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Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Godzilla Minus One is perhaps the final time I will go to the cinema in 2023 and I couldn't end the year on a better note. It's been six years since Shin Godzilla came out and this film seems to have come out of nowhere but is easily in my top ten of the year. Set at the tail end of the second world war, kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima pretends their is a fault with his plane and at that moment Godzilla strikes, the rest of the story sees Shikishima get his courage back to take on Godzilla with a new romance with Noriko and a baby girl that Noriko 'found'.

The main difference between Toho Godzilla films and Hollywood Godzilla films is that Toho is more about the humans and the effect that Godzilla has on them whereas Hollywood is about the destruction of places which isn't a bad thing but its nice to have different types of Godzilla films. Sometimes the human aspect of a Godzilla film hasn't always been the best. In the case of this film it is what makes it one of the best non-Hollywood Godzilla films for quite sometime. I have a great fondness for Shin Godzilla but this was a huge step up. I don't know if its because the setting was unusual for Godzilla films in that its set in the past but it worked to create a fresh feeling to the franchise.

Godzilla himself apparently only appears on screen for 11 minutes but its used effectively and due to the fact that the human story was interesting I found myself not being that fussed that we weren't getting enough Godzilla. I know this might be something other people disagree with me on but its a common complaint in Godzilla films but I think that the balance was just right in this. The Godzilla scenes were really well done and we have come a long way since the early days of the franchise and seeing Godzilla regenerate when a part of his face melted was really cool to see and even though we know that Godzilla never really dies they do end it in a way that I found satisfying even if Noriko's sudden return was a bit of a silly inclusion. 

I thought it was funny that one of the trailers that played before the film was Godzilla x Kong which looks tonally and thematically different to Godzilla Minus One and I have a gut feeling that GXK wont be as good as this film. Hopefully we get another Toho Godzilla soon and not in six years.

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