Godzilla Minus Zero (2026) - Part 2 of 3 - Godzilla (1954) and Godzilla Minus One (2023)

[00:00:18] [SPEAKER_04] Welcome to The Lorehounds and our pre-release coverage for Godzilla Minus Zero. I'm your host, David. And with me today for this Part 2 podcast, Part 2 of 3, is newly minted Lorehounds Community co-host Nate. Nate, how you doing today? I'm doing great. Cool. Happy to be here. Great. We had a good conversation with Part 1, I thought, with history in the context of Godzilla. We did a very typical Lorehounds thing, which is we went far too long for...

[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_04] ...or what we had decided we were going to do. It's okay. You can let them know that that's my fault. No, but you don't understand that that is classic Lorehound behavior. That is like... Well, you experienced it on Pachinko, right? Oh, yeah. You know, it's like, oh, one podcast turned into three. You know, so this is two turning into three. So it's all well within bounds. But anyway, we're going to be talking today about the 1954 Godzilla movie with some notes about the 56 version.

[00:01:16] [SPEAKER_04] And then Godzilla minus one. And then once Godzilla minus zero is out, probably about a week later, we'll be back with a movie review of that. And we'll sort of wrap up the whole series altogether. For those of you who participate on our community Discord, I was working with moderator Brian8063 today. We're setting up a whole new sort of forum channel for all of the sort of Godzilla-y stuff. We're going to call it Monster Island.

[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_04] And we'll have a channel for Toho. We'll have a channel for Legendary. And then movie threads will have, you know, movies will have their own threads. And I think like when the TV series comes back, you know, depending on what kind of coverage and we have on that, there'll be, you know, space to have a conversation there.

[00:02:04] [SPEAKER_04] So look forward to that coming along. And then my blog post on the semiotics of how to read a monster's body is up and available. Link in the show notes. Kind of had some fun with that. Learned some things.

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_04] And there's, I really discovered there's a wide, wide world of people who compare the Godzilla bodies and rank them. I was watching the YouTube today where a guy was doing a whole sort of S tier ranking of like a lot of the different, I didn't realize each, each design has its own name as well. And like it goes deep. I didn't realize. It's fascinating stuff. Yeah. Yeah. People are having a lot of fun. Anyway, we'll keep the housekeeping short today.

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_04] Remember if a subscription is an option for you, when you think you want to give us a hand, we really appreciate it. We get by on ad dollars, but subscriptions are really a much more direct way to support the community and support getting more podcasts like these made. You can get in touch with us at our email address, lorehounds at thelorehounds.com. Like I mentioned, the discord. And of course we are a network. And so we've got a bunch of affiliate podcasts.

[00:03:16] [SPEAKER_04] And in the show notes, if you look down at the bottom, there's a link tree. It's kind of a webpage that aggregates all of our links and it's a lot easier for us to maintain an update. And that has links to all of the different affiliates and subscription channels. The blog goes directly to the blog, all kinds of things. So check out that link.

[00:03:35] [SPEAKER_04] If you want to follow up on anything with the affiliates or get in touch with us in any other way. So like I mentioned, we'll talk about 1954. We'll take a little break. Then we'll do some conversation about minus one. And then we'll do a little bit around minus zero. So Nate, let's start talking about 54. And you've got some notes here in the outline. Do you want to sort of set the stage for us for 54?

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_03] Sure. So before, I guess, you know, we're calling it 54, obviously, because it was released in 1954. It's kind of the easiest way, right? You know, yeah. I mean, you can't say the Godzilla movie when there's 38 of them. So just so that people know, we're using that as kind of the shorthand to talk about the original OG, you know. Does it have its own standalone name?

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_04] Original Godzilla, right? Yeah, very good. Does it have its kind of own Gojira? I mean, I know I sometimes I see it written Gojira. I don't know if I pronounce it.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_03] Gojira is so that's the Japanese version of it. And then when it's anglicized, it's Godzilla.

[00:04:44] [SPEAKER_04] Right, exactly. And so sometimes I've seen people refer to the 54 movie in that spelling. But I didn't know if that's official or if that's just sort of a different. No, not particularly. People are making it sort of. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like you said, 38 films. So like, how do you, you need a nomenclature.

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. Right. So, yeah, I'm actually going to jump to the historical context first just to kind of get that out of the way. Perfect. Love it. But so, you know, the movie is released nine years after the end of World War II, and it's two years after the U.S. occupation of Japan. So the memories of Japanese people are still fresh with both the destruction from the U.S. bombing raids on Tokyo and, of course, you know, other major cities.

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_03] And, you know, finally, Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the atomic bombings. They've also just been through the experience of U.S. occupation by military forces. Right. And including the running of the Japanese government by the U.S. occupation administration. And so, you know, during this time, Japan really lacked its own kind of autonomy.

[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_03] The U.S. basically wrote the new constitution for the Japanese that went into effect in 1947. In that constitution, Article 9 banned war-making capability. So that's a very controversial to this day part of that constitution because what does that mean? What does it mean that they can have military forces or not? We'll get into that a little bit. Can I have a quick question about Article 9? Is it still standing or has the constitution? Okay.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_03] It is. Rather than change it to this point anyway, though, of course, some elements of the Japanese political spectrum have wanted to, it's really just been continually reinterpreted. And this actually brings up a good example of that. The Japanese Self-Defense Force was organized in July of 1954. And, of course, it's the Self-Defense Force.

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_03] It's not an army, quote unquote, even though it has army equipment and has, you know, military equipment that you would expect. So Article 9 hasn't changed. It's actually still part of the Japanese constitution. It hasn't been officially amended, even though, you know, some would like to do so. Right. But instead, it's just been reinterpreted. So, you know, what does war making capability mean? Right.

[00:07:23] [SPEAKER_03] That's why Japan officially their military forces are called the Self-Defense Force and not the army. And, you know, terms like that tend to be a little bit politically charged, especially when we're talking about what they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do. I'm not going to go, like, down that rabbit hole too much.

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_04] No, that's one of your lessons. Yes. That would take me into a lecture that we don't need.

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_03] We're going to talk about a movie, entertainment. But it is, within the context of the movie, it is interesting to note that the Self-Defense Force itself was organized in July of 1954 in response to U.S. pressure. Because even though the U.S. wrote the Constitution that said, hey, you can't have a military, once the Korean War happened, right next to Japan and all those U.S. soldiers that were in Japan, the U.S. wanted to move them to fight the war in Korea.

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_03] The idea was, well, okay, we have to allow Japan to have some military forces, even if they call it a self-defense force. And so in the movie, when you see military equipment, it's American military equipment that's being used by this new self-defense force. So in some ways, and we'll see this in other Godzilla movies as we go, it's kind of an advertisement in some ways for the self-defense force to say, hey, we exist, we're real.

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_04] I could see, too, that would be a really interesting area of study because what does war-making capability mean? It's not, oh, you've got a tank. It's that you have a factory that can produce 1,000 tanks a week or something like that.

[00:09:03] [SPEAKER_03] Indeed. Indeed. Indeed. Indeed. That's certainly one take on it. Right. You know, of course, the other political take is, well, anything that, like, you can't have a rifle or something. No pew-pews. Oh, my gosh, that would be military capability. And, of course, does anybody actually interpret it that way in policy? No, of course not. Interesting. Anyway, but I'm sure it's a fascinating area of study.

[00:09:32] [SPEAKER_03] So, at this time, I guess, the point of what I was getting to with all of this is that even though, you know, we're all aware of Japan's activities during the World War period in China and Korea and other places around Asia. Philippines. Yeah. All over. Philippines, yes. The list goes on.

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_03] Japan, because of the way that the war ends with utter destruction of most of its cities, its infrastructure, a lot of civilian casualties, and we can't not mention the two atomic bombings, Japan being the only country who has ever been targeted in war with nuclear weapons. Right.

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_03] Then Japan sees itself a bit as a victim because even though, you know, obviously it was the aggressor in the war, the average Japanese person is able to, at the end of the war, say, well, it wasn't me. It was the militarists. It was the politicians. It was all those people who led us into war and I was just along for the ride.

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_03] So, once those people are removed from power, you know, Japan as a whole kind of has this a bit of a victim complex. And through the occupation and then even into, you know, the Cold War, in some ways they're trapped between two nuclear powers, the United States, who they have a complicated relationship because they were just defeated by the United States in war and then occupied. But also they are treaty allies.

[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_03] They are pulled into the United States' kind of sphere of influence almost by default because their military capability is now limited due to the constitution. They have to rely on the United States for their security and protection. But they're also – Japan's closest neighbor, a lot of people don't know this, is Russia. It's the Soviet Union.

