{"id":60914,"date":"2023-12-13T13:43:28","date_gmt":"2023-12-13T13:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/?guid=b1875b759b7a3f0be86a857287efe363"},"modified":"2023-12-13T13:43:28","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T13:43:28","slug":"godzilla-minus-one-review-precision-tooled-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/13\/godzilla-minus-one-review-precision-tooled-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"Godzilla Minus One review \u2013 Precision-tooled fun"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A<\/span>nyone who has the temerity to write off Godzilla (fucking Godzilla!) as a spent force of franchise filmmaking will need to backtrack right now. On the evidence of Takashi Yamazaki\u2019s rip-snorting historical action epic, Godzilla Minus One, there\u2019s still some nuclear-powered juice in the lumbering metaphorical lizard yet.<\/p>\n

The industrious director, who also wrote the screenplay and collaborated on the (very slick) special effects work, strips the story back to basics, keeping context and exposition to a minimum and leaning on robust, timeworn plot mechanics that focus on delivering chunky thrills.<\/p>\n

The filmmaker has been open in interviews about his love of Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan, and the evidence is up there on screen. But he has not pilfered their stylistic tics, but more their supreme storytelling tactics and the slow, intense build-up to a big finale. It\u2019s a \u201cback to basics\u201d film which replays the story with a very straight bat, and it seems that the weird variations on the Godzilla mythos (see 2016\u2019s Shin Godzilla<\/a>) have been swept aside from something more purely entertaining.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 1945 in Japan, and things are not going well on the World War Two front, to put it mildly. Even the kamikaze pilots are finding excuses to not sacrifice their lives for what they now see as a lost cause \u2013 such is the case with pilot K\u014dichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), who lands his plane on an island service base, complaining of machine faults as a way to shirk his nationalistic responsibility.<\/p>\n

Unlucky for him and the gang of engineers who take him in, Godzilla decides to roll up from the sea and pay them a smashy-smashy visit, which results in widespread murder. Shikishima, scared out of his wits, doesn\u2019t have the nerve to fire upon the beast from the cockpit of his downed plane, and is thus blamed for the wipeout.<\/p>\n

Back in Tokyo and racked with guilt, he takes in a woman and her orphan child and decides to join a crew of seabound mine sweepers in order to pay his \u2013 and their \u2013 way. It\u2019s not long before he\u2019s got some more face-time with his scaly, heat ray-blasting pal who, it transpires, can self-heal from all the heavy ordinance fire it takes. It\u2019s after this second big action set piece that the touchpaper is lit for a grand climax which plays out in classic heist movie style: we hear the details and justifications for the madcap plan to destroy Godzilla in immaculate detail, and then must palm-sweat intensely as it all precariously plays out.<\/p>\n

The film and its subtexts all say one thing: don\u2019t prod the monster. Godzilla, in its defence, only reacts violently when humans start to shoot at it. And the same lesson can be taken when it comes to nuclear diplomacy in the postwar period, although one may question the notion suggested here that Japan entirely brought on their problems when it came to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<\/p>\n

Yet Yamazaki\u2019s film works as a perfect entry point to the franchise and doesn\u2019t require any prior knowledge of Godzilla or his city-levelling pals. It\u2019s precision-tooled in terms of structure, almost to the point of airlessness, but you\u2019d be hard-pressed to knock back the final 45-minute showdown as anything less than an impressive feat by a filmmaker orchestrating and charting the fine processes of an epic battle.<\/p>\n

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