Releasing just before 2023’s close, “Godzilla Minus One” took the world by storm. Produced on a budget reportedly under $15 million, “Minus One” earned Toho Studios roughly $100 million at the global box office by making people from all walks of life do that rarest of feats — flock to the movie theater.
Sure, the Godzillaheads out there eagerly anticipated the King of the Monsters’ 70th birthday celebration, but there simply aren’t enough of us them out there to explain why this movie was such a success.
How many major studio releases did you attend in the last five years that were simply awful? A lot. Almost every notable “pop culture” release in recent memory prioritized ideology over storytelling. “Minus One” did not, and it was rewarded.
To be sure, “Minus One” is an ideological movie. Godzilla, in general, came into being as a metaphor for the cultural and physical devastation caused by the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But it doesn’t lean into the gay-race communism that most contemporary films do. Instead, it explores the psychological toll of survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder and the importance of family, community, and mutual self-sacrifice.
The film opens by showing protagonist Kōichi Shikishima defecting from his duty as a kamikaze pilot during the final days of the Second World War. While wracked with neurotic ambivalence as he contemplates abandoning his suicidal obligation, the island-based mechanics’ outpost upon which he has taken refuge gets attacked by the film’s eponymous reptilian. Shikishima,
