I took the kids yesterday and we enjoyed it. We don't go to the local AMC IMAX shows because the seats are terrible, but the screen we went to was just fine. It was very loud. A decent crowd for a Friday afternoon, I'd say not quite half full. Our AMC had a stack of Godzilla Minus One IMAX mini posters so we each took one home.

I've seen at least 30+ Godzilla movies. This was by far the best one of them. I have never cared this much about the human storylines in these movies, ever. The kamikaze redemption arc was phenomenal (I saw the ending coming) and I was genuinely moved by his heartache, and we felt for the people of Japan in a way I don't think I have in these movies before. Seeing the rebuilding from WWII did, I think, play a big part in that. The kid who played Akiko did really well! The retro music theme cues were tremendous! We were even scared a little bit here and there, and I can't recall the last time I could say that about a Godzilla movie.

The budget is 100% on the screen, it's unbelievable. I got to thinking how sometimes things were clearly digital but, well, this is a Godzilla movie. We are so used to obvious models, costumes, wires, zippers, etc. I mean, are we really going to be disappointed if the computer graphics aren't perfect in a "Man in Suit!" movie?! They did such a good job!

I'm really glad to see this doing well.

This movie did not disappoint in the slightest. It's funny how Gojira's lack of screentime in Godzilla (2014) felt like a gigantic cocktease, but I didn't care one bit when he was offscreen here. Unlike any of the Monsterverse entries (or any of the previous Toho movies, really), I was fully invested in the human drama here. Yes, certain story beats were extremely predictable, but I was so invested in the characters that I did not care. As others have said, you can cut Gojira out of this movie and still have an excellent movie.

I can't wait for the UHD BD of this movie.

I've seen so many reviews state that Godzilla is a metaphor for Japan's nuclear fears, and while I agree with that in the original, I think in this version, the monster represents a general, national PTSD in the aftermath of the war. There's more talk about the Japanese government harming people than A-bombs. But then the humans also display a fair amount of nationalism stemming from grassroots. If you did the same thing in a modern-set American film, it would feel like it's inspired by the Tea Party. So that's a testament to how they're able to really take advantage of the time and place (versus a lot of Big-G movies that could really just take place anywhere).

It made me wonder what other issues could be tackled through the lens of Godzilla and if the public in Japan and abroad would be receptive to that.

I saw the movie again tonight in 4DX. I last saw Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning in 4DX back in the summer and it was fun.

Let me just say, seeing a Godzilla movie in 4DX is freaking wild and took it up several notches. It was literally like a 6.0 earthquake hit the room. The chair was shaking like crazy with every major G action piece. I had to hold on to my popcorn for dear life or it would have almost certainly spilled all over the place.

The theater also had wind effects as well, which also really added to the atmosphere. Movie was awesome again and 4DX was a crazy experience. Not every theater supports the format. I saw it in a CGV theater, which is a South Korean owned chain. It's the only one that has 4DX near me. I think some Regals do have it. But, if you get bad motion sickness, then it's definitely not for you. The ticket is a true premium format pricing. It was $23.

I will add one thing about the movie. The little girl who plays Akiko is a great child actor for such a young age. She cried on cue and it was really realistic and heartbreaking during some of the really emotional scenes.

The Godzilla scenes in this were thrilling, and his design was outstanding. I love how they still made him look like a guy in a suit, and it worked perfectly during the rampage through the city. All the low-angle shots really sold the enormity of Godzilla.

I always feel a bit uncomfortable with child "performances" like this. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I just assume someone makes a loud noise or something to startle the kid and film their real crying.

Yeah, the physics involved with giant monsters are really problematic.

Aside from the "sqaure-cube" business, you also get into things that you wouldn't normally consider like temperature regulation and energy consumption. And what does a creature of that immense size eat? And does it maintain a breeding population?

