A New Generation (Gets Stomped On)
On Godzilla(s), taste, and handing off the baton.
Five years ago, I was flattened by Ishirō Honda’s 1954 allegory of the atomic bomb, of war, of death, and its presentation of a creature awoken, and destroying cities as citizens watch helplessly’ its opening scene a direct reference to current events, of radiation poisoning, of war, of death.
The titular character is now a pop icon, their movies creating the longest running film franchise in history. There are statues, toys, food, a theme park, and whatever else you want to have with their face on it. You name it, you can 3D print it. It’s a strange place to be, flooded with light, sugary, fun ways to replicate something born out of such darkness.
Nearly 70 years – and dozens of films – later, Takashi Yamazaki has created his own version, his own vision, of the destroyer, filled with heavy emotional tolls, impossible personal decisions, a humanity, and a weight that maybe hasn’t been seen since Honda’s original. But it is also very much a product of its director and of this current era, and I’m not sure if the two blend together smoothly without any lumps.
Godzilla: Minus One (2023, Yamazaki) was a big financial success made with a surprisingly small budget. It is the highest grossing Godzilla movie of all time in Japan, and was the second highest grossing movie in that country in 2023 (only behind The Super Mario Bros.). It connected with audiences near and far, gathering over 55 million dollars here in the U.S., a mark that domestic films would kill for. It was immediately lauded, and awarded, for its visual effects, headed-up by its writer and director Yamazaki.
Being the Very Online person that I am, I was aware of all of this before I hit play on Netflix this week, and I was surprised to find that I was drawn to its themes and story – both specific and dark and emotional – and mostly not vibing with the visual presentation. Like the original, Minus One starts on Odo Island, a (fictional) land mass off the coast of Japan. A fighter pilot comes down for repairs, but the mechanics based on the island find nothing wrong. The pilot, our protagonist, is revealed to be a kamikaze flyer, unwilling and unable to fulfill his duty after recognizing that the war (WWII) is over, and that they have lost. That evening, the earth starts to shake, and cropping out of the visually striking darkness of night, is Godzilla, full-stop. Minus One wastes no time getting its star into frame. Where JawsI (1974, Spielberg) and Godzilla (1954, Honda) take their time to poke and prod around their physically real — and barely functional or believable — monsters, Minus One believes in its animation and design team’s creation, and while initially masking it in darkness for dramatic effect, the team are clearly not scared of the monster at all. As Godzilla approaches, the pilot has a chance to potentially save the island’s many non-combat trained technicians. But he freezes when he gets into his plane and gets his hands on the triggers. Havoc is wreaked, many people are killed, the pilot survives, and now he must return home, having failed his obligation to his country, and having failed to try and save his comrades.
The story continues to pick at the scab of country, obligation, sacrifice, and failure, the pilot’s fellow countryfolk ashamed of what he has done, or hasn’t done. The war has killed countless, including family, and now they must rebuild from scratch. When Godzilla returns, the people must ask themselves: do they risk their own individual lives for an impossible-to-win battle, again? Does this pilot need to give up everything they’ve rebuilt to redeem their past decisions?
The film has a perspective and politics and ideas, which is what made the first film so timeless and haunting. It has heart, but it has been placed within a heavily animated shell, and has been prepared for a new generation, one that has been raised on much different art and technical capabilities and sensibilities. Minus One leans very clearly into this current era of manga and anime, and the broad reach and deep hold that those mediums have on the consumers of the world. Streaming platforms have expanded the access to world-wide productions, and the successes of my American youth’s few anime breakthroughs (Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball/Z, Gundam Wing, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, etc.) and animated feature films (Akira [1988, Otomo], Ghost in the Shell [1995, Oshii], Miyazaki movies, etc.), all paired with the semi-recent boom of Netflix purchased titles (Attack on Titan, Kill la Kill, One-Punch Man, etc.) has created a new visual and emotional palette for film and TV viewers, one that has successfully and fully infiltrated live-action movies. Anime is working and popular right now, in a time when many live-action ideas are not, so why not take the stylings and strategies of anime and manga and put them into live-action?
