Regardless of the generalized American sensibility stating that motion pictures with subtitles are dumb and boring and would possibly as effectively be in black and white or one thing, curiosity in Toho’s Godzilla Minus One has reached a fever pitch for one necessary cause: It seems so, so metallic.
And to listen to critics and audiences describe it, it is so metallic. The movie presently boasts a stratospheric 97% vital approval ranking on Rotten Tomatoes, with solely two detractors: A YouTuber, and a man from The Orlando Sentinel who gave The Flash a greater assessment than Killers of the Flower Moon. The movie takes Godzilla again to his roots in postwar Japan, serving as a reverent reimagining of the kaiju’s first look again in 1954. Divorced of the MonsterVerse and the fractured continuity of the earlier 36 entries within the collection, it stands alone, screaming and exploding Tokyo with unstoppable beams of atomic fury, artistically talking.
All of which is to say that, whereas the studio has but to announce plans for a model of Godzilla Minus One dubbed in English – or into any language in addition to Japanese, for that matter – you shouldn’t let that be what stops you from checking it out. By nearly all accounts, the film is a considerate return to type for Japanese cinema’s most enduring allegory for the risks of the nuclear age, sloughing off many years of what amounted to luchadors in rubber fits in favor of the genuinely haunting imagery and concepts current within the unique film. In addition to, the sound of a 200-foot prehistoric rage beast screaming into the sky transcends language. And in case it doesn’t, subtitles are your besties, for now.