I've always found the square-cube thing interesting. If you take a typical human that is six feet tall and two hundred pounds, and double his size to twelve feet, then he's going to weight sixteen hundred pounds because you're not only doubling the height, but the width and depth as well. An eighteen-foot tall man would weight weight 5,400 pounds instead of the common-sense expected 600 pounds. Scale him up to the size of godzilla, and you're looking at fifty million pounds! And even then, you're looking at a ton of energy needed to maintain that mass, and a normally-proportioned human body would not be able to support it without collapsing into a big pile of red goo.

How refreshing, the director of Godzilla Minus One thanks the North American Fans for the success.
https://comicbook.com/anime/news/god...ge-to-america/

Quote:

"We're excited by the tremendous response in North America. I've been reading the fan feedback on social media and am very encouraged by the passionate comments based on a thorough analysis of the film. In some theaters, I've heard there was even applause. Thank you for warmly receiving our Godzilla."

Now if only he could encourage people to visit his earlier works and see what they’ve been missing all along! This movie is literally a compendium of his favorite tropes, with Godzilla the massive cherry on top. It’s not a collection of writerly and directorial flourishes finally coalescing into his magnum opus; he’s been doing this in top form for over 20 years. It honestly boggles that, even prior to MINUS ONE, some North American distributor didn’t realize the quality and translatability of a larger selection of his previous films, most of them incorporating gorgeous visual effects. As far as I know, only his live-action anime/manga adaptations like the two PARASYTE films, his first DORAEMON animated film (he co-directed the sequel just this year) and the live-action SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO (another adaptation) have been released on disc in North America (happy to be corrected on this, of course). Maybe LUPIN III as well? That’s certainly nothing to sneeze at, but there’s a nice list of others that can hopefully be dusted off in light of MINUS ONE.

It's like you've known me my whole life.

Has there been any word on when this will be digital or is that up in the air because of how well it's doing in theaters?

I hope when it's time for a home video release, someone like Arrow picks it up and gives us a fancy limited UHD BD set.

I wasn't aware of these at all. Thanks for the leads. I've seen the TV anime series of Parasyte, which was released here. And I've been watching Doraemon films for years, always in Japanese with no subs, I've seen the live-action YAMATO in the Japanese video store (no subs), but never thought to pick it up. Now I think I will. Thanks.

Toho's going to find they have a bidding war for Minus One. Either that or they release it here themselves! (I hope not, they're not known for high quality Blu Ray releases.) But, the point still stands - Minus One is going to be a big seller on disc!

If Toho release it themselves, wouldn't it be their first English-friendly home video release?

Probably. At the same time I'm pretty sure this is the first time they've released a move in the U.S. themselves, too.

No problem. The US edition of Yamato (with subs, of course, plus some good bonus material) is OOP, I think, but can still be had for reasonable prices on Amazon marketplace. The PARASYTE live action films are both in a combo pack that’s still available. Not sure his second DORAEMON movie is on disc yet, but the first one DORAEMON: STAND BY ME is a real treat in 3D if you’re equipped. The only 3D Blu-ray I’m aware of is the Hong Kong edition, which you can still get for about $30 on various sites, including eBay. I double checked my earlier comment and his LUPIN III: THE FIRST is on disc over here, and still reasonably priced. Totally forgot I signed it out from the library here. Beautiful animation.

I’m really hoping, though, that a U.S. company gets the rights to all three of his ALWAYS films, as they’re literally stuffed with everything people seem to be loving about the GODZILLA film aside from Godzilla (although as noted around here previously, he makes an appearance as well): extremely well-developed characters, a deep sense of nostalgia underpinning heartwarming and heartbreaking plotlines, and identical post-war setting that stretches into the mid-60’s by the third film, very similar political themes and subtext, and of course outstanding visual effects (for their time) to completely recreate the Tokyo of that era.

I have Lupin III: The First in a bin somewhere. I've been meaning to watch it. Does his other work incorporate real world politics and sort of dissect Japanese nationalism? That was the big reason this worked for me, although I would have liked a line or two that brought up their own atrocities.

I reviewed Lupin III: The First for this very site. It was my first exposure, though I have since gone a bit deeper. Fun stuff, and it makes me even more hype to see G -1.