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_03] There's a couple islands in the northern side that are only separated from one of the main islands of Japan by a couple kilometers. You mean they can see Russia from there? Yeah, you can actually see Russia from backyards in certain parts of northern Japan. No, that's 100% true. On a clear day, you can. Of course, those islands are disputed. So, Japan's official position might be that those aren't Russia.

[00:12:04] [SPEAKER_03] But anyway, so the point is that Japan, you know, through this time, it feels very powerless. It feels that it's kind of caught between these nuclear powers.

[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_04] It's kind of caught between these two kaiju.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_03] These two giants, yes. Yes. Nuclear monsters. Nuclear monsters. And so, as all this is kind of, you know, rolling about, right? On March 1st, 1954, there's an incident where a Japanese fishing vessel, the Lucky Dragon No. 5, or Daigo Fukuryu Maru in Japanese,

[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_03] with a crew of 23 is caught in the radiation fallout from a U.S. H-bomb test in the Pacific. They were outside of what had been designated the, you know, safe zone or the area around the blast that you needed to keep out of. They were outside of that, but because of, you know, shifting winds and all sorts of things, they still were exposed to severe radiation.

[00:13:12] [SPEAKER_03] All of them get radiation sickness. One of them dies a few months later. And this incident stokes anti-U.S. and anti-nuclear sentiments, especially because the U.S. was very cryptic and unwilling to release information. You know, I think on the U.S. side, there was speculation that this fishing boat was actually not Japanese, but that it was doing spy activity for the Soviets or something like that. You know, it's the middle of the Cold War, right? So we got all this stuff going on.

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_04] And lack of information oftentimes breeds that kind of speculation, that sort of wild speculation about things going on. I guess we could say that the OPSEC was a little bit convoluted during that time. Indeed. Indeed. Sorry, not too many. I should stop making all of these concurrent jokes. We'll move on. Moving on. That's okay.

[00:14:04] [SPEAKER_03] So, yeah. So this is kind of like the stage setting events for the movie. And then when Ishiro Honda, who is the main writer and the director of the movie, was coming up with a concept, he – I guess there was another movie that he'd been working on that kind of fell through. And so he had an opening and time to do it.

[00:14:32] [SPEAKER_03] So he said, well, why don't I make a movie on these themes of nuclear issues and so on? Literal fallout. I want to do it as a metaphor. And he had also been influenced by the movie Godzilla – I'm sorry, not the movie Godzilla. This is the movie Godzilla. The movie King Kong had just been re-released, the 1930s version.

[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_04] Right. Okay.

[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_03] And probably being shipped over to Japan maybe? Indeed. Was being shown in Japanese theaters. And also there were some other American monster movies. Right.

[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_04] Because this is also the rise of the – when I was doing my research on this a little bit, I was wondering if Godzilla was one of the early IP franchises, sort of these IP salt mines that we have.

[00:15:21] [SPEAKER_05] Mm-hmm.

[00:15:22] [SPEAKER_04] And in fact, the Frankenstein, Wolfman, you know, vampire, Dracula stuff, that was sort of the first one. Mm-hmm. But interesting and we'll maybe discuss later is that the Toho turned out to be the first sort of roster one of this size and this volume. So they were a very early leader in IP franchise management. But preceding it was King Kong and then Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein, all that stuff.

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_03] Yes. So Honda decides to – he writes the script. He decides to make this movie. And for the special effects, he brings in a legendary special effects coordinator named Eiji Tsubutaya, who did the effects for over 250 films, including all of the Godzilla movies through the 1950s and 1960s. Wow.

[00:16:15] [SPEAKER_03] He's also responsible for several of Kurosawa's more famous films like Throne of Blood and The Hidden Fortress. And he also created the Ultraman series. Oh, yeah. I love Ultraman. Yeah. Well, like, he actually built the studio. Like, he created the studio that ended up producing Ultraman. Mm-hmm. So he is kind of a major creator of – we talked about it in the first podcast. Studio as in company? The company.

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_03] And the physical space. Yes, yes. And so he's a major originator of that tokusatsu style of special effects that we talked about with the suitmation and the different models that the actor wearing the monster suit is interacting with. And so this, you know, is kind of the beginning of all that in Japanese film.

[00:17:14] [SPEAKER_03] I also want to mention – I'm not going to go through all the actors and actresses and so forth, because many of them won't register for a non-Japanese audience. But I do want to mention Takashi Shimura, because he is notable for being in about 21 out of Kurosawa's 30 films. Okay. Our listenership may know him as he was the lead in The Seven Samurai, the older samurai who was kind of mentoring everyone and – The wise old warrior. Yes.

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_03] He was also in Ikidu. He was the main lead in that. So he was the man who was given a cancer diagnosis and only had a short time to live, and so was going through the end of his life trying to figure out – But anyway, he does over 100 – or I'm sorry, over 200 movies in the span of his career.

[00:18:07] [SPEAKER_03] So probably somebody that, you know, you've seen if you watch Japanese movies from the 50s and 60s.

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_04] Is there a way that Japan will recognize civic contributions to national culture? Absolutely. In the UK, you would get a – you know, he might be, you know, sir. You know, he might get a knighthood or something like that.

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_03] No, they do. And in fact, I think he had received something like that. I'd have to, like, look at it real quick to find it. But I'm sure it's on – Well, somebody could post it in the Discord once we get those channels up.

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_03] But, yeah, many Japanese actors and directors and so forth who have these kinds of careers are awarded, you know, lifetime achievement recognition and so on and so forth. So, the movie itself was released on November 3rd in Japan of 1954.

[00:19:08] [SPEAKER_03] So just, gosh, what, seven months after the incident with the Lucky Dragon No. 5. It's notable because this is also the date of the 1947 Constitution, so the anniversary of the Constitution going into effect. And it's also the Meiji Emperor's birthday.

[00:19:34] [SPEAKER_03] So the emperor from 1868 to 1912, his birthday is a national holiday. Even still, they just don't call it his birthday anymore. They call it Culture Day. But there's a purpose to the date here that I go through with my students as well. So I wanted to mention it here. Well, we're here at your feet, so.

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_04] These dates matter. They're important. Is that an important factor in Japanese culture? Is days that have some sort of auspiciousness to them?

[00:20:06] [SPEAKER_03] It is. I don't know if it's so much auspiciousness as tying it to both the Meiji Emperor and the changes that Japan went through underneath the Meiji Emperor. Of course, that was the restoration or revolution, depending on how you want to characterize it, where Japan got rid of the old shogunate and instituted a more modern governmental system underneath the emperor.

[00:20:32] [SPEAKER_03] But also, I think, given the themes of the movie, it's important to recognize that it releases on the anniversary of the Constitution being promulgated in 1947. So you have Article 9 that we just talked about, which is one of the main more well-known, I guess, parts of the Constitution. Key feature of the Constitution.

[00:20:56] [SPEAKER_03] And here we have a movie about a threat to Japan where they have to use, or at least consider using military force in order to protect it. And what are they going to do? And so on and so forth.

[00:21:07] [SPEAKER_04] So I think my question, too, was, are calendar dates an important thing? Like, we might have a particular, oh, you know, this holiday falls on this day. It's just kind of that day. Yes. It's not necessarily within Japanese culture. Are these dates, do they carry a special kind of an extra spin to them, so to speak?

[00:21:27] [SPEAKER_03] Well, so like I said, the birthdays of former emperors dating back to Meiji are all now national holidays. They just, once the emperor passes away and a new emperor is in charge, that new emperor's birthday becomes the emperor's birthday holiday. And the previous emperor's birthday is named a new holiday. So in Japan, it's known as Culture Day.

[00:21:54] [SPEAKER_03] The Showa emperor, Emperor Hirohito's birthday, is like Marine Day, because he was a marine biologist. Okay. So it's a day for the celebration of marine life. Mostly people about it care because it's part of a series of holidays called Golden Week. So basically the whole country takes like a week off. Nice. It's really hard to get hotel rooms anywhere or travel because everybody's doing it. Right.

[00:22:19] [SPEAKER_04] So anyway, one quick follow-up point on the Lucky Dragon number five thing, which I think adds a little bit of additional context and a little bit of additional spin to the whole issue around that, is some other secondary effects from the Lucky Dragon number five thing.

