Godzilla Minus One | Musings on a Masterpiece (Spoilers)

well it's been quite a holiday season for us Godzilla fans hasn't it Godzilla minus one Monarch Legacy of monsters and the trailer for the new monsterverse movie excitement all around for sure but I have to tell you guys the thing I'm most stunned by is how much praise Godzilla minus one is getting I think I'm just not used to this this is the most attention I've ever seen a Godzilla movie get in my lifetime maybe the runup to the 1998 movie might be the only other time where I felt like the main stream had its eyes on Godzilla in this way but this is better because it isn't some marketing campaign that's sucking them in it's people's reaction to the film itself before the movie released in the United States I rewatched my initial reaction to the movie when I first saw it in Japan over a month ago and I remember thinking damn maybe I raved about this movie a bit too much I mean I was all positive in that video though to be fair all my criticisms are mostly related to the story so I couldn't really go into that in a spoiler-free review but I remember feeling like oh man I hope other people like this movie as much as I did or else uh big action Bill might start being called Big action shill but it turns out thankfully people have been going nuts over this thing I see some people praising it even more than I did my second viewing of the movie occurred on November 29th in early iMac screening at a local theater where I live and I brought a friend who isn't a Godzilla fan and just overall he pretty much hates everything he's one of the more cynical people I know and even he liked it and that's when I knew okay good I'm Vindicated I think this movie is going to be just fine December 1st rolled around and that's when the reviews started pouring in from us audiences I kind of felt like I was off the hook but I have so many more thoughts on the movie that I didn't get to express in my last video especially after seeing it a second time and reading some of the responses from critics and social media I still plan on making a video about Monarch Legacy of monsters and the history of Godzilla 2014 is still in the works but I'll be honest I'm just much more interested in talking about this movie right now in fact I was thinking about maybe doing a stream possibly next week uh we could all just sort of hang out talk about the movie and we don't just have have to talk about the movie we could talk about all the all the Godzilla going on right now if you want check out my non-spoiler review or my more in-depth review that includes spoilers if you want to hear me talking about everything or mostly everything that goes on in the story something I didn't talk about much in either of my videos so far was the score the soundtrack was created by naoki Sato I'm familiar with his work in Dragon Ball super superhero masquerade hotel and the liveaction parasite movies which were Direct Ed by Godzilla minus 1's Takashi yamazaki himself and all those movies were good by the way yes even the parasite movies were good liveaction anime movies always an interesting Venture by the way I can't believe we're getting a YuYu Haka show live action that's just going to be bananas but anyway Sato score complement the Sullen atmosphere specifically when shikishima returns to Tokyo and the decision to let a lot of the scenes breathe without music was wise at times I was reminded of Akira ifukube's prayer for peace speaking of ifuku the soundtrack includes new recordings of classic Godzilla pieces the 1954 Godzilla theme you know the one well if you Godzilla historians out there remember that piece of music was intended to be the theme for the Japanese Defense Forces as they try to lure Godzilla away in the first movie but over time it just became associated with with the monster Sato also did a new recording of the 1962 Godzilla theme you'll know this one too it's goeta it wasn't until 1991's Godzilla versus King gura that eacu combined the 1954 and 1962 pieces together in what for the last few decades is now considered the Godzilla theme but we even hear pieces of music from mothur versus God Godzilla when norico is hanging from the train and I believe we get the end credit music from Godzilla versus destroya which combines Godzilla's theme with music from the King Kong versus Godzilla score I'm sorry but when Godzilla's theme is playing during the final battle even on a second watch I got goosebumps and It's oddly fitting too that the theme that was intended for the Defense Forces is now being used to show Naval veterans attempting to stop Godzilla I felt like the theme during his Ginza attack yes that's for Godzilla but here I feel like the music is for the humans it's like the music found its way back home sure someone with more musical knowledge than me which isn't saying much may find Sato and ifu sound clashing with each other but I thought the combination matched the sees song of emotions you feel throughout I was rooting for the humans and was so pumped up once they engaged Godzilla at Sea with the theme playing it's almost like us in the audience were those people back in 1954 cheering on the Defense