Tag: Christopher Nolan

An image of Godzilla roaring and whipping his tale, from Godzilla Minus Zero

With its unflinching look at post-war trauma, Godzilla Minus Zero responds to Nolan’s Oppenheimer

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My full article can be read here.

After directors Christopher Nolan and Takashi Yamazaki won Academy Awards in 2024 for their huge movies Oppenheimer and Godzilla Minus One, Takashi had a chance to speak with Nolan when Oppenheimer premiered in Japan. He told Nolan that he’d one day like to make a response to his film. Recently, Takashi told Time, “In my mind, I was thinking I’d develop a film that looks directly at Hiroshima. But then I began thinking, ‘Wait – Godzilla is itself a metaphor for nuclear war. Maybe I can combine the two and make a Godzilla movie that is also an answer to Oppenheimer.”

Godzilla Minus Zero is an absolutely terrifying and unflinching look at the human cost of war, four years after the U.S. dropped the bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Through its visuals and some of its characterization, Yamazaki did indeed make a film that responds to Oppenheimer.

There are major spoilers ahead for Godzilla Minus Zero.

Unlike Oppenheimer, Godzilla Minus Zero focuses on the human cost of war and its traumatic aftermath

Nolan’s Oppenheimer largely deals with some of the ethical issues surrounding the creation of the atom bomb and the political stakes. The film was rightfully criticized for not showing the effects of the bomb on the Japanese people, or really the Japanese perspective more broadly. There are no causalities in Nolan’s version of this monumental historical 1945 event, and the Japanese presence is largely absent.

Godzilla Minus Zero, however, shows the effects in brutal detail. Set in 1949, a mere four years after the bombs fell, the blockbuster opens with one of Godzilla’s arch rivals, King Ghidorah, a winged beast, leveling another Japanese city. This triggers traumatic responses from the core survivors from the last movie, specifically kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), his wife Noriko Oishi (Minami Hamabe), and their adopted daughter, Akiko (Sae Nagatani). The consequences of Godzilla’s last rampage and the history of Godzilla as a metaphor for nuclear war resonates with the each member of the family unit differently.

Koichi has profound mental wounds from his last mission, in which he helped defeat Godzilla. The last thing he wants to do is get in a plane and this time, fight another monster, King Ghidorah. Noriko pleads with him not to do so, but of course, he feels the pull to join the fight. Meanwhile, the effects of war/Godzilla’s devastation manifest via a mutation Noriko undergoes. Infected with Godzilla’s cells from the aftermath of the last movie, her body starts to mutate and grow scales. She even has a yellow, Godzilla-like eye she keeps hidden behind an eye patch. The metaphor here regarding mutations caused by nuclear war aren’t exactly subtle.

One of the most poignant scenes that illustrates post-war trauma comes when Akiko freezes in the kitchen and screams and wails that something bad is going to happen. She’s still shellshocked from the last kaiju rampage and the fact that her biological parents were killed during the fire bombings and air raids over Tokyo at the end of World War II. While some audience members may find a child crying to be annoying, it’s effective in the context of the film’s darker themes and the fact that these characters’ scars from World War II haven’t healed.

Godzilla Minus Zero introduces a new character to further explore post-war trauma

Godzilla Minus Zero has a few new characters, and one of them is Jun Kunimura’s Dr. Ogata, a scientist who lost his daughter and granddaughter in Hiroshima. In a flashback, he discovers their charred bodies in the dust and the rubble. This movie is filled with bleak landscapes, and this is one of the grimmest set designs. He’s one of the many survivors attempting to find remains of their loved ones during the flashback. A few years later, Dr. Ogata launches a plan to entice Godzilla and King Ghidorah to fight each other, but he has ulterior motives. He envisions unleashing Godzilla upon New York City as payback for the Americans dropping the bomb.

In one of the movie’s most brutal scenes, Ogata has a fantasy of Godzilla knocking over the Statue of Liberty and then unleashing his atomic breath upon Manhattan. The movie then switches to a slow-motion shot of skin peeling off faces. For this sequence alone, the movie earned its R rating. Ogata’s trauma plays out in the form of fantasized revenge.

In Godzilla Minus One, the Americans aren’t the good guys

Though Nolan doesn’t exactly make Americas out to be heroes in Oppenheimer, Godzilla Minus Zero makes them a clear villain alongside the monsters. Early in the movie, the American military gives occupied Japan a massive weapon to drop on Ghidorah. However, the Americans insist the Japanese fly the planes, thus putting their lives in danger. Those who fly the planes are veterans who barely survived World War II and aren’t exactly thrilled to suit up and go on another suicide mission.

Additionally, we later learn that the Americans also have an ulterior motive and want to harness and steal Dr. Ogata’s monster-luring technology to add Godzilla to their nuclear arsenal, as absurd as it may sound. The Americans certainly can’t be trusted, and beyond that, they have the hubris to think they can control a force of nature as massive and powerful as Godzilla.

Here’s a major spoiler: Godzilla ultimately defeats Ghidorah, but the Japanese decide to leave him be. They accept that he’s part of their history, and thus, watch him return to the sea, an ever-present part of the Japan’s national consciousness and post-war scars.

