| curl-6 said: Nice. :) I became a fan at 13 or 14; I started studying Japanese at school and my Dad started taping any Japanese movies that were on TV as a way to help me practice, and one night Godzilla vs Destoroyah was on; I was instantly hooked! And yeah, in a series of mostly fun B movies, Minus One is really something else, a genuinely great piece of cinema. The acting, the music, the direction, the writing, it's all great stuff. Even the effects work is astounding good for a film that cost just $15 million to make; less than 10% of the recent Hollywood Godzilla flicks due to Japan's film industry being a fraction the size of the US. Spoiler!
I was also fooled by the film seemingly setting up Koichi to fulfil his role as a Kamikaze; I was worried it would make the film come off as bleak and militaristic, and the twist where it subverted those expectations was great. In most films, I would've said Noriko surviving at the end would have felt contrived, but I feel like Minus One really earned it. After all, in real life, after horrific disasters, people assumed to be dead do often end up being pulled from the rubble alive even days later.
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Knowing another language is impressive!
I thought Godzilla vs. Destroyah was surely the end of the franchise! Three generations of installments later...nah, Godzilla will never really die. They'll always find a way to keep him going. It's too important to too many people.
Speaking of the effects, that heat breath is what made a lot of the difference from other Godzilla movies in terms of the stakes here, I think. It's always been a staple feature of Godzilla movies (...except well that American one from '98, but let's just pretend that didn't happen), but not like this. They lengthened the build-up and like 10-upped the power of it compared to how it's normally portrayed and that made any situation where Godzilla's building up toward unleashing it feel a lot more threatening; like everything could potentially end here. That's working smarter, not harder.
