, he finds a semblance of normalcy alongside a woman (Minami Hamabe) and a little girl (Sae Nagatani), lone survivors like him, yet his PTSD strains his relationships and self-worth. When he and a crew of mine disposal sailors encounter a certain overgrown lizard, the survival of both his nation and makeshift family are threatened.

It’s hard to pin down why Minus One succeeds where others are “just another Godzilla movie.” Usually, they throw in a threatened family to garner audience sympathy, but it never goes as deep as Shikishima’s trauma and the natural way he bonds with others while grappling with it. Beyond that, Godzilla himself is far from a zipper-backed suit, but a hulking CGI monstrosity that becomes genuinely scary as we see the scale of destruction he can muster, with innocent civilians utterly powerless beneath him. He’s truly a monster and a force of nature, hardly the benevolent protector from the American version. While I tend to think Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 deserved the prize a little more for the extent of its CGI, I was not upset when Godzilla Minus One managed to win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, a first for Japan reflecting how impressive the film is despite a piddling budget compared with Hollywood’s blockbusters.

If ever a film proved how a good story and characters can refresh a well-trodden franchise, Godzilla Minus One deserves that claim. Its themes of survival and endurance denounce the culture of death that Japan had become during the war, and put Shikishima’s struggle on a level beyond a single man’s battle. The ending even brought a tear to my eye, and I’ve heard stories from others who said they wept in the theater. A crowdpleaser to rival any American production, Minus One was the biggest pleasant surprise the cinema has given me in a while, and even if I consider it a fluke for the Godzilla series (please don’t let a sequel ruin things!), I’m grateful for it.

Best line: (Noriko) “Is your war finally over?”

Rank:  List-Worthy

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