[00:22:40] [SPEAKER_04] And our dear friend Aisha, who has the Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever podcast, one of her early episodes was on the Godzilla movie and she had a couple of great guests on. And I pulled a couple of quotes when I was listening to her podcast to prep for our conversation. So this is a clip. One of her guests, Yuki Miyamoto, who's a professor of religious studies and the director of the Humanities Center at DePaul University.

[00:23:06] [SPEAKER_04] And her work focuses largely around the ethics of nuclear discourse. And she had a really insightful thing about Lucky Dragon number five. So let's listen to that really quick. Let's do it.

[00:23:17] [SPEAKER_00] When this incident took place, which was place on March 1st, 1954, one of the nuclear tests conducted by the U.S. That was H-bomb, which was far bigger than the scientists had anticipated. So this Japanese tuna fishing boat, which was in the Pacific, they were outside the designated area.

[00:23:42] [SPEAKER_00] But nonetheless, they got caught in the nuclear fallout and they saw the flash going off. And then they immediately, they knew what it meant. So they immediately turned around and went back to the Japanese port. The social impact of this incident was enormous. For example, because it was only nine years after the war. But this incident was much more impactful because it affected the food.

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_00] It affected the fish. The fish that this Lucky Dragon number five brought back to Japan were also emanating radiation and radioactive. So radioactive tuna became a phrase that people were afraid of consuming. And the consumption of fish plummeted.

[00:24:32] [SPEAKER_04] So I thought that was really interesting that it's not only, oh, here's a little reminder. It's, you know, that, oh, we, you know, we were the target of this and it's a live issue, right? It's an ongoing thing.

[00:24:46] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_04] Is that the, you know, our livelihoods, you know, the sea is a major important part of who we are as a nation and how we feed ourselves. And so all of this, anything in these, in this realm is a, is very affecting. And so when you were talking about how the incident, you know, restoked anti-US and anti-nuclear sentiments. Yeah, man, it's not just like, oh, this one boat got caught in a blast radius.

[00:25:13] [SPEAKER_04] It's that the radioactive tuna is now something we got to, our very food source, our very, you know, deep down, this thing affects us all the way to our very ability to exist.

[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_03] And since you bring that up, I feel I need to, this is part of like a continuing problem with whether it's radiation or pollution, you know, all through the 1960s and 70s, we have issues with pollution affecting food supply.

[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_03] And then even if you go to 2011 and the triple disaster, as it's known in Japan, the earthquake and tsunami, which result in the shutdown of the Fukushima nuclear reactor. For a long time, even, you know, potentially up to today for some people, they don't want to consume food that's coming from the Fukushima region.

[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_03] And of course, you know, one of their big exports to, you know, outside of the region to the rest of the country was different kinds of beef and food and so forth. And so the fears of either radioactive or in some way contaminated food that we see with this continue on with any kind of incident like this. So it is a very active thing in, you know, the social and political discourse.

[00:26:44] [SPEAKER_04] Would we say that the Shin Godzilla movies are in some way connected to the Fukushima triple disaster?

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_03] Absolutely. Okay. We're not going into it. Is there a Shin movie coming up? There is one in production. Okay. So when that comes out, we'll definitely talk about it. But we will definitely do that. We'll have to talk about it on that. Yes. But the 2016 Shin Godzilla movie is absolutely a critique of the government's handling of the triple disaster in 2011.

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_04] So I started to... Fascinating. I started to watch it the other night. Busy life, Amy, blah, blah, blah. So I just got to the beginnings of it, watching how the government's functioning to this weird disaster thing. It reminds me a lot of sort of a Cloverfield style vibe. We almost covered that for some subscriber stuff for October, for Spooktober. The Exorcist won out by one vote, though. So I'm a little bit chagrined. But I was like, oh, wow, this is so interesting.

[00:27:46] [SPEAKER_03] It's definitely a different vibe than any other of the Godzilla movies. It's a bureaucratic comedy at times. And I watched it the first time and just fell out of my chair laughing as somebody who had done liaison work with the Japanese government and the Japanese military. And so that's another one. I make that available to my students as well as an option for them to write about. Okay.

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_03] Well, we'll have to...

[00:28:17] [SPEAKER_04] We'll get back to that. Definitely when that movie is in pre-production, we'll have to come in touch on the Shin Godzilla stuff. Because it's a super interesting take from what I've been researching. Anyway, carry on with our main thread here.

[00:28:33] [SPEAKER_03] So just to kind of go quickly through the story of the 1954 movie, we open with a scene of a Japanese ship.

[00:28:41] [SPEAKER_04] Oh, and I guess this is your spoiler warning. I didn't really say it at the top. So this is your spoiler warning. Yeah.

[00:28:47] [SPEAKER_03] If you haven't seen this movie that came out in 1954, sorry.

[00:28:54] [SPEAKER_04] Sorry for spoiling. And I will say, if you haven't, you should. Because it's actually a pretty good movie, especially for... Well, we'll talk about special effects or whatever later. Yeah. But it's a good movie. It really is. It is. Carry on.

[00:29:10] [SPEAKER_03] So the opening scene is of a Japanese ship, the Eikomaru No. 5, which is an obvious callback to the Lucky Dragon No. 5.

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_04] And not knowing that when I was watching this the other day, because I hadn't done a bunch of this research, I'd watched the movie, the 54 movie first. I was like, now that all makes sense. That ties in really well. Absolutely.

[00:29:30] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. So we see it destroyed by some sort of radioactive flash, which, of course, is reminiscent of the stories of what the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, the big flash and then a blast. And then later on, Godzilla attacks a village on a small island. Seemingly, these things are related.

[00:29:53] [SPEAKER_03] The Japanese government sends a team led by a paleontologist, played by the aforementioned Shimoda Takashi. And it confirms that Godzilla is a radioactive giant T-Rex-like dinosaur. They dispatch ships to try to kill Godzilla with depth charges, but it doesn't work.

[00:30:18] [SPEAKER_03] And, of course, Yamane, the paleontologist, is very frustrated because as a man of science, he thinks that Godzilla should be studied. And it kind of sets up this tension through the movie of, you know, should we be killing this monster? Should we be studying this monster? How should we handle this thing?

[00:30:38] [SPEAKER_04] Which ties into both King Kong and the monster stories from the United States with Frankenstein and everything like that. Because we have the mad scientist stuff. And then the whole atomic age American monster movies where it's this tension between science and nature. That's right.

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_03] Has man gone too far? Exactly. Right? So, speaking of that, we're introduced to this love triangle between Yamane's daughter, Emiko, to the mad scientist in the movie, which is Dr. Serizawa, who is Emiko's arranged marriage partner as a junior of Yamane.

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_03] Right, of class and status and breeding and what have you. Right. And, of course, he's a very dark and brooding character. He has an eye patch and a big scar on his face. He's very reclusive and mysterious and, you know, sets up almost kind of as a bad guy or the stereotypical mad scientist at first.

[00:31:47] [SPEAKER_03] Emiko is actually interested in love with a man named Ogata, who is a ship diving captain. He's a ship diving captain. In, you know, the salvage service. And so, Emiko visits Serizawa and is shown this invention of his called the oxygen destroyer, which disintegrates oxygen atoms and liquefies the remains.

[00:32:13] [SPEAKER_03] And he's very concerned about this information getting out and being misused by the powers of the world, turned into a weapon. So, he swears her to secrecy. But after Godzilla attacks Tokyo, Emiko can't handle it anymore. She sees that this weapon is the only thing that can defeat Godzilla. So, she tells Ogata and they go to confront him and try to convince him to allow the weapon to be used against Godzilla. And he initially refuses.

[00:32:43] [SPEAKER_03] But then, of course, on the TV there in his office, we have... Oh, so very conveniently. Yes. We have a broadcast that shows the destruction of Tokyo and the efforts of survivors and all the wounded being tended to. And, you know, there's singing by a girls' choir layered on top of it. And it convinces him that, okay, this one time we can, you know, we can use the weapon.

[00:33:13] [SPEAKER_03] But he takes care to burn all of his notes so that it can never be used again. The four or the three of them plus Yamane, the paleontologist, go on a ship into Tokyo Bay. And Ogata and Serizawa dive down to the bottom in diving suits connected to the top with, you know, the air hoses. And they plant the device. Ogata ascends to the surface and he assumes Serizawa is behind him, but he's not.

[00:33:43] [SPEAKER_03] And so when Ogata gets to the surface and is there and realizes that Serizawa is not coming up, he calls down via the communications link to him. And Serizawa says, you know, wishes him to have a happy life with Emiko. So apparently he picked up on the idea that Ogata and Emiko were an item. And he then cuts through the lines that connect him to the ship so that when they try to pull him up, all that comes up is like an empty cord.