Forces as they desperately tried to stop Godzilla so yeah it's safe to say the score resonated with me it's also cool knowing that because of the mainstream attention the movie's getting a lot of people are hearing some of those ifu pieces for the first time another thing I noticed on my second viewing is how insane Godzilla looks when he's about to fire the atomic breath for that final time and he's getting hit with the effects of the compression like his eyes are bulging out of his head and his body's shaking he looks nuts and I didn't catch that on the first viewing so that was really cool I really can't wait for the physical copy of this movie to become available because there's so many shots I want to look at more I also noticed on the second viewing that every time he uses his Atomic breath or as they call it in the subtitles uh heat ray he seems to take damage when he uses it so that's a nice little touch something I was happy to see when reading and listening to other people talk about the movie was that I wasn't the only one that was completely devastated by Akiko crying her crying may have been a stronger Force than Godzilla's uh heat ray or Atomic breath on my second watch I made sure to pay attention to Akiko when shikishima gets to the hospital to find that noro was alive because I know some people were disappointed we didn't really get any focus on Ako during that part well if you look at her during that scene and you just pay attention to her she she's barely even even looking at norico I mean she's a toddler there's only so much you can expect from her in terms of doing things on Q you know she's two years old so who knows maybe they couldn't get her to really react during that part so they said it let's just let's just focus on Shiki Shima here's what I want to know has yamazaki explained to us yet what the mark on noro's neck is if he's smart he won't because people are going to just keep talking about this I still would prefer it be radiation poisoning which doesn't necessarily mean she's going to die it just means as shikishima war is ending hers is just beginning as she will now have to battle to survive the radiation poisoning which you can survive you're it's not necessarily a death sentence and I know I've repeated this like a million times in my other videos but I I'll always think of what David kala talked about in his book about how Godzilla sometimes is like a ghost story a Japanese ghost story where you may survive your first encounter but eventually it will come for your life and this mirrors the hibakusha people who survived the blast of the atomic bombs but were impacted by the after effects if the Mark is supposed to be telling us that Godzilla's biology is now a part of her that would make her surviving more plausible as we can say Godzilla's regenerative pow saved her there is also a small line in the movie about how Godzilla's flesh is scattered throughout Ginza after his attack and that the area is too radioactive to go in which I think strengthens the case that she was exposed to his DNA and now has some sort of mutation in her I know a lot of you guys disagree with me on this but I still find that that really doesn't fit the movie some of you brought up other Godzilla movies like bolante or the ridiculous stuff that happens in other Godzilla movies but I really just that doesn't have any bearing on this individual movie the entire movie is grounded except for Godzilla but everything else should be as realistic as possible if Godzilla started singing karaoke midm movie and then turned into a giraffe and flew into outer space would you still be saying well it's Godzilla nothing makes sense it doesn't matter stop it has to be somewhat logical there can't just be nonsense on the screen the reason why I find having regenerative powers to be ridiculous is the same reason why I find the idea of her firing a heat ray out of her mouth to be ridiculous now if I had a gun to my head and needed to decide what I thought yamazaki was going for radiation poisoning or mutation I'd say the case is stronger unfortunately norico has Godzilla's cells in her now because after a second viewing I was able to confirm that the black mark under her skin is spreading or moving so it's doubtful it's just radiation poisoning I think one of the things I enjoyed the most after the second video I made was some of you guys giving me kind of a a history lesson on a few things but also learning about the military vehicles that were showcased in the movie some of you guys also helped me understand why the fish looked so strange before Godzilla showed up basically the fish's insides pop out of their mouth due to the decompression from being brought to the surface so that's why I had so much trouble identifying what the hell they were during the Odo island scene it's also a really clever foreshadowing for how they eventually try to deal with Godzilla as far as any criticism of the movie that I haven't already touched on after the second viewing I did notice it was the dream sequence where the CGI looked really bad that's probably the only time I winced regarding um the CG that dream sequence is also the scene where you notice