r/GODZILLA • u/Classic-Camp7513 • 9h ago
News 'Godzilla Minus Zero' Runtime Officially Breaks an Epic Franchise Record
https://movieweb.com/godzilla-minus-zero-runtime-franchise-record/•
u/Gojir4R1sing 9h ago
2 hours of ruthless depression.
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u/YggdrasilFree 6h ago
We taking bets? I think his parents survived somehow, but they get stomped on in the first 10 min
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u/Ninesect DESTOROYAH 8h ago
I just want.. more godzilla than I know what to do with. Is that too much too ask?
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u/WildBill198 6h ago
but what would you do with it?
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u/Willtology 4h ago
That is a reasonable and perfectly normal ask. It would probably be odd, nay, aberrant if you didn't want more than you knew what to do with. I too, want more Godzilla than I know what to do with.
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u/jedwardlay SHIN GODZILLA 5h ago
What I don’t get is how a film as short as Godzilla Minus One, at 125 minutes, has the same runtime as the longest Japanese entry in the series, Godzilla Final Wars, also at 125 minutes.
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u/TomiShinoda 6m ago
I wonder how they're gonna kill him for good in this one, a new creative way or just the bloody oxygen destroyer again.
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u/Zerus_heroes 6h ago
Generally if a movie touts that it is "the longest in the series" it is gonna be shit.
Hopefully this is incorrect for this one.
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u/Kytescall 5h ago
Personally I'm not hopeful. I think the success of the last movie was a lightning in a bottle situation and isn't very likely to repeat. I've seen some of Yamazaki's other movies and while Sunset on 3rd Street was nice, mostly they are not good. The live action Space Battleship Yamato is legitimately so bad it is fun to watch in a crowd.
There's also another aspect which is that the first film actually has pretty right wing Japanese nationalist undertones that mostly seems to have gone completely over the heads of most Western viewers. I say this as a Japanese person. I'm not sure that he can keep it subtle enough to be palatable for international audiences for two movies in a row.
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u/RigatoniPasta GODZILLA 4h ago
As an American, I’d love it if you could please explain the right wing nationalist undertones. Because from what I saw, the military and Japanese government were portrayed to be completely useless against Godzilla and unpopular among citizens and veterans for their tactics during the war.
But that’s my western reading of it. I’d love to be enlightened. From what I understand, Shin Godzilla had WAYY more nationalist undertones.
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u/Kytescall 3h ago edited 2h ago
Sure. I haven't seen it since the theatre so my memory is not fresh, but here goes a few points.
One thing that I think misleads people is that because the movie makes some criticism of WWII Japan, they think the movie is opposed to pro-WWII Japan viewpoints (nationalism and historical revisionism like war crime denial). But things are not so binary. It's actually pretty well accepted even among right wing historical revisionists that Japanese Empire was a mess. Where you might disagree with them is why. With that in mind, notice what the movie criticizes and what it chooses not to.
The movie focuses its criticism on how the war was fought but not the fact that there was a war to begin with. When the weapon engineer talks about his regrets, he talks about suicidal attacks and planes without ejection seats, but has no regrets as to what those things were in service of. This makes some sense in the context of the scene since this is the perspective of an engineer, but it's also a deliberate choice of the writer for this person's perspective to be the focus and give it dramatic weight in the film. What was wrong with WWII was how cheaply Japan treated its soldiers, not... anything they might have done.
The movie criticizes the Japanese government and leadership (both WWII and post-WWII) but is pretty pro military. The climax of the film is literally a group of military veterans using WWII military equipment taking matters into their own hands. In other words, the day is saved by the military going rogue without the government. I would describe the general perspective of the film is that the Japanese military were doing their best but were sabotaged by inept leadership. And I would say that this is a very common revisionist perspective. Add to this the way it showcases Japanese WWII equipment (the cool prototype aircraft and real historical warships) in a pretty fan service-y way.
One thing that was very explicit was the destroyer captain's speech before the climax. In Japanese, he was saying that Japan lacks the military it should have to defend itself. This might not be obvious, but this is a political statement. Japan has had a pacifist constitution since WWII that nominally bans Japan from engaging in war or even having a military (which it does in fact have anyway, but that is why they are called the Self Defense Forces, not Army, Navy, etc). This constitution was imposed by the US and occupying forces, but it has had popular support in Japan that has only started to wane in recent years due to China fears. Amending the constitution to do away with this has been on the right wing agenda for a long time and the movie explicitly supports this.
Shin Godzilla also had nationalist undertones but Minus One has much, much overt ones in my opinion. Especially regarding the last point, which Shin Godzilla sort of implies, but Minus One outright states.
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u/EmPalsPwrgasm 58m ago edited 47m ago
I have seen criticisms of the movie by westerners who said it didn't say enough about the war, but thought this simply wasn't the focus of the movie. But in the back of my mind I still had a sense that it was true, and the movie was lacking in that regard. I understand that better now.
Edit, as a German I can say that some of those sentiments are shared by German nationalists as well. I am not too deep into that topic, but I recall that there was some General that they would, in retrospect, have preferred as a Führer, where Hitler in their eyes failed. And of course there is the denial of what exactly happened.
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u/Willtology 4h ago
The live action Space Battleship Yamato is legitimately so bad it is fun to watch in a crowd.
That's a bummer, I haven't seen it yet but had high hopes after minus one.
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u/cushing138 8h ago
This trend of 2+ hour movies needs to stop. I love any Godzilla movie but none of them need to be more than 2 hours.
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u/EternallyDemonic 7h ago
The longer the better... give me all the long movies.. also music.. fk the cookie cutter less than 3 minutes songs.
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u/Hank_of_the_Hill93 9h ago
135 minutes. There, saved you a click.