[00:34:12] [SPEAKER_03] He sets the device, turns it on, and it kills both him and Godzilla, taking the knowledge of the weapon with him so that he can't be forced to give up his secret knowledge and enable a new kind of weapon of mass destruction.

[00:34:30] [SPEAKER_04] You think he knows something about human nature in that moment?

[00:34:34] [SPEAKER_03] Maybe. The movie ends then with Yamane, the paleontologist, speculating that another Godzilla may arise if things like nuclear testing continue to occur. Bum, bum, bum.

[00:34:48] [SPEAKER_04] Bum, bum, bum. Something you mentioned in the context and history was that Toho Studios requires any licensee to never ultimately kill off Godzilla. That Godzilla always, there must be always a sort of pre-credit, post-credit stinger of

[00:35:09] [SPEAKER_03] to be continued, dot, dot, dot. Something, yes. Some sort of indication that there's a possibility continuing. And so that sort of quote-unquote DNA goes all the way back to this. All the way back to that. The idea that, you know, did they have the idea for a sequel in mind already? I don't know. I was just going to ask that. Probably not, I would say, actually. I mean, they didn't know whether it would be successful or not.

[00:35:35] [SPEAKER_04] But from that allegory standpoint, it is the warning that if we continue to mess with these really powerful forces, then this horror could return. Yes, absolutely. And so we need to, it's maybe a note of caution or a check to people. Because this is also going to be being watched by the citizenry. And so this, in a way, is a little bit of moral teaching.

[00:36:02] [SPEAKER_04] Hey, everybody, you know, keep an eye on your government because they may try to mess around a bit again, future. Sure.

[00:36:10] [SPEAKER_03] Mm-hmm. And kind of a plea to the world, right? Not just, you know, Japan. But it's not Japan that's doing the messing around that causes this. It's other powers. So, yeah. You know, we talked about the special effects and the different style of special effects, like tokusatsu and suitmation in the first podcast. So we don't need to necessarily rehash it.

[00:36:39] [SPEAKER_03] But this sets the standard. And as we said, the effects director, Tsuburaya, is really the guy moving forward who popularizes all of this. One thing to note, if you've seen one of the later Godzilla movies, but you haven't seen this, and by later I mean 60s and 70s, this is a very different tone. People are often very surprised how dark the movie is, both thematically and visually.

[00:37:11] [SPEAKER_03] And Godzilla is not cuddly at all in this movie. It is meant to be scary. And I think for 1954, it probably was very scary. We've come a long way since then.

[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_04] And when you add in all of these real world effects, like radioactive tuna and what's the, Serizawa? Serizawa, yeah. Yeah, has a scar and he's visibly injured, but they don't explain to us why or what caused that. But I could imagine that it wouldn't be uncommon for a lot of your fellow citizenry to be continuing to show visible signs of the war on their bodies. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:37:53] [SPEAKER_04] And so there's a lot of signaling in this movie about, that I think would resonate and be very palpable in the movie theater if you were to see this on its initial releasing.

[00:38:08] [SPEAKER_03] Certainly agree with that. And that's one of the things I try to get my students to understand is it's hard for 18 to 22-year-olds to put themselves in the seats of 1954 moviegoers. Right. But I explained it to them.

[00:38:24] [SPEAKER_04] It's hard for me as a 50-something-year-old man to put myself in a seat of 19-year-old. Fair. Absolutely. But my brain is cooked, right? Like I have a fully functioning brain, whereas the 19 and 20-year-olds are still connecting those cortexes.

[00:38:37] [SPEAKER_03] And I'm going through all of this with them to get them to understand that for the time, this was scary. This was frightening in all that context.

[00:38:46] [SPEAKER_04] And this, you know, I hear this from time to time, not so much anymore since I'm very distant from the college, the world of university and college. But I had a cousin who I remember who's studying mathematics and engineering, and he was grumbling about having to take humanities courses. And I'm like, bro, now I'm like, oh no, you guys, especially you engineers and scientists, you need to be taking humanities because you need to remember that we are human beings at the end of the day.

[00:39:15] [SPEAKER_04] And the effects of your science, and this is a major plot of the story, right, is with Sarazawa having, this is science defeating science. Yes. Right. Godzilla as this, you know, victim conceivably, he was just some little creature down there at the bottom of the ocean and he gets irradiated and it sort of drives it. Well, he already existed, right? The old island, the guy in the island said, oh, well, we have this god down there.

[00:39:45] [SPEAKER_04] But Godzilla is just sort of mostly being peaceful and he gets irradiated. So he's a little bit victim. And I think we talked about that in the last podcast. But it's a result of science. And so Sarazawa is understanding his fellow scientists' inclination to pursue that he found the oxygen destroyer by mistake. He was just interested in oxygen.

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_04] And he discovered this incredibly powerful thing, kind of like the atom. Oh, the atom's cool. What happens if we split it? Oh, shit. Right? Exactly. Wow. And it's like, oh, what can we do with it? And then the government, the military can go along. Oh, thank you very much. And off you go. So it's very prescient in that way. It's a really great social commentary. Very clear-eyed social commentary on what it is that we human beings will get up to.

[00:40:41] [SPEAKER_04] We're pursuing science for altruistic purposes. And oops, things don't always work out the way our altruism would have allowed, you know, that we had thought originally.

[00:40:56] [SPEAKER_03] Yes. Yes. I mean, the, you know, we've mentioned it already, but the anti-nuclear and anti-war themes are kind of prevalent throughout it. And this is matching that with the idea of, you know, scientific weaponry and in some ways, you know, the hubris of man as he messes with forces that he doesn't understand and creates things that have these effects.

[00:41:24] [SPEAKER_03] You know, we know a lot more now, obviously, than we did in the 1950s. But in the 1950s, we were still learning about what the effects of radiation were. And so many of the fears that we talked about may or may not have been unfounded or at least over-exaggerated because of this, they were unknown.

[00:41:45] [SPEAKER_03] But certainly the idea that something like this could spawn such a monster with a destructive force was something that resonated. I also think we need to talk about the idea of Serizawa as, you know, personal sacrifice. Right? And the way that he, and I think you, you know, put the notes in this.

[00:42:14] [SPEAKER_03] I don't know if you want to take the lead on it. But, you know, he doesn't tell anybody that he's going to destroy himself at the end until he actually does it. But he, you know, realizes that the only way that he can be certain that nobody misuses his technology is to not only destroy his notes, but to destroy himself.

[00:42:39] [SPEAKER_04] And this is an interesting counter, I don't want to say counterpoint, but when we start talking about minus one versus 54, this is a key message of 54. Self-sacrifice and, and sacrifice for the greater good. And I don't want to be stereotypical about Japanese culture because I am, I don't know anything about Japanese culture except for what I know from sort of modern entertainment industry. Sure.

[00:43:06] [SPEAKER_04] But the idea that, uh, the individual and the collective, that there's a relationship between those two and that, um, that in this case, Sarazawa sees that his path is for this, uh, self-sacrifice. Whereas in minus one, the, uh, the message is you have to live. You can't work yourself to death.

[00:43:35] [SPEAKER_04] You can't sacrifice yourself. You need to be there to carry on for the next generation. Right. And, uh, uh, and so it's a, it's an, you know, at the same time, and we'll talk about the Godzilla design in there that, but they, they're bringing back a whole bunch of stuff from 54 into the minus one movie. But yet here, this is just a really fundamental change in what the, the movie is saying to us. And, uh, you know, we see collective action. We see the government coming together.

[00:44:05] [SPEAKER_04] We see, you know, military forces, uh, responding to this threat. Um, but it's all very kind of abstract government response. And it's all very sort of top down as well. We see a bunch of pilots who can't seem to aim their rockets. That's I'm stealing your, your, your joke there. Um, but you know, but it's up to this one man who, who's, who has this knowledge and,

[00:44:32] [SPEAKER_04] and, uh, but is also very distrustful of his, of his own, you know, uh, industry, I don't want to say industry, his own academic practice or his own, uh, of human nature. Yeah.

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_03] Well, I, I think it's important even if we, you know, not even going to minus one yet, just looking at his sacrifice in the movie versus the sacrifices that were demanded of the Japanese people during World War II in the name of the emperor or in the name of, you know, winning the war or whatever, which ultimately were useless. Uh, and in many times were wasteful, at least from a, an outside perspective.