dust or smoke in front of shikishima face and it just looks OB obviously imposed now we could give this the old all monsters attack defense and simply say well it's a dream so it's fine the CG can look like there CU it's a Dream It's a feature not a flaw so if you want to if you want to do that God bless you there's times where Godzilla is walking and I'm not talking about the dream sequence when he's in his fully mutated form he looks very stiff I noticed the same thing with Shin Godzilla now a lot of people have been citing the budget being 15 million but apparently it was less the exact number hasn't been announced yet but my goodness yamazaki has made quite the name for himself after this not just as a director but as a visual effects man and has anyone confirmed if this shot here is practical effects or CG do you have 100% confirmation what this is if it's CG then that is just unreal that's unbelievable because if you just asked me without any context you just showed me this picture and said what is this CG of practical effects I would say practical effects I also asked you guys in my last video if anyone knew the main reason why Japanese CG sometimes isn't the same level as the United States CG the most popular answer was money which leads to more manpower to work on your scenes that require computer Graphics I even had one person say that there is no difference between the CG in the US and in Japan and that it is a stylistic choice and America just does all their CG uh scenes at night I don't know about that one but I'll let you guys argue about that in the comments if you want I also noticed and this isn't a flaw this isn't a criticism there are multiple times where scenes End by just going to Black and for some reason that really it reminded me of watching a Broadway play It's almost like all right scene change go to Black and even like some of the acting is kind of a little over the top at part s and that reminded me also of Broadway a little bit and again that's not a criticism I I just found it to be interesting uh also I thought the ginsa attack could have been longer but again I don't know exactly what budget restraints they were working with it probably took so much Manpower and time just to create that entire scene there is that part with the boats with all the regular people arrive to help it's an amazing moment I just don't know the logistics of how long it would take to have all those boats tie themselves to the bigger naval ship and wasn't the whole decompression plan tied to getting Godzilla raised quickly I mean you know it's kind of a nitpick and and people who are more familiar with boats than I am could probably weigh in here but I did think about that on my second watch now as far as other criticisms of the movie that I've been seeing from other people I'd say there's two common ones I'm not counting criticism of the ending in this because I've already talked about that enough I think so again there's two big ones uh that I've just been seeing and hearing a lot the first one Godzilla didn't fight another monster now I can understand people being disappointed by that because I've always been partial to when he's fighting other monsters rather than just him going solo well apparently leading up to the movie there were leaks that said there would be more than one monster in the movie or more than one Godzilla something like that I didn't see any leaks so I don't really know that much about it so I think some people really went into the movie expecting God to fight another monster I mean the trailers did not give any indication of that so I again there must I'm assuming it was the leaks that gave people this false impression uh so they sort of set themselves up for disappointment but Godzilla minus one I mean it's more than a monster movie you I mean you got an emotional haym maker of a film and look I love watching monsters fight but I also love movies that Express something deep and and do it well so I was okay with what we got more than okay and who knows maybe we'll maybe there'll be a sequel and Godzilla will fight Angus who knows we'll get Godzilla Raids Again on steroids now the second common criticism has a lot more depth to it and honestly this is the most interesting critique of the movie that I found there's a contingent of Godzilla fans that heard that the movie was taking place in postwar 1940s Japan and thought reasonably so it was going to offer some commentary on the actions of the Imperial Japanese or maybe comment on America's actions or subsequent occupation of Japan something along those lines but as we know the movie did not go in that direction they do show Tokyo in Ruins due to the fire bombings but there's never any dialogue that's heavily critical of the Americans there are lines in the movie that criticize the former Japanese leaders and even the post-war government but like I said I think this contingent of fans wanted a more overt commentary on one of the more controversial topics like the the atomic bombings or again Imperial Japan's actions in Asia some complained about how Nagasaki and Hiroshima weren't even brought up in the movie I even read one article calling the movie a