‘Godzilla Minus One’ – Part One: Concept, Character and The Boys On the Boat

If you were to have told me at this time last year that one of 2023's best films had a really big international star named Godzilla, I would have laughed. Though the great Shin Godzilla (2016) showed that you could make a good film about the big guy by making it a comedy/satire of political bureaucracy in a time of crisis... the idea of the words “Godzilla” and “Oscar-worthy” in the same sentence was just absurd. But now? Because Killers Of The Flower Moon gets a Best Picture nomination and Godzilla: Minus One didn’t? The Oscars are broken. 

Robert Downey Jr. who won an Oscar for Oppenheimer, but said, "I felt so exposed after being in the cocoon of Marvel where I think I did some of the best work I will ever do, but it went a little bit unnoticed because of the genre." The Academy should have used this most recent Godzilla movie as a chance to make up for all of the past great commercial films that were better written and more dramatic and had better acting than the self-important “Oscar bait” junk got a statue instead. If “Best Picture” is really about quality? Godzilla: Minus One needed to be in the running.

Let me make the case for the film...

CONCEPT

Godzilla Minus One proves that you can make a serious movie with big emotional moments... that's also popcorn entertainment. Yes, this is a Godzilla movie. But it's also about the trauma of war, feelings of failure and responsibility for the deaths of others, how people and families are displaced after war, and living with the horrors of war haunting every moment of your life after the war is over. And Godzilla.

Movies are spectacle. I frequently say that it’s a big screen and it’s our job to fill it. We want an idea that requires people to leave their homes and go to the cinema to see it on the biggest screen possible. So the average ticket buyer might have paid to see Godzilla destroying Tokyo yet again. But because the story is big doesn’t mean it’s stupid, or that the quality of the story doesn’t matter. Yes, Aquaman: Lost Kingdom can attract an audience for all of the epic underwater action scenes, but the things that make a movie a hit are repeat viewings and “word of mouth” recommendations and then “aftermarket” like streaming services and collectors who still buy DVDs and Blu-Rays and 4ks... and the upscale “steel books” and special editions. 

These days a film with great reviews (and “word of mouth”) that might have struggled in cinemas could be in profit from aftermarkets. If a Disney film doesn’t click with the audience in cinemas, it might be the very film that increases subscriptions to the streaming service. But those aftermarkets require quality and that means Godzilla kicking over buildings isn’t going to be enough... you need a story that touches people emotionally. Something they want to see again and again.

So not just any concept that has Godzilla destroying Tokyo or Aquaman fighting Mantis will work... you need a dramatic concept with emotions built into the idea... and then you need to really dig into that concept and “mine it” for all of the great scenes and moments.

Which is where Metaphors come into play.

Godzilla: Minus One takes its inspiration from the original Gojira (1954) about a prehistoric reptile awakened and given power by the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which allowed the audience to deal with the horror and destruction of those events in a “safe” story about a big monster. 

Instead of the story being only the surface story, like “Aquaman 2"s global warming or brothers elements that seemed to be tacked on later - never demonstrated by the film itself, never explored. Minus One digs deeper and deeper into the horrors of war and makes the Godzilla story a way to explore the characters and their emotional struggles. The “plot seed” that every scene and character and moment and piece of the plot grows from - even Godzilla destroying Ginza - exists to explore the drama of post-war trauma.

When someone asks you, “But what is your story really about?” it’s not just to annoy you, but to find out what the audience’s emotional connection to the story will be. Your story about a famous family of wrestlers isn’t just about wrestling matches, it’s also about family - trying to win the love of a stern father and deal with the loss of family members. The Godzilla movie uses the big guy destroying Tokyo to explore emotional issues that we can understand and relate to.

The Concept needs to be all about the Characters and their emotional struggle.

CHARACTERS

“They’re all dead because you didn’t shoot!”

Our Protagonist, Kiochi, is far from a hero... and that’s important. A static character has no emotional journey - they have either already arrived or just aren’t going anywhere. Your story can either explore a character’s larger emotional journey or their emotional relationship with other characters... this film does both.

The end of World War Two, Japan has lost. Kiochi is a kamikaze pilot who fails his mission. He lands his plane at a repair base on an island and tells the head mechanic Tachibana that something is wrong with his plane. The great thing about this deception is that Tachibana realizes that Kiochi is lying... and it’s not the plane that is the problem, but the pilot. Kiochi is a coward who would not give his life for his country. 

The great thing about a character's secret is that the audience fears that it will be discovered... and this not only creates suspense but audience identification with the character. If you think about movies like The Talented Mr. Ripley or Saltburn the audience worries that the secrets of a terrible person will be discovered, and that means that the audience cares about the character. In Minus One our protagonist is a coward, but having the head mechanic slowly discover his secret makes the audience worry about him. Tachibana tells Kiochi that one less Kamikaze mission isn’t going to win the war.

When Godzilla attacks the island, Kiochi has a chance at redemption - he can use his plane’s machine gun to kill the monster. But he fails at that, too. Everyone on the island except Kiochi and Tachibana are killed... and the head plane mechanic, who had his leg injured by Godzilla, is less forgiving. Kiochi caused the deaths of his entire crew! 