(Just trying to drive a little more traffic to the dead part of the site. )

I don't think his other movies lean into that stuff as heavily, but then none of them had the kind of gigantic metaphor you get with Godzilla, and he's matured enough throughout his career to go all-in with MINUS ONE. I guess ETERNAL ZERO and GREAT WAR OF ARCHIMEDES are his most obvious films to deal with real-world politics, to a degree, and the ALWAYS films do touch on thorny issues (of the eras) on occasion, but with subtlety. To me his movies feel more nostalgic than nationalistic, even when they're not set in the past, but I suppose the two go hand in hand in cinema from lots of places. I think Yamazaki's primary goal, coming as he does from a visual effects background and supervising the effects on most of his own movies, has always been to make popular big-budget effects-driven movies (with a touch of that Spielberg schmaltz) that maybe evoke a bit of nationalism, a lot of nostalgia, critique both here and there, and add some cuteness that does push the limit sometimes, but mostly to just entertain on a larger scale.

Here's some trailers for the ones that might be worth watching at least once. Some have been released in North America and can still be found pretty cheap on old DVDs or Blu-rays, or maybe at your local library. I'm sure the FX in his some of them will look a bit dated now, but his storytelling has always been pretty solid:

JUVENILE (2000):

RETURNER (2002)

ALWAYS: SUNSET ON THIRD STREET (2005)
(this one was his breakout smash and swept the Japanese Academy Awards that year)
Can't find a trailer for ALWAYS 2, sadly, but it's as good as the first and was an even bigger success.

SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO (2010)

ALWAYS SUNSET ON THIRD STREET 3 (2012)

THE ETERNAL ZERO (2013)

DORAEMON: STAND BY ME (2014)

PARASYTE PART 1 (2014)

PARASYTE PART 2 (2015)

THE GREAT WAR OF ARCHIMEDES (2019)

LUPIN III: THE FIRST (2019)

I have Returner on DVD. It's derivative of a lot of other movies (like Transformers, The Matrix, and even includes a sequence where Takeshi Kaneshiro essentially imitates Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible II) but a whole lot of fun nonetheless.

The first Yamazaki movie I ever picked up was actually his first film, JUVENILE, on a Hong Kong VCD from a Toronto shop years before I lived here, mainly because the artwork looked cool, but the first movie of his that I watched was RETURNER, which I likewise got in the same store a couple years later on a non-anamorphic Hong Kong DVD. I recall seeing a grainy trailer online somewhere in those pre-YouTube days and immediately sensing that MATRIX and (notably pre-Michael Bay) TRANSFORMERS vibe. A little while after that I read that the director had debuted with JUVENILE, so suddenly I had to dig that out. It’s obviously aimed a little more at kids, and it likewise feels a bit derivative of 80’s Hollywood special effects-driven kids’ movies like EXPLORERS or FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR, even ET. Knowing his background in visual effects, it’s easy to figure that he probably saw a lot of American FX movies and wanted to bring that game to Japanese genre films when he got the chance.

On a semi-related note, I read that he said his budget for MINUS ONE was actually a fair bit less than the widely reported $15 million (apologies if that’s already been brought up here). I saw an amusing online comment saying that for the cost of one SHE-HULK episode, we could have two GODZILLA movies.

I thought this was the best Godzilla movie by a very very large margin and easily the best movie I saw this year. I think it is an instant classic. Almost perfect in every way. Wonderfully directed and filmed. As mentioned looked like a $200 million movie not a sub $20 million one and the Godzilla portions were squee. And it was actually exciting. Been a while since I saw a movie that was actually exciting

Expanding to more theaters tomorrow. I know some here aren’t theater goers, so you’re going to have to wait longer.

I'll probably go see this over the weekend. Glad to see it's doing well here.

This is great news, as it potentially means more films of its ilk making their way stateside. I just hope studios/distributors don't take the wrong message from this film's success and simply assume "what the people want is more kaiju movies, so let's flood the market with kaiju".