quote unquote missed opportunity so here are my thoughts on this I think a lot of this criticism can be boiled down to it wasn't what they thought it was going to be or what they thought it could be based on the setting of the movie which is fair enough even if you're just casually into history you know there's a lot that can be explored in that setting the mostly absent Allied occupying forces is something I noticed too but I was fine with it because I just assumed okay yamazaki wants to focus on the Japanese I don't think there was some Sinister intent in why he chose to mostly omit US forces I'm saying mostly because the US is not totally absent in this movie we see the US military mutated Godzilla and then tries to stop him as it makes its way towards Japan they fail to do this and they then leave it to the Japanese to deal with the monster while they deal with the Soviets if anything the United States presence is felt more in this movie than in the original in 1954's Godzilla I don't think any US forces are seen or even mentioned the only times you hear about the atomic bomb is when Dr yane is speaking with the Japanese government and then at the end of the movie after Dr sahawa dies and it's only brought up in the context of nuclear testing they stopped short of naming the United States I think David KET described it perfectly it was like watching a movie about the Frankenstein monster without Dr Frankenstein being there there's also a quick scene of the lady on the train mentioning how she survived Nagasaki but it's mentioned in such a casual way a lot of people think Godzilla was solely influenced by the atomic bombings of hirosima and Nagasaki when really the more direct influence was the Lucky Dragon 5 incident where Japanese fishermen were hit with radioactive fallout from The Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test now of course the US occupation of Japan ended in 1952 but there was still a large US military presence in Japan in 1954 when the first Godzilla movie took place and there's still US forces in Japan today yet there is essentially no mention of the United States in the original movie and with a few Exceptions there is little to no real focus on American forces in the other Japanese Godzilla movies we've gotten over the last 65 plus years so I think if you're going to criticize Godzilla minus one for being historically inaccurate for its absence of US forces then you probably need to Levy the same criticism on the original and honestly every other Japanese Godzilla movie that doesn't focus on the US military if you want to be consistent I'm sure there's people who interpret this movie where you can look at Godzilla himself as the standin for the United States there's this interesting shot where Godzilla stares up at the mushroom cloud he just created sort of like he's pondering it like wow what the hell did I just do before roaring in Triumph maybe you can look at that as a reflection of American reaction to the bombings some think it was wrong or should at least give us pause While others think it was justified in order to stop potentially even more death another sentiment that I saw come up a little before the movie came out was this sort of repulsion at the idea of depicting Japanese people during this time in any sort of sympathetic light I understand why people could or would think that way just read about the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese for a few minutes and you'll you'll sort of understand and then also there has been a history of some Japanese denying certain atrocities committed but to then take that and look at an entire group of people and deem them all to be Unworthy of sympathy because they lived in a country whose military did evil things I think that's wrong the people in postwar Japan weren't these cartoonish Devils with horns they were people like you and me that is one of the Mind shattering and scariest lessons of World War II that you don't need to be some sociopathic barbaric monster to go along with heinous things normal people living their everyday lives can easily be swayed to accept evil I'm sure some of you have heard of the book ikan in Jerusalem a report on the banality of evil and the author Hannah ardan's documenting of the trial of the Nazi Adolf ikan the quote unquote coexistence of normality and bottomless cruelty shook people to their core and still does today so in terms of Godzilla minus one I had no issue feeling sympathy for these characters I've never seen so many people who would otherwise never talk about Godzilla heaping Praise on this movie and if you guys are familiar with my videos you know I get sort of a kick out of when Godzilla gets mainstream attention because then all my friends and family are like oh that's that weird thing Bill likes and I get this stupid sense of Pride almost the movie has been celebrated widely so it has to be tough to be on the other side of this imagine giving the movie A mostly negative review when the end result has been this groundbreaking for the franchise and I don't say that mockingly I have a ton of respect for people who didn't like it and were honest about it it's tough to go against