With streaming titans and digital platforms battling for viewer attention, an old master has made a jarring comeback, blurring the lines between nostalgia and contemporary cinematic reinvention. Takashi Yamakazi’s Godzilla Minus One (2021) is no ordinary giant monster movie. Its Netflix debut has ignited a global hit of epic magnitude – with the exception of Japan – and perhaps even a few debates about how you market movie spin-offs without their primary characters? What’s on show is more than just a camera angle. On the one hand, it’s a crowd-pleasing action blockbuster, but on the other hand, it’s a meticulously constructed art installation. It’s also a testament to global digital distribution, with its presence on Apple TV, Amazon and Google Play worldwide. Let’s explore the uncanny escape of Godzilla Minus One and discuss why this compilation of hidden cinema treasures matters.
Underneath everything, ‘Godzilla Minus One’ is the story of a timeline – a thing that crosses history and nuclear destruction. It is a sequel to the end of the Second World War. It shows us where the kaijū comes from. In the story, Kōichi Shikishima, a kamikaze pilot, chooses to go to Odo Island, instead of crashing his plane into an American ship.
Its decision to make ‘Godzilla Minus One’ available to audiences worldwide, with the exception of Japan (where the classic is still in distribution) and France (whose own company, Cinemart, secured pre-emptive rights back in the 1960s) is yet another fascinating and unanswerable question about distribution rights, audience desires, and geographic exclusivity. For those around the world who will now be able to experience the original Japanese version of one of cinema’s most iconic creatures, it is a night to celebrate for viewers who feel historically deprived of a rare and unusual widescreen treat. And yet, for the residents of Japan and France, who have waited decades for the legal entitlement to watch their monster return in all his bilingual glory, they are left to wonder what they did to deserve this strange dilemma of waiting on the sidelines.
For those wishing to see Godzilla Minus One, you can easily rent the colour version for $5.99 or $14.99 to buy the same two versions (colour film or colourised black and white) at Apple TV or Amazon and GOOGLE PLAY.
But Godzilla Minus One felt like it told the monster’s story in its entirety by showing his birth in the sea. With the narrative situated in the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings at the end of the Second World War, the film emerges as a complex reflection on the monster’s origins as well as the consequences of humanity’s worst inventions.
Godzilla, far from being just a destructive monster rampaging across an urban landscape, is an idea of resilience, a mirror that reveals society’s fears and simultaneously its capacity for rebirth. Godzilla Minus One continues that tradition by creating something wholly new that, even among its long-time fans, promises to connect on an entirely different level with much younger generations of storytellers and viewers.
Tracing ‘Godzilla Minus One’ as it makes its way through the world wide web reveals not only how the technology of filmmaking has evolved – but also how new forms of movie consumption are reshaping the motion pictures we watch. With newer technologies and distribution platforms, such as Netflix and the GOOGLE PLAY store, making their mark on the world of cinema, ‘Godzilla Minus One’ is just one of many proofs that tradition and innovation remain an awesome combination in contemporary movie magic.
Oh, and Google? Google is… good? The name has come to serve as shorthand for the limitless ether of the digital, but just consider for a moment the value of Google (now simply ‘search’, if you will) to a devotee of Godzilla Minus One. Google is the service that lets you dive outside yourself and into the context and conversation and new work that revolves around the burning rock. It is the means by which a Godzilla Minus One superfan can type into a search bar, and discover not only the Jean-Paul Gabilliet-penned article in the French journal Inrockuptibles that delved into the history of cinema’s most unique face-off, but discussion boards full of fans arguing over Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla (’74). It is the sphere that lets any user, bypassing the intermediary cineaste, plumb any Godzilla for its mere armature, and then clothe it for themselves.
From renting or buying Godzilla Minus One online in your Google Play store to searching for reviews of the film to see how people have reacted to it, to simply satisfying a curiosity about the history of the movie that produced Godzilla, Google is a friend to the film student in all of us.
Overall, ‘Godzilla Minus One’ is a thrilling reimagining of an enduring myth for a new generation of viewers, released via Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon and Google Play, where the monster emerges, reborn from the cinema of the past to captivate audiences in the future. As this cinematic behemoth continues to evolve, its growth informs us that stories live on, and past and present, monster and man, are forever in dialogue.
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