This is certainly not a new idea. An easy example is my beloved Speed Racer (2008), the Wachowski sisters’ loving throwback to a very silly American dub of a Japanese cartoon. We’ve also had a ton of anime adapted to live action in the last decade or two (Death Note [2017, Wingard], Rurouni Kenshin [2012, Ōtomo]). There are also live-action films that pull ideas or sensibilities from animation and anime, like other Wachowski films (The Matrix [1999], Ninja Assassain [2009, McTeigue]), or Pacific Rim (2013, Del Toro), or Stephen Chow’s movies (Kung Fu Hustle [2004], Shaolin Soccer [2001]).
This style has been brewing and adapting and improving for a while now, for my whole life and then some. The build-up has been slow, but seeing Minus One felt like whiplash, like the arrival of the style, like a complete live-action realization of anime, from the way that characters express emotions, the way that Godzilla is shown in full light for long stretches of time, and also in the way that the screenplay is structured, which is a trait that I am not smart enough to explain. It just feels like anime, full stop.
This is not a bad thing!! I am not an anime connoisseur, nor even a regular consumer, which definitely colors my commentary and perspective. What I find so cool and interesting about the style of this film is in how it represents a baton-passing between generations. The mimicking of the 1954 film’s emotional core and surrounding it with new sights and sounds is smart, and points out how much things have changed. It made me think about taste and its development throughout a generation: we’re each born within a circle of culture and taste that we can’t control or really understand, but very early on we get to start making our own circle of styles and ideas and interests, though still based within a circle of influence that is created by our surroundings. It looks like this shitty drawing I just made:
Then, very quickly, that small circle branches out, and learns things completely new and undiscovered by the influencers who brought us up, and we make a venn diagram with the generations older than us.
These circles can also detach completely (I don’t know about you, but my grandparents and I were not into the same TV shows OR music). Godzilla: Minus One feels like it is creating that shared space in the circles of multiple generations’ tastes. It also feels, to my 34 year-old circle of taste, like an older creator, MINUS ONE’s Takashi Yamazaki — who turned 60 on June 12th, happy birthday! — is intentionally handing something off from one generation to the next. Yamazaki was born ten years after Godzilla first graced movie screens. There were four Godzilla movies released before he was born, with a fifth releasing when he was six months old. He was born into a second generation of the story’s viewers, though with plenty of access to the original’s terrifying reflection of Japan’s reality and recent past. He also had immediate access to the iterating and watering down of the franchise, movies that leaned into entertainment and excitement, something that younger viewers would go to the theater for, and something that the people world-wide could have fun with.
Beyond those original iterations, the “make everything serious and dark”-ification of Hollywood’s 21st century artistic goals attempted to turn the franchise into something grandiose and, once again, terrifying. 1998’s Godzilla (Emmerich) was the first attempt — fun, entertaining, but ultimately unsuccessful — and 2014’s Godzilla (Edwards) was another “serious” reboot, which, oddly enough, has similarly evolved into popcorn-entertainment movies featuring King Kong and other familiar Bid Bads of the original spin-offs. 2016 saw Japan’s third reboot of the franchise with the very successful Shin Godzilla (Anno, Higuchi) — which I unfortunately haven’t seen — which made visual and aural callbacks to the original, just as Minus One does.
But Yamazaki has, for what feels like the first time, successfully blended the titular monster’s story and emphases with a different storytelling style, one well-suited for handling big sci-fi ideas and big sci-fi visuals. It is also attempting to bring the (so far) timeless franchise into a modern style, one that newer viewers know and understand and enjoy. It might not be my cup of tea, but I love looking beyond my taste, towards what might be going on beyond.
A part of me, though, is disappointed that Godzilla, a character I’ve been enjoying my whole life, might have just passed me by, latching on to the younger and more hip crowds. A big part of my 30s has been watching things move on from targeting me as I move into a different commercial demographic. It has been hard to let go of some things, but also a pleasure to see what the next group does with different icons and stories and ideas.
I might be getting left behind, but, of course, Godzilla was designed to outlive us all. I’m sure they will.
Thank you, as always, for reading. I hope you enjoyed the premiere of my terrible Procreate drawing skills, and of my attempting to make visualizations for the ideas that float around in my brain. How many Godzillas have you seen? How many have you eaten? What should I eat for lunch right now? I have so many questions for you, but have already taken up so much of your time. Let’s leave it here for now. Until next time.
TTFN,
b