 This reinforces our protagonist’s need for redemption. If our protagonist fails and doesn’t care? We won’t like them. If they fail and are haunted by their failure? We will understand them and probably identify with them. We have also failed at something and still feel terrible about it. We are human. When a character has human flaws that are shared by the audience? They can imagine being that person - it’s a metaphor for their lives. None of us have failed to kill Godzilla, but all of us have failed to do something in our lives that we still feel bad about. The war is over, and Kiochi returns to Tokyo and his parents...

Except they are dead. His neighborhood in Tokyo is in ruins from the bombings.

There are two ways to call attention to a character’s emotional state: The world around them reflects their emotional state or the world around them is at odds with their emotional state. If your character’s emotions are obvious, having the world around them being at odds works well. In this case, the character represses his emotions and the world around him helps us understand what he’s feeling. He builds a shack from the rubble and fills it with any scraps of his past life...

And two new additions: Noriko, a young woman whose parents were also killed in the bombings, and her baby Akiko... Except the baby isn’t hers - she found it amidst the rubble and is taking care of it. Three people who have lost everything form a rocky family... Kiochi not trusting Noriko at first. They share a shack, and often battle an angry neighbor Sumiko, an old woman who has lost her entire family and lashes out in pain, “If you had done your job, my children would be alive!” 

Every character in this story is suffering from PTSD and the loss of loved ones. Every character feels like a failure. Every character has witnessed the horrors of war and suffers from survivor's guilt. Every character has lost the ability to trust, to work together. While the winners of the war drink champagne, like in Oppenheimer, the losers blame each other. Every character is looking for a way to put their lives back together. Every character is looking for some form of redemption.

“I’m someone who wasn’t supposed to live.”

Kiochi suffers from nightmares of his failure to stop Godzilla from killing all of the mechanics. The thrown-together family has no money for food... and the angry Sumiko has now become the baby’s “Auntie”, and gives them the last of her rice to feed the child. Kiochi gets a job as a mine sweeper - Tokyo harbor is full of both Japanese and American mines, and someone needs to do the dangerous work of removing the mines. The pay is good... and this might get Kiochi’s mind off of his past failures... and the nightmares. But Noriko is afraid that he will die. She has lost her entire family and doesn’t want to lose her new family.

Though the mine sweeper job will eventually fit into the Godzilla part of this story, he could have found a construction job, but this job creates the most drama and emotion. It also shows character - Kiochi is torn between suicide and his new family, and this job offers both. He could provide for the new family... or get blown to bits.

THE BOYS ON THE BOAT

“Leading the audience” is one of the most important tools of a writer, and the crew has been told that the mine sweeper boats have been specially made for this purpose. So they are expecting something high-tech, but what they are stuck with is a wooden boat with very few metal fixtures. You see, mines are magnetic and attracted to metal ships. So they are stuck on this old-fashioned tub, “Shinsei Maru”.

The other three on Kioshi’s crew are tough Captain Yoji, scientist “Doc” Noda, and “Kid” Shiro - the only one who didn’t fight in the war. These four men had different experiences in the war, and each brings their perspective to every scene on the mine sweeper. All of these are brought to the surface by the “Kid” who wishes that he had served, with the other three explaining their horrible experiences... or avoiding the questions due to the pain of those experiences. The scenes on the boat were reminiscent of Jaws - but instead of three people with very different shark knowledge, we have four people with very different war experiences... but all tragic.

"Kid" was too young to fight in the war and desperately wants to not be called "Kid" and to prove himself to the veterans around him... To become like them... Not realizing that those veterans have seen the horrors of war and are permanently scarred by it. That's not just a great character (who is going to take chances and do dangerous things to prove himself) but also fits the Unity Of Event (or theme, you choose) because it deals directly with the aftermath of war. The other three guys on the boat are dealing with the horrors of war, and this Kid wants a piece of that, not realizing how bitter it tastes.

As they go about the very dangerous work of cutting mines from their tethers so that Kioshi can fire a mounted machine gun and blow them up (proving that he’s an excellent marksman and could have hit Godzilla); each dealing with the trauma of war, you might be wondering when Godzilla is going to return to the story?

Here are some of the story threads that explore character in this film:

1) Kiochi’s failure, and search for redemption.

2) The death of the airplane mechanics on the island.

3) The loss of Kiochi’s parents, and the death and destruction in Tokyo.

4) The makeshift family, and the baby that calls him “Daddy”.

5) The Boys On The Boat dealing with the horrors of war.

6) Kiochi rebuilding his parent’s house... and his life.

7) Godzilla!

Each story thread will have a series of big emotional conflicts that your characters will need to deal with - ups and downs on the path toward a resolution. What are the story threads (and the ups and downs) for your characters in your story? What are the setbacks and twists and accomplishments and failures in each story thread?

We’ll get to our other war-scarred character (Godzilla!) in Part Two when we look at how Conflict Exposes Character, Visual Storytelling, and Redemption. 

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