Through its war-ravaged set designs, bloody body count, and exploration of its characters’ emotional and physical wounds, Godzilla Minus Zero responds to Nolan’s Oppenheimer by showing the aftermath of nuclear war and centering the Japanese perspective. In doing so, the film maintains Godzilla’s status as a walking metaphor for post-war trauma and nuclear devastation. Yamazaki does all of this while featuring one hell of a kaiju battle at the climax, too.

Musings on the Dark Knight Rises

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Last night, Jenna and I went to a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises. I wish the movie was making news this morning for other reasons than the horrific shooting that happened in Colorado at another midnight premiere. With that said, I wanted to offer some thoughts on the film. If you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want the plot to be ruined, then read this blog post after you see it.

First, I’ll admit that Batman was never my favorite comic book hero. I always was and still am an X-men guy, both the comics and movies. That said, I have loved the way that director Christopher Nolan has treated Batman in his three movies. He brought a grittiness to the character that represents some of the best Batman arcs in the comics. I also love some of the ways in which Nolan addresses social and political issues in the films. You can consider the last movie, The Dark Knight, one of the best takes in cinema on the post-9/11 world. I say that because you can draw some resemblance to the videos the Joker makes of the victims he kidnaps to the videos Bin Laden has made over the year. But more importantly, the film addresses the issues of enhanced interrogation, spying, torture, and ethics.  Batman has a major computer system that spies on millions of citizens in Gotham, using cell phones. His technology guru, Lucious Fox, played by Morgan Freeman, opposes the technology and calls it unethical, but ultimately uses it, just once, before destroying it after locating the Joker. Prior to that, there is the issue of how Batman deals with the Joker as a terrorist once he has him alone in a cell. He punches him and bangs his head off the table. There is much in that film that alludes to the Patriot Act, torture, and the way we deal with terrorists post-9/11.

This brings me to the latest and final installment in Nolan’s take on the Batman saga, The Dark Knight Rises. Going into the film, I had high expectations. The trailers only made me more excited. Yet, in the back of my mind, I knew it probably wouldn’t top The Dark Knight, let alone Heath Ledger’s performance as the maiin foe of the caped crusader.

After walking out of the theater around 3 a.m. and thinking about the movie before bed and the morning after, I felt a little let down. The third Batman movie feels like a huge action flick and little more at times. There are explosions galore, especially near conclusion when the Gotham police department and Bane’s revolutionaries face off. There are car chases, motorcycle chases, and multiple fisticuffs. At times, it felt like too much. I also took issue with the plot. Nolan tried to squeeze way too many classic Batman story arcs and too many characters into one three-hour film. I didn’t find the main villain, Bane, nearly as menacing as the Joker. In fact, I found him difficult to understand throughout most of the film, due to his mask and the effects placed on his voice, which I know, is part of Bane’s character. I’m uncertain why he does what he does , why he wants to destroy Batman and Gotham. The speeches he gives are often muddled and vague. He speaks of wanting to liberate Gotham and turn it over to the people, but why exactly, and why does he then want to blow it up with an atom bomb? The Joker’s intentions were clear. He reveled in upsetting the system,  causing chaos, and destroying any sense of structure, order, and safety.

I found some of the main themes of the film as hazy as Bane’s speeches.  I guess a viewer can draw distinctions between today’s economic/class issues and The Dark Knight Rises. Bane’s people overtake and imprison the superrich, including Bruce Wayne and his plutocrat friends; however, we never actually see the wealthy doing anything destructive to the poor at any point in the film. Still, Catwoman hisses to Bruce Wayne early on that he and his friends have taken too much for too long, leaving too little for everyone else.

Another issue I had is the way the lower and middle-classes are depicted.  Early in the film they are shown as janitors, construction workers, and shoe shiners, and they join Bane’s army.  Even though these people may be desperate and may be working for very little money, would they really follow a psychopath who’s new in town? I was also annoyed that the only ones who can save the city are Batman and his friends that are superheroes and plutocrats. The only semi-average/normal guy who helps out is a beat cop played by Joseph Gordoon Levitt. But even he becomes something more. Here is a major spoiler- he turns into Robin. By the time the credits rolled, I felt as though Nolan was saying that the only ones who have the power to save America from itself, from the great class divide and economic turmoil, are the plutocrats, the upper 1 percent, people like Bruce Wayne who have billions to invest in noble causes.

The movie does have a lot of positives. It is stunning visually, especially some of the arial shots of the city, and kudos to Nolan for shooting all of the movie on film, not using CGI. Some of the acting is just as strong. Anne Hathaway does a wonderful job as Catwoman. She is badass and sexy. Joseph Gordan Levitt is solid as cop/detective Blake. Christian Bale is good in his final performance as the caped crusader. Tom Hardy is a good actor, but Bane just isn’t as menacing or twisted as Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker.  Like a lot of other trilogies, Batman’s weakest link is its third part.  I got the sense that Nolan wanted to be done with the Gotham saga and he didn’t quite pour everything he had into the last movie. I’m sure that Heath Ledger’s death made filming the last movie that much more difficult, but we can all be thankful that we have his haunting performance  as the Joker preserved on film.

If you’ve seen the movie, I’m curious to hear what you thought of it.