the masses especially with social media nowadays when this topic of a movie's narrative gets brought up the conversation more times than not turns into an argument as to whether film should be political or not you get a lot of the American culture War stuff that comes into it as well but I don't think Godzilla minus one fits into that whole dichotomy it's a Japanese movie that isn't concerned with modern American culture wars that being said Godzilla movies historically have had social ecological and political messages in them them sometimes explicitly and other times implicitly there are brilliant Godzilla movies that aren't subtle at all about the narrative they're pushing the first movie in 1954 is the best example of that putting all allegory and metaphor aside the final lines of the movie from Takashi shimura are as direct as you can [Music] get now on the flip side of this there are amazing Godzilla movies where the themes or messages are subtextual or seemingly non-existent if you've watched my history of Godzilla video series you know that almost every movie in the showa era no matter how silly has some sort of implicit message in it like how 1962's King Kong versus Godzilla isn't just a comedic battle between two iconic monsters it's also shinichi seawa criticizing the rampant commercialization consuming Japan ultimately I think whether you're being explicit or implicit with your messages you can make great movies with either approach and the Godzilla series is the best example of that now I do think a lot of American filmgoers are tired of the explicit approach mostly from Hollywood and when that's coupled with a poorly written script and a lackluster story you do run the risk of having your film be labeled propaganda like I said I don't think Godzilla fits into all that stuff but I'm sure there are people who are praising Godzilla minus one as a sort of reprieve from what they'd consider politics and movies and that may be true from an American perspective but to say Godzilla minus one is without any sort of message would be inaccurate sure the commentary in yamazaki movie may not be what some were expecting but it's there and it's at times just as direct as Honda's movie was can speech before the final battle is probably the most overt the movie gets with one of its messages it's a moving speech against the militarism that took the country over and the way lives were treated cheaply the movie doesn't stop there with its commentary either there's survivors guilt there's dealing with trauma there's choosing to live despite what is expected of you there's the idea that every human life is valuable and then there's the theme of individuals coming together to solve a crisis when they're left to fend for themselves Mio tanak character the naval ship captain hot he also gives a speech and it's in order to get the naval veterans on board with kenji's plan he's transparent about how poorly they were all treated during and after the war and he even gives the men the opportunity to walk away this time they'd have a choice of whether they'd put their life on the line it's probably not surprising that a message like that was being written during the covid pandemic where lots of people yamazaki included felt either let down by their governing instit tions or felt like they were on their own in an interview with the verge.com yamazaki said this quote it was right in the middle of the pandemic when I was first writing that script in those early first few weeks we had the sense of hey the government's not doing anything this is going to be up to us of course the Japanese government eventually stepped up later but I wanted this script to reflect the feeling of people realizing that presented with a problem like Godzilla they would have to rise to the occasion themselves to survive and not to be lost in all this talk of the commentary and political messaging and historical messaging and whatnot this movie is mostly a character-driven piece where it is very personal in its themes so I may be talking about some high level stuff but Shiki shima's trauma all the other characters the way they were touched by the war it all adds to the the beauty of this movie I'll just end on this topic and this video by saying I think there's a place for messages in movies whether political or otherwise but the best creators craft their message within a well-written and entertaining story first and foremost isher oh Honda did that with Godzilla and so did Takashi amazaki with Godzilla minus one thanks for listening God bless and I'll talk to you all next time

Channel: Big Action Bill

Views: 90,265

Keywords: Godzilla, Godzilla Minus One, New Godzilla Movie, Godzilla History, Godzilla Scary, Godzilla Day, Big Action Bill, ゴジラ, Takashi Yamazaki, Reiwa era, Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Koichi Shikishima, Noriko Oishi, Sakura Ando, Godzilla Feral, Godzilla Form, Godzilla Fighting, Godzilla Spoilers, Minus One Means, Minus One Spoilers, Gojira Minus One, Godzilla -1.0, Godzilla trailer, japanese godzilla movie, Godzilla Heat Ray

Id: kugVF0BAOlg

Length: 26min 21sec (1581 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 10 2023