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_03] Uh, and I don't think I need to rehash, you know, kind of those images. I think, I think everybody understands, uh, if, if they've read anything about World War II, but the fact that Serizawa is sacrificing himself, but he's doing it a of his own volition and B, it is serving a greater good, not just the glory of the empire or something like that.

[00:45:33] [SPEAKER_03] It's saving humanity and ending a conflict instead of being part of that conflict, I think is a major shift from that, that, that a Japanese audience member of 1954 would recognize and resonate with them, you know?

[00:45:50] [SPEAKER_04] Interesting. And then it's, it's also interesting with the love triangle, he's not bitter or resentful about, um, uh, what's her name? Um, Emiko. Emiko's, uh, uh, interest in Ogata and he, and he gives her permission, have a happy life. And in some ways that's also saying to the Japanese people, the audience, you know,

[00:46:15] [SPEAKER_04] there's horror here, but don't let that stop you from living your life. Like you got to go on.

[00:46:24] [SPEAKER_03] Yes. And I think that actually does quite well meshing with what we'll talk about when we come up to minus one. Right. Um, so you want to talk about the rock? Yeah. Let's talk about some of the things that didn't work because I do have nitpicks. I, you know, we, we do have to understand it is a 1954 movie. Uh, so some of the acting scenes are

[00:46:47] [SPEAKER_03] pretty contrived. Uh, the, the, the scene where Sadi Zawa demonstrates the, uh, oxygen destroyer to Emiko, uh, we see like the fish just kind of dissolve and Emiko screams.

[00:47:02] [SPEAKER_04] No, we don't even see the fish. Do we even see the fish dissolve?

[00:47:04] [SPEAKER_03] We do in the second scene of it when we get the kind of what actually happened, what happened, right. The little flashback scene, but she turns away and just screams in horror. Yes. Uh, you know, it's very 1950s horror movie scream kind of, kind of thing. Um, and then you mentioned the, the jets attacking Godzilla, they're firing rockets at him and I'm just watching it the whole time. They don't hit him at all. They're just like nowhere even near him. They're just randomly

[00:47:31] [SPEAKER_03] spraying rockets. And I'm thinking how much collateral damage are they doing? How many people are dying? Not because of Godzilla, but because the jets are shooting rockets all over the place

[00:47:42] [SPEAKER_04] and missing, uh, just, well, I think, you know, not, not by their purpose, but by a secondary meaning that we, you know, decoding that we can take out of this is that yeah, fighting the monster itself is going to have an effect. And I think that's when we look at a war machine, uh, that is rampaging, uh, across a globe and the, uh, amount of, um,

[00:48:11] [SPEAKER_04] resource and material and what has to be done to stop that war machine is as equally horrifying

[00:48:19] [SPEAKER_03] and potent and deadly. Indeed. And I'd be remiss. I know I said I wouldn't go into Shin Godzilla, but I'm going to you for just a brief second. We can't help it though. Um, so it's, it's, it's interesting to contrast this with Shin Godzilla because there are scenes in Shin Godzilla where they have, you know, self-defense force helicopters lined up to take the shot and,

[00:48:43] [SPEAKER_03] and hit Godzilla with rockets. And they, they have to get the all clear from the prime minister because of the way the constitution is written. It has to come directly from him. And they're just about to give the all clear. And then there's like a, uh, an old, uh, grandma with a, a cane walking across, uh, the, uh, the, the crossing of the road and the train tracks. And so immediately they have to stop everything and can't fire because there's one civilian who

[00:49:13] [SPEAKER_03] wasn't evacuated. And so in, in the context of Shin Godzilla, this is about, you know, the restrictions on Japan, the Japanese military and whether they should have these kinds of things and, you know, that prevent them from engaging a threat. But, you know, here we have the original one made almost immediately after the constitution and it's, uh, yeah, fire away, just blow the city away. Uh, yeah, that's interesting to me, but again, Shin Godzilla,

[00:49:43] [SPEAKER_04] maybe a later time. Different movie. One of the things that didn't work for me was the beginning of the movie is very snappy. It doesn't waste a lot of time getting in, getting into the issues, setting up the world. And then it's, there's that point where it just sort of drags and it just feels, it sort of changes down shifts. Now that may be movie going sensibility of that time. I'm not enough

[00:50:07] [SPEAKER_04] of a cinema buff or a film historian to really understand the, the, the pro, you know, the, the thinking of how the creative process for, for a movie at that time. The pacing decisions. Wow. Yeah. And it just kind of, whoa, slows down. And then there's great things like where there's just, oh, the radio wasn't off. And then suddenly there's, you know, there's suddenly a broadcast from a device and you're like, oh, was the radio on all the time? Was the TV on all the time? Right. Right.

[00:50:36] [SPEAKER_04] And there's a bunch of, you know, little weird things like that, but that's, you know, that's fine. That's of, of the time and of the, of the day, but I don't have that many critiques or criticisms beyond just that strange pacing, which I'm willing to allow for. It's a movie from 1954. Otherwise this, the special effects, not despite the rockets, the, the, the monster,

[00:51:01] [SPEAKER_04] the puppetry, the, the suit nation stuff. It, it's all pretty ground breaking. Is it groundbreaking? It's, I mean, it really advances the art form and it really advances the kind of storytelling. And I think when I compare it, I haven't watched a Frankenstein or a, a Dracula from the mid fifties, but I definitely have seen them. Uh, and I'm thinking of 54, 54 has an intentional craft to it.

[00:51:30] [SPEAKER_04] It has an, it has a point of view. It's trying to say something. There's nutrition here inside of this fluff. Whereas yeah, later on when we get, you know, monster Island stuff, uh, it, it, uh, it gets a little silly and a little bit goofy, but really there's some, some amazing, the, the inversion of Sarah's hour, uh, the, uh, Amiko's, um, sort of personal agency. She's, you know, when there's an early scene of them where, where, where, where Ogata is like,

[00:52:00] [SPEAKER_04] Oh, I just got called into work. So you'll have to go to the concert by yourself. And Amiko's like, okay, bye. She just heads out, you know? Uh, so you, I think you had mentioned this when we did our first recording and I don't think it's in the first podcast. I think it was in the, um, the cutting room floor. Right. But you were talking about the parliament.

[00:52:19] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. So there's a scene where there, you know, uh, Yamane, the biologist is, is briefing a parliamentary committee and there's members of the multiple parties or what have you in there. Uh, and one of the politicians, uh, male politician gets up and starts talking about how they can't release this information to the public and whatever. And he's immediately attacked by a group of,

[00:52:45] [SPEAKER_03] uh, women, politicians, women diet members who are saying, no, we have to tell the public and we have to do this. And that part stuck out to me because it's only with the 1947 constitution that women are even given the right to vote and become members of, you know, or, or participants in politics, uh, in this way. And so here we have, you know, a scene where not only are women participating in

[00:53:15] [SPEAKER_03] politics, but they're, they're diet members. They're members of the parliamentary system and they're voicing their opinions very strongly, uh, in, in what they do. And they're right. They, they do need to let the public know. Um, and so I just thought that was very interesting that for the movie in 1954, it even included, uh, women in this scene when it was such a recent

[00:53:41] [SPEAKER_03] relatively thing. Uh, I thought that was nicely done. Um, and we talk, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, since we're on it, I'll just talk about there's, there's two moments in the movie that I really want to make sure that I get in as kind of my favorites. Uh, one of them is there's a scene during Godzilla's attack where there's a woman and, uh, she's holding her, her child and you get the sense that they're

[00:54:07] [SPEAKER_03] about to be crushed by a, uh, falling building being knocked over or something like that. And she says, uh, don't worry, you know, we'll get to see daddy soon. Um, and it's not explained anything beyond that, but the assumption that you can make take from the scene, right? Is that dad died in the war in some way, shape or form. And this is a, you know, child who has grown up without a father.

[00:54:36] [SPEAKER_03] And so as being, you know, as their, as mom realizes that they're going to die right now, she's comforting the child and probably herself by saying, well, we'll get to be with, you know, my husband, your father, uh, in, in heaven or, or, you know, wherever soon. Um, and that just one, that would just like hits me, you know? Um, the other scene is as Godzilla is rampaging across the

[00:55:02] [SPEAKER_03] city, there's a reporter and film crew and other, uh, backup that are standing on the top of this building, uh, or tower. And the reporter is a, you know, he's a, he's describing the attack for the radio audience or the TV audience or, you know, whatever's being recorded behind him. Um, and like, he's literally giving play by play, watching the monster come towards them speculating, Oh, you

[00:55:30] [SPEAKER_03] know, it's too late for us to run. Are we going to die? You know, stay tuned and see. And then of course, Godzilla comes and knocks the building over and every, all the camera crew and the reporter and all fall off to their death. It's not a very like uplifting scene, of course, but it's, it's interesting just to kind of into watching 54 and I bring it up because it comes back in later

[00:55:55] [SPEAKER_03] movies. It's, there's a recreation of the scene in both Shin Godzilla and in minus one, um, which we'll, we'll, we'll get to, of course, but there's a couple other scenes in minus one too. The, the, the continuation of these echoes is just something that I just love to see.

