Ever since the first Godzilla movie hit theaters in 1954, the King of the Monsters has served as a metaphor for the moment, standing in for everything from the dangers of nuclear weapons, to man’s destruction of the environment, to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Part of the power of the original lay in the fact that it was created for a Japanese audience who had recently seen their cities suffer the sort of devastation portrayed in the film, which was released shortly after the end of the American occupation regime. The most recent installment – and the first to come out of Japan since 2016’s Fukushima parable Shin Godzilla – takes place during the end and immediate aftermath of World War II, when Godzilla would have had to look hard for cities whose destruction hadn’t already been seen to by American bombers. Shame and redemption are the two great themes in Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One, which – to this lifelong Godzilla nerd – is the best iteration in years, and deserves every bit of its 98% audience and critics scores on Rotten Tomatoes.
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