How ‘Godzilla Minus One’ reimagined the monster and snagged an Oscar nod

That’s how filmmaker Takashi Yamazaki pictured Godzilla. His version of the cinematic monster both nods to the 1954 original and goes fully berserk with visual effects that have been honored with an Academy Award nomination—the first for a Godzilla picture, of which there’ve been dozens.

The creature storms into Tokyo in Yamazaki’s “Godzilla Minus One," but the Japanese movie crept up on America. It appeared in U.S. theaters in December with virtually no advance marketing, then emerged as a critical darling and word-of-mouth hit.

At the domestic box office, “Godzilla Minus One" became the No. 3 highest-grossing international film ever (ranking behind “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and “Life Is Beautiful," respectively, and just ahead of “Parasite," best-picture winner at the 2020 Oscars). 

“Godzilla Minus One," including a black-and-white version, took in $56.4 million through Feb. 1, when it had to exit theaters so as not to compete with a different Godzilla movie coming soon from Hollywood.

The human drama in “Godzilla Minus One" was key to the monster movie’s success, and proved there can be emotional stakes in a genre that has long relied on giant spectacle. The story takes place in the aftermath of World War II, as Japan rebuilds from zero. 

“Minus One" refers to Godzilla’s effect on that national struggle and the already traumatized characters in the film.

After decades of takes on the monster, ranging from goofy to heroic, “I wanted to remind audiences that Godzilla was a metaphor for the atom bomb and war, to some degree," says Yamazaki, the writer, director and visual-effects supervisor of “Godzilla Minus One." Speaking through a translator, he explained how the film visually drives home those themes in a few scenes.

Night vision

The movie opens on an island outpost during the final days of World War II. A crew of mechanics and a kamikaze pilot, who reneged on his suicidal duty, get attacked by a creature mythologized by locals.

“Through Godzilla they are dragged back into this conflict and struggle" of war, Yamazaki says. The film team shrouded Godzilla in darkness and decided to introduce it at a smaller scale than usual in movies. At roughly 50 feet tall, this Godzilla moves more like a marauding dinosaur.

“Once something becomes too gargantuan, it almost falls into the background and doesn’t instill the same fear it does when it’s right up in your face," the director says. Later the creature blows up in size and rage level due to nuclear testing in the Pacific.

Godzilla meets ‘Jaws’

After the war, the guilt-wracked former kamikaze pilot (played by Ryunosuke Kamiki), joins the crew of a ramshackle mine-sweeping boat. Their encounter with Godzilla at sea evokes “Jaws," from the fin-like way Godzilla’s spikes slice through the water, to the crew exploding a mine in the monster’s mouth.

Yamazaki, 59, says “Jaws" loomed large when he was growing up in Japan’s Nagano prefecture, and eventually influenced his design of the sea chase in “Godzilla Minus One."

“I really wanted to watch ‘Jaws’ when I was a young kid, but for various reasons I couldn’t. I had to imagine what [the shark] looked like from the various articles I was reading and from what my friends told me. I had imagined this giant creature, and the poster also implied that it was huge," Yamazaki says, recalling his surprise at how small the shark seemed when he finally saw the Steven Spielberg movie around age 10. With Godzilla, “perhaps I wanted to recreate what I had imagined before seeing ‘Jaws.’"

The monster hits town

Godzilla is about 160 feet tall when it stomps into Tokyo, towering over the pre-skyscraper 1940s cityscape, including one rooftop where a news crew covers the devastation. “I wanted Godzilla, specifically his head, in the same frame as human characters because that’s where a lot of the fear factor comes from," Yamazaki says.

Unlike the savage look of Godzilla in smaller form, the dynamics of the colossal version reference those of Godzilla from 70 years ago, when the monster on screen was a man in a rubber suit. That vintage version—created by the same Japanese company whose studio, Toho International, produced “Godzilla Minus One"—is an image many viewers have “imprinted in their minds," Yamazaki says.

“We didn’t simulate any muscle movement on the larger Godzilla," he says. “If it felt too muscly and too animated, the Japanese moviegoing audience would somehow instinctively feel, this isn’t Godzilla."

Cutting-edge techniques, however, helped the filmmakers sell the realism of a godlike creature bent on destruction, rendered in gnarly close-ups and a blast of nuclear breath.

High profile but absent

“Godzilla Minus One" is considered a strong contender to win best visual effects at the Academy Awards on March 10. The movie, which reportedly cost about $15 million to make, is going up against nominees from Hollywood with much bigger budgets: “The Creator," “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," “Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One" and “Napoleon."

Despite the spotlight on “Godzilla Minus One," the movie is not in theaters and not yet available for home viewing in the U.S. Toho International removed its movie in February under the terms of a partnership that the studio’s parent company has with Hollywood studio Legendary Entertainment. The next installment in Legendary’s “MonsterVerse" franchise, “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire," comes out March 29.

“It is a little unfortunate that with the Oscars coming up so soon that some people aren’t going to be able to see it," says Yamazaki, the first director to be nominated for a visual-effects Oscar since Stanley Kubrick’s win for “2001: A Space Odyssey" in 1969. But Yamazaki notes that the American success of “Godzilla Minus One" came as a big surprise. “We never expected our theatrical run to run against the Hollywood version in the first place."