[00:56:11] [SPEAKER_04] It's a lot of fun. Should we make a couple of quick notes about 56 and then we'll take our break and then, uh, we'll come back and we'll talk about minus one. Yeah, let's, let's do that. Um,

[00:56:22] [SPEAKER_03] so the, in 1956, uh, a cut of Godzilla was released in the U S under the title Godzilla King of the Monsters. It was heavily re-edited, uh, and it inserted Raymond Burr, who I, I think was an up and coming actor at the time. I think that's what we, right. I think it was, yeah. Um, and he,

[00:56:46] [SPEAKER_03] he is the lead in this movie that has been kind of edited, uh, to make him the focal point playing an American reporter on the scene. Uh, it was, it was cut, uh, in some ways with, you know, new footage, splicing him in and using body doubles in other places to kind of recreate the Japanese characters that he should be interacting with, but, but didn't obviously, cause he wasn't in the original.

[00:57:12] [SPEAKER_03] Um, and they removed most of the references to atomic testing by the United States, uh, the scenes of destruction and suffering in the city caused by Godzilla's rampage because they didn't want, you know, those were toned down cause they didn't want American audiences associating that with the world war II era bombing and feeling some kind of way about it. Um, prior to that,

[00:57:41] [SPEAKER_04] I would imagine that American audiences were being plied quite heavily with propaganda, you know, or American, uh, American favorite, if it favored, uh, uh, news reels at the, at the movie theater and obviously Japan, the war in Japan and the war in the Pacific carried on for a little while after the war in Europe had ended. And so there was probably, so suddenly this focus

[00:58:09] [SPEAKER_04] switches over to that for quite a number of years.

[00:58:13] [SPEAKER_03] The, the, the 1956 version also removes any references, uh, that could be interpreted as references to Hiroshima or Nagasaki because you couldn't portray the bombings, the U S bombings of those two cities, uh, as negative. So the whole narrative was that the bombings of those two cities with nuclear weapons were necessary in order to end the war. And, you know, there's been

[00:58:43] [SPEAKER_03] so much academic ink spilled over that question. Yeah. We're not going to litigate that. We're not going to do it. Um, but it's interesting to me that, that, that was part of the editing as well was to take out anything that, that cast a negative light on that because America's got to be the hero. Uh, and, and so they re-edited it with an American

[00:59:06] [SPEAKER_03] protagonist, you know, just dropped into the movie. Right. And, uh, a focus on things where,

[00:59:13] [SPEAKER_04] you know, it's not the Americans as the bad guys. And it's, I think this version then is where we start to get that fundamental shifting, uh, away from social commentary, away from allegory and metaphor and really into, I, this is a franchise that we can make a bunch of films out of. It's entertainment, it's wrestling entertainment, literally because we see, uh, the suitzilla, uh, you know, fighting later

[00:59:42] [SPEAKER_04] is, is sort of a, a proto wrestling style, if you will. And so I think it really sets up for it, even all the way that shift, I think is still evident in Toho licensing the, uh, monster verse two legendary because this is just about monster fighting and CGI budgets than it is about,

[01:00:07] [SPEAKER_04] uh, thoughts about society and science and relationships and all of this kind of stuff.

[01:00:14] [SPEAKER_03] Whatever social commentary is in the monster verse movies. And, and I haven't not seen all of them, so I don't want to, you know, disparage all of them. Right. Right. But, um, whatever is there is certainly it's there as part of the story, but it's not the focus. No. Whereas it is absolutely the point in Godzilla 1954 and a couple of the Godzilla movies that come after. And then several

[01:00:41] [SPEAKER_03] of the series reboots start with those sorts of themes. Yeah, exactly. Cool. All right. Well,

[01:00:50] [SPEAKER_04] should we take our break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about minus one. Let's do it.

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[01:02:32] [SPEAKER_04] And we're back. All right. So let's talk about the 2023 movie Godzilla minus one. I remember when this came out a couple of things, one, I had no idea that it was coming out. It was just suddenly, uh, it suddenly arrived. I was like, Oh, hello. And then I remember seeing it in the theater and I felt really conflicted and I didn't necessarily enjoy it. Not only because the theater

[01:03:00] [SPEAKER_04] are local, it was in one of the smaller little theater rooms and it's the most uncomfortable chairs and the screen isn't that great. So blah, blah, blah. But then I, I think I didn't have the right calibration to see this movie. I was thinking of when I think of, of Godzilla from the, like a Toho Godzilla film, I'm thinking of the monster fighting wrestling, WrestleMania stuff, right? Or I'm

[01:03:27] [SPEAKER_04] thinking the new monster verse from, from legendary. So my calibration for what this movie was trying to do and what it's trying to say, my appreciation for it was like, I had no, I was, it was almost too serious. It was. And I didn't understand it. And then because the CGI of this movie is a little, you know, it's, it's not bad. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just not like, it's not maybe some of

[01:03:54] [SPEAKER_04] what I'm used to. I, I came away with it from this movie just going like, what? And I keep hearing people talk about, Oh, it's really great. It's really great. So now as we're going into this, I'm like, Oh, now I'm calibrated. Now I'm attenuated to what this movie is saying and what this movie is doing historically and contextually. I can actually start to see some of these, this deeper stuff that's going on here. And, and, and so now I'm a little bit more excited to see what

[01:04:18] [SPEAKER_04] they're going to do with minus zero. So that said, why don't you set us up for some of the basics? What's the, you know what's the, what are the production basics here and what are we looking

[01:04:31] [SPEAKER_03] at as a film? Okay. So Godzilla zero minus one was released in 2023 on November 3rd in Japan. Remember I said that date. Yeah. It's, it's, it's like I tell my students, everything I say is Chekhov's gun. It's gonna come back around. Right. So yeah, it was released on the 70th or I guess it

[01:04:54] [SPEAKER_03] was the 69th actually, but they build it as the 70th anniversary going into it. Uh, uh, whatever. And then it was released in December 1st in the United States. Uh, it was written by and directed by, uh, Takashi Yamazaki who funnily enough, uh, when he, he's got a quote from, uh, cause this is

[01:05:19] [SPEAKER_03] the first Toho film with Godzilla to come after Shin Godzilla and his quote, uh, about when he was told, okay, you're making the next Godzilla movie. He was like, uh, Shin Godzilla was amazing. When Toho asked me if I would do the next Godzilla movie, I could only think I have to follow Shin. So, um, but he, he's an experienced, uh, writer and director, uh, had, did work on, uh, several movies,

[01:05:45] [SPEAKER_03] the great war of Archimedes, uh, the fighter pilot, which was about a zero pilot. Uh, and he was actually the filmographer or the director of filmography for the Tokyo Olympics that took

[01:05:58] [SPEAKER_04] place in 2021. Interesting note about the zero pilot because the pilot is the primary protagonist in, in this movie. And it looks like I watched the two trailers for minus zero before we recorded today. And there's a lot of airplane action going on in there as well. So I don't wonder now knowing that fact that, Oh, this, this might be a through line from this director. So, um, just other, you know,

[01:06:26] [SPEAKER_03] numbers, uh, the budget for the movie was 15 million box office. It made 114 million worldwide, according to Rotten Tomatoes. Uh, it was a 99 and critic score, 98 fan score. So people liked it, uh, unlike David on first watch. Um, and, uh, Metacritic had it as a 81, uh, or an 8.6.

[01:06:51] [SPEAKER_03] And actually funny that you said that about the CGI cause Godzilla, this Godzilla movie was the first Godzilla movie to win an Academy award, which it won for best visual effects.

[01:07:01] [SPEAKER_04] No way. I had no idea. Yeah. Oh my goodness. So, wow. Uh, there you go. You're, you're, you're, you're a harsh critic. Another a, uh, I'm just another, uh, uh, uh, uh, alpha hotel with a microphone out in the world, you know, spewing spewing his opinions. Yeah. Uh, who am I to argue with the Academy?

