Godzilla Minus One Was the Best Movie of 2023, and It Belongs Among My All-Time Favorites

I do not know that there has ever been a movie, out of the hundreds I have seen across every genre, that hit me as hard and grabbed my soul as strongly as Godzilla Minus One. I had already done a non-spoiler review, one where I admit I was a bit scatterbrained because I was still processing what I had just watched, plus a separate spoiler review. I still have not fully found the words to describe how I feel about this movie, but I hope this piece gets a lot of eyeballs, because it is something I never thought I would make but think needs to be made.

I am not going to sit here and say Godzilla Minus One is the best movie ever made. That would be a dumb and silly thing to say, the kind of thing a fanboy would say. But it would be hard for me to lie and say that this movie, sitting alongside my catalog of favorites from Back to the Future to Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings films and Spider-Man 2, The Shawshank Redemption and Memento, does not end up ranking among them. Not necessarily above them, but among greatness. I never thought that was possible for a Godzilla film.

Takashi Yamazaki Turns a Monster Movie Into a Serious Drama Everyone Should See

From the pen of writer, director and visual effects supervisor Takashi Yamazaki, this movie transcends being a monster movie about a giant lizard and becomes, in my opinion, a serious drama and the best film of 2023. Everybody needs to see it, whether or not they are a Godzilla fan, and it does not matter if they are a fan of Japanese culture either. This is a film that, to me, goes beyond any MCU movie I have seen in the past ten years or any great Nolan or Tarantino film I have experienced in a theater.

This is the one movie that has made me not just ask my friends to watch it, but almost demand it in what I called a "somewhat authoritarian way." I apologize if I have done that to anyone, but this needs to be experienced in a theater, and I hoped everyone would see it because it means that much to me.

The Anti-War Story Beneath the Monster: Nuclear Fear, Family and Survival

The script can appeal to anybody who has ever had some kind of dilemma, some kind of overarching depression or fear. Godzilla has always represented the Japanese fear of nuclear power and what it did to Japan in the 1940s. Ironically, we now live in a world where, at least to some, it can feel like we are on a bad trajectory as a civilization. I am not going to get political, and you can watch whatever news outlet you trust, but if you look at what is going on in the world right now, it is not necessarily peaceful.

Godzilla Minus One tells the story of a family coming together through tragedy, and of surviving after having your entire life taken from you. Most of us watching are never going to experience war, never going to come home and find out our parents were killed in a firebombing, never going to face a life or death situation where you have to react instantly or you are gone, and never going to have our own leaders tell us to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good. Yet the Japanese, and several other armies throughout history, have done exactly that. We live a lot more privileged now than we did as a civilization eighty some years ago.

Six Character Arcs in Two Hours and Five Minutes on a $15 Million Budget

The script and its two hour and five minute runtime surprised me because it manages to give arcs not just to several main characters but to side characters as well. Watching the film a third time, I realized it has about six character arcs, and by the end, six characters, and really all of Japan when you dig deeper, have been changed from where they started. The film is that powerful.

It is not only the best movie of 2023, it downright embarrasses the Hollywood system that keeps pumping out films that are, in my words, "all sizzle and no steak." This movie had a fifteen million dollar budget and yet accomplished more and looked better than most of what was in American theaters that year. Obviously pay and the movie industry work differently in Japan, but it shows that Godzilla Minus One is more steak than sizzle, a filet mignon cooked by one of the greatest chefs in the world, and that chef is Takashi Yamazaki, who has made other great films before, including anime films.

My First Viewing Left Me Overwhelmed and Second-Guessing Myself

I saw the movie three times, and the first showing was so powerful I did not know how to process it, which is why my non-spoiler review came across scatterbrained. Driving home from the theater, my first thought was that I was going to have to tell people a Godzilla movie should be nominated for best picture, and that they were going to point and laugh at me, think I was a goof, a sellout critic, or a fanboy.