[01:07:26] [SPEAKER_03] I guess we'll go, um, quickly through the story here. Sure. Uh, but in 1945. So the reason this is called minus one is because the idea is that Godzilla 1954 is the, the, like the level. Right. And so this begins before that. So they, that's part of, this is like a pre-story. Um, or was at least how I understood it when, when it was first explained and then we'll get

[01:07:54] [SPEAKER_03] to minus zero and they went in a different direction. I don't know. But the idea is that this is like in this timeline, these events happen before we would have had it in the 1954s timeline. Right. So this allows them to start it earlier. So it's 1945. World War II is at the very end. It's, it's about to end soon, but it's not over yet. Right. And it's just real quick too. It's an

[01:08:20] [SPEAKER_04] interesting convention. And I think it, um, creatively it's interesting because the title is like, wait, mine, it's not, Oh, part one, part two, you know, whatever it's this minus and plus. So what are we going to get? We're going to get Godzilla plus one eventually. And so it's, it's an interesting convention. It's like a countdown, right? It's like T minus.

[01:08:45] [SPEAKER_04] Exactly. And it's, but it's also, uh, uh, the world changes at this point, right? As of zero. Right. Right. And now we, we reset this clock and we move forward, you know, and we talk about in Star Wars, we talk, you know, sort of BBY or, you know, that, that kind of stuff. So we have these, you know, pre history dates and these post history dates. So I think it, it works, but also just visually it makes the title and the way that they've done the graphics.

[01:09:11] [SPEAKER_04] It's really cool. And I have to say, it's kind of a little bit of creative genius, a little stroke of genius in what they've done. So I really like it. And it certainly sets it apart from the rest of the Godzilla universe. Yes. As its own thing. So, um, it's unmistakable, right? You know, that it's when we talk about minus zero, minus one, you know, exactly which movie it is,

[01:09:37] [SPEAKER_04] so you know, and you know which era it just situates it perfectly. Anyway, carry on. So, uh,

[01:09:42] [SPEAKER_03] 1945, the war is almost over and our protagonist, uh, named Shikishima, uh, is a kamikaze pilot who appears to have mechanical troubles. So he lands at an emergency airfield on this small little island, uh, Odo Island, which is the same name as the one in 1954's movie.

[01:10:01] [SPEAKER_04] Oh, right. Okay, cool. So there's a lot to, they really do mine the original, but they do it in a

[01:10:07] [SPEAKER_03] very tasteful way, I think. Um, so that night Godzilla attacks the garrison, uh, the lead mechanic Tachibana urges him to use his plane's machine gun on the monster, but Shikishima freezes up and panics, uh, and everyone dies, but the two of them leaving Tachibana to blame Shikishima's inactivity for the death, uh, of all his, of his comrades. Uh, Shikishima returns to Tokyo to find it bombed out

[01:10:36] [SPEAKER_03] and he learns that his parents are dead and he runs into a former neighbor named Sumiko who screams at him for coming back alive and not doing his duty. And all of this combined with the events that happen on the island, uh, add to his survivor's guilt, uh, that he, he feels very heavily throughout the movie.

[01:10:57] [SPEAKER_03] Um, he, he takes in a, uh, uh, a young woman who has a baby. Uh, the baby is not hers. It's an orphan that she has taken custody of, uh, from the, the mother who passed away. Uh, and he, he, he's reluctant to do this, but he doesn't really have a choice. Uh, Noriko kind of makes herself at home and he gets a job

[01:11:21] [SPEAKER_03] supporting his new kind of adopted family as a gunner on a boat that's clearing wartime mines in the waters around, uh, Tokyo back. And I, I just wanted to make a quick note on this because one of the things that if you're studying this immediate post-war period that comes out is the,

[01:11:42] [SPEAKER_03] the, the, the number of wartime orphans because of family dwellings being bombed and so forth. And so oftentimes the children were sent out into the countryside, much like in Britain during the blitz. Right. So the children would be in somewhere that was safe and not under bombing, but the parents would die. And so you do have quite a large population of orphans. So it's interesting to me

[01:12:11] [SPEAKER_03] that they highlight this with Akiko here in the, in the movie. Um, and so we fast forward a couple of years, we see that, you know, they are slowly becoming a, a, a family. Um, meanwhile, we get to 1947 and the United States is conducting nuclear testing, just like in the original. And one of these

[01:12:36] [SPEAKER_03] tests mutates Godzilla who resumes attacking ships in the ocean off of Japan. Um, the United States recognizes that this is a threat, but offers no help because they don't want to do anything that would stoke tensions with the Soviet union. The Japanese government likewise refuses to warn, uh, or, or publicize this to the public because they don't want to cause a panic. Um, I, interesting to me historically

[01:13:05] [SPEAKER_03] is that 1947 is around the time that we see the reverse course or what's known as the reverse course in occupation policy. The Americans at this time, you know, prior to this, everything was about getting the, you know, supposed war criminals out of the government and democratizing Japan and taking away their military capability so that they couldn't ever go to war again and, and cause a world war two,

[01:13:32] [SPEAKER_03] uh, to happen again. And by the time we get into the middle of 1947, the U S is having second thoughts about that policy because they are, you know, the cold war is, has started and they're seeing the way this is that the Soviet union is flexing its muscles in Europe, flexing its muscles by, you know, propping up a communist regime in North Korea. And then there's a little thing called the domino theory.

[01:14:01] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's, there's that. So, so, you know, uh, the Chinese civil war is going on. So the U S starts thinking, Hey, we need to shore up things around the world. And Japan is one of these places that we don't want to fall to communism. So maybe it's a useful location in

[01:14:18] [SPEAKER_04] terms of it's a workforce that can be industrialized. That's, uh, and it's a great base of operations. To influence activities in the, in the Pacific region.

[01:14:29] [SPEAKER_03] So the whole idea of not wanting to stoke tensions with the Soviet union in the movie fits in this point where the U S has larger geopolitical concerns, uh, and, and so wouldn't want to do anything that, that looked like an overly aggressive move while at the same time, they're kind of conserving their forces in case anything happens or becomes right. Um, uh, a problem.

[01:14:55] [SPEAKER_03] We'll get to some problems I have with this here at, eventually, but, um, you know, understanding the geopolitical context here kind of helps explain how they make this choice. Right. Anyway, uh, Shikishima's, uh, mind clearing boat runs into Godzilla and is manages to stall it a little bit until a former Imperial Japanese Navy ship, the Takao, uh, comes on the scene

[01:15:22] [SPEAKER_03] and engages Godzilla with its guns. Godzilla's attention turns to the Takao and he sinks it with his heat ray. Uh, but Shikishima's crew, uh, escapes. You know, they're able to take advantage of kind of Godzilla being distracted. Um, Godzilla makes his way to Japan, uh, and attacks Ginza

[01:15:42] [SPEAKER_03] where coincidentally, uh, Noriko has just gotten a job as a secretary in an office. So, uh, Shikishima makes his way to Ginza to try to find her and, uh, and does, uh, cause he wants to get her out of there and protect her. Uh, Ginza is where relative? Ginza's in Tokyo. It's a district in Tokyo. It's a district. Uh, and it's kind of like the high end shopping and business area at the time.

[01:16:10] [SPEAKER_04] Got it. North, South, East, West, like where? Uh, central. Central. Okay. Yeah. So, um,

[01:16:18] [SPEAKER_03] cause I don't really have a geography in my head. No, it's, it is, it is prime central Tokyo. Uh, you know, it's one of the first places that we built, which actually she mentions when she talks about getting a job there that much of it has been rebuilt. It's quite a deep harbor going into Tokyo. Absolutely. It's quite a long neck there. Yeah. Yeah. So Godzilla, Godzilla is there. He's attacking, everybody's running from him. The Japanese military, uh, fires,

[01:16:47] [SPEAKER_03] uh, tank fire at him and he gets angry. So he unleashes his, uh, his, his blast and it levels the area. Um, Shikishima is pushed to safety between two buildings by Noriko, but she's swept away in the blast. Um, so never to be seen again. Maybe, uh, he is very distraught. And of course,

[01:17:14] [SPEAKER_03] vows revenge. This is, you know, the third time he's had a run in with Godzilla and lost people. So, um, and this is the scene, this is the period, the part of the movie where we have the reporter standing on the top of the building, narrating the attack until it is destroyed. And it's a absolute callback to the 1954 movie. It's also a callback to the same scene ongoing in the 2016 movie.