I have grown up with Godzilla, that much is true, but this is way more than a Godzilla film. None of my other favorite movies ever gave me the feeling this one gave me, and I could never have predicted that this, of all movies, would affect me this much. I was sitting there extremely emotional but still trying to stay rational.

My Second Viewing Revealed the Structure, and the Scariest Godzilla Ever

The second time I saw the film, in IMAX, I picked up on more of the subtleties and the things foreshadowed in the first act that pay off in the last act. That is when I realized the structure and the writing are absolutely brilliant, something I have not seen in most recent movies, matched only by some of the great classic films of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, at least in the American market, since the foreign market has a lot more variety.

Knowing the outcome the second time created the reverse effect for me. It made the film more powerful, not less, because it created a sense of dread, not just for the people onscreen experiencing the Godzilla attack, but for my own composure. There is a scene about forty five minutes into the movie that I have told people is probably the most terrifying, tragic and horrific scene I have ever seen in a movie, and I have watched dozens if not hundreds of horror films. The director set out to make this the scariest version of Godzilla ever, and that is exactly what he is.

I have been told by people that seeing Halloween and The Exorcist was emotionally moving, and I have been told by older people that if you were alive in 1977 when Star Wars came out, that was all anybody talked about for weeks. I am not comparing Godzilla Minus One to Star Wars or saying it will become that, especially given what has happened to the Star Wars franchise since. But it may be possible that a variant of me exists somewhere in the multiverse who was sobbing for hours, or shaking after the screening from the emotional ride the film provided. I am not normally an emotional guy at the movies, and yet this one touched nerves inside me that I never knew existed, similar to feelings I have only had from real world events, though I want to be clear this film itself was not a real tragedy for me.

This Godzilla Is Sadistic, and Naoki Sato's Score Pays Tribute to Akira Ifukube

The film carries a powerful message not just through the humans of Tokyo being knocked down and rebuilding after a torturous war, but through Godzilla himself, who is damaged and rebuilds each time. The antagonistic monster is not that different from the humans who created him. This version of Godzilla, unlike others, is not just a force of nature. He is sadistic, he wants to hurt people, and he enjoys hurting people and animals, unlike the majority of Godzilla films where he is the protagonist. He has cold and evil eyes that instill dread and fear, exactly as the director intended, and I never thought CGI could pull that off.

Naoki Sato's score shook every pore of my body watching in IMAX, hearing the classic Akira Ifukube Godzilla theme reworked into a new version. Sato's take, to be honest and a little controversially, sounded more powerful and menacing than even the original score, and it worked as a tribute to Ifukube.

A Tribute to Ishiro Honda's 1954 Original

I tweeted at director Takashi Yamazaki that Ishiro Honda smiles down on him from heaven, and I believe that is true. This film was the closest to capturing the message of Honda's original 1954 film Godzilla, known as Gojira in Japan, with its strong anti-war message. The story moves from a society that felt sacrifice was honorable despite the obvious fact they would not win the war, to a society that understands life is worth living.

My Third Viewing: Dread Mixed With Optimism, and Why to See It in a Theater

By my third viewing, everything came together. The film broke me and rebuilt me. The feeling of dread mixed with optimism, to me, equals drive, sometimes fear of losing everything is what drives you stronger than any other goal, the willingness to live, as the character Tachibana embodies. To me he has the most powerful arc of all the characters except for Koichi himself, but I leave that for people to discover for themselves.

This is worth seeing in a theater with great sound and video, not waiting for streaming and not pirating it. Every single person I recommended it to came back with shock, awe, suspense, and many moved to tears. About ninety five percent of them, a lot of them grown men, were moved to tears by Godzilla Minus One, and that was, in my words, "not on my 2023 bingo card." Out of my favorite movies ever, including Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption and The Crow, this one is special because it is a movie I needed to watch at this point in my life, and I think a lot of people out there need this movie to remind them to live.