[01:17:43] [SPEAKER_03] Um, but then we're also, once Godzilla's attack subsides, we see all the aftermath, the victims, the rescue efforts, there's black rain falling, which is reminiscent of the, the, the acid rain falling after the nuclear attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So we have very clear imagery calling

[01:18:06] [SPEAKER_03] back to conventional bombing. We have it calling back to atomic bombing, et cetera. Um, and so in order to do something about this, because you know, the complaint throughout the movie is that the government is, uh, uh, uh, an incapable, right. And the U S is not doing anything. There's a group of

[01:18:29] [SPEAKER_03] former, uh, war veterans led by, uh, a former Navy captain and, uh, Noda, who was one of the crew of Shikishima ship, uh, or, or boat rather, uh, who just happened to have been a weapons development specialist for the, for the Imperial Japanese Navy during the war. Um, good to have a mad scientist among your tea drinking crew. He's our, he's our city's always stand in, but not nearly as scary.

[01:18:59] [SPEAKER_03] Certainly not as coded as that, but he does have the frizzy hair and the little round spectacles. Absolutely. He looks, you look at him, you're, you're like, yeah, that's a professor. Um, so he comes up with a plan that's very convoluted, but, uh, the, the idea is that they're going to use, uh, you know, scientific, uh, principles in order to sink Godzilla and then bring him back up and

[01:19:24] [SPEAKER_03] basically give him the bends and this will cause him to explode. Um, and they have former Navy ships that they're going to use to kind of enact this plan, but they need Shikishima who, because he's a pilot to fly a plane, uh, in order to distract Godzilla while they put this plan into place. Shikishima reaches out to his, uh, old kind of nemesis or not nemesis, but, uh, uh, the,

[01:19:51] [SPEAKER_03] the Tachibana, the mechanic who blames him for the death of his comrades and Tachibana agrees, uh, in the end to refurbish this fighter. Uh, and so Shikishima is able to, to take off. Uh, he doesn't, the, the, the notice plan doesn't actually go to plan because of course not, of

[01:20:14] [SPEAKER_03] course not. And so it doesn't finish him, but as Godzilla is readying his, his atomic heat ray to blow everything up, Shikishima flies the fighter into his mouth and it detonates the bombs that are attached to the aircraft, destroying the head and triggering the body's explosion. There's a minute where we think that, or the audience has led to believe that Shikishima died, sacrificing himself,

[01:20:41] [SPEAKER_03] uh, calling back to the fact that he was a kamikaze pilot who did not do that in the war and feels guilt about it. But we see after a minute or so him floating down to earth because Tachibana, the mechanic installed a, an ejection seat. I think it was already in the plane and he just made sure it

[01:21:02] [SPEAKER_04] worked. No, it wasn't. It wasn't. Oh, it wasn't. In fact, this is, this is a plot point because

[01:21:09] [SPEAKER_03] as Noda's giving his big speech, rallying all the veterans and they're talking about, you know, how the Imperial Japanese military sent them out without these things. One of the things he mentioned that they didn't get was ejection seats in their aircraft. Right. Which is why I thought it was there. So I guess, okay, I misread the scene. Yeah, no. So then, so then we get a, a scene later

[01:21:32] [SPEAKER_03] where Tachibana is showing him specifically, Hey, I put this in for you. Right. And, and telling

[01:21:39] [SPEAKER_04] Shikishima to live, not die. You gotta live. Exactly. And then that ties into the, uh, his relationship or being a surrogate father to the child and all of that stuff. Right. And the forgiveness and,

[01:21:50] [SPEAKER_03] and that Tachibana shows him for everything that happened, uh, and wanting him to live.

[01:21:57] [SPEAKER_04] Right. So, so that's a big theme is, is not only, uh, survival, but also, uh, moving, healing the, healing the, the trauma and, and for, and, and giving people grace and forgiveness because here we are, we are here where we are now. And what are we going to do now? Right. Right. We can hold these feelings. That's fine. But we have this threat that we have to deal with right

[01:22:23] [SPEAKER_04] now. And so, um, here, you know, live, yeah. Live your life. Anyway, carry on.

[01:22:30] [SPEAKER_03] So they all come back to shore and Shikishima is given a telegram, which tells him that Noriko is actually alive. Shocking. Um, so he goes, he rushes to the hospital where, where she, uh, is in a bed. He takes Akiko with him and they embrace, and we have our family, our, our created family back together again. But as you know, we're kind of ending the scene, the camera zooms in to the back

[01:23:00] [SPEAKER_03] of her neck where there's a strange black mark spreading across of it. And then the movie cuts to underwater somewhere in Tokyo Bay, there's a chunk of Godzilla's exploded flesh and it starts bubbling with new growth as the Godzilla March plays. So there we have our trademark. You thought this is over. It's not over. It's not over yet.

[01:23:26] [SPEAKER_03] You know, uh, that Toho mandates and that's the end of the movie.

[01:23:31] [SPEAKER_04] Really quick question on the, on the plot stuff. It has, was it established in prior movies that Godzilla has this regenerative power? Uh, in some of them at least, yes. Okay. Cause they set that up really early on in this movie when he gets shot in the head. Yes. And he grows back.

[01:23:48] [SPEAKER_03] His cheek like basically explodes, but then grows immediately back. Yeah. Right. And creating an indestructible force ultimately. Yeah. That is, that is a point as well in Shin Godzilla, um, which again, totally different timeline and whatever, but the fact that Godzilla can do this is established in some previous movies. Yes.

[01:24:09] [SPEAKER_04] And this goes in one of the themes then too, is, is that once, once unleashed, these forces are never controllable or never containable. We can't put the toothpaste back into the tube.

[01:24:19] [SPEAKER_03] Well, and, and conventional weapons are not going to destroy it because it can just heal itself. You have to come up with some sort of convoluted plot.

[01:24:28] [SPEAKER_04] We need Mark Watney here to, uh, science the shit out of this again. But then we know from 1954 is that there's a, there's social commentary there, which is you guys aren't trustable yet. Just because you make this new thing to defeat this one thing. Now we have a problem solution mass problem begets solution, which begets problem, which begets solution. And so once it's out, once we can't ever put back the, the knowledge of, of splitting the atom. Yes.

[01:24:56] [SPEAKER_04] Right. And unless we return to, you know, our,

[01:24:59] [SPEAKER_03] The toothpaste does not go back in the tube as they say.

[01:25:02] [SPEAKER_04] No. Although I do every once in a while when I get a little too much on there, I try to put it back in a little bit. So anyway, uh, so yeah, so it, so big theme, big, interesting theme, uh, of, of, um, living with guilt. How do you, how do you repair trauma? How do you forgive people? And how do you pick up after this really, you know, things that you did or didn't do? And it's,

[01:25:30] [SPEAKER_04] it's an interesting argument because with, uh, uh, Shiksima, he arguably Godzilla would not have been defeated had he completed his kamikaze mission. Right. Right. There's a, you know, there's a, there's an argument there that you can't ever solve. Like, Oh, it was somebody else would have, but he was the guy who in that moment knew how to do the thing that they needed to do,

[01:25:58] [SPEAKER_04] which was to fly this weird experimental plane. And that's one of the things that didn't work for me in this movie is that Godzilla is, Oh, look at this little plane. I'm going to go chase it and go out into the bay again and like stomp around. Like it's a, I don't go chasing mosquitoes around my house to that degree. Right. So anyway, that was a little thing that bothered me about the movie.

[01:26:21] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. A little bit contrived in the plan. Yeah. Um, but, but, but no, I, I think that's a very valuable point in the idea, you know, going back to what we were talking about with 54 and the idea of sacrifice, right. And what does sacrifice mean? And when is it, uh, purposeful? Uh, and when is it like one of the themes that I catch through the whole movie and I'm going to mention him cause I just

[01:26:44] [SPEAKER_03] love him. Uh, the, uh, captain of the minesweeper boat that Shikishima is on as a man named, uh, Akitsu. And he is just the, the, the stereotypical old blue collar, you know, had obviously been in the Navy in during the war. Uh, and he's always chiming in whenever something, you know, the government, uh,

[01:27:10] [SPEAKER_03] doesn't do something or, or makes, you know, a choice to try to like control information. He's always got a comment about how this country never changes. Uh, information control is the only thing this country is good at and the leaders failed us and all this stuff. So he's kind of like the, the, the voice of that frustration. Um, but the ship that, or the boat, I keep saying ship, the boat that he's on,

[01:27:36] [SPEAKER_03] cause it's this tiny little wooden thing. The name of it is the Shinsei Maru, which is the new life. It's like the SS new life. Okay. And so it is, you know, here he is, we're, we're talking about, you know, how useless the government is and the idea of how they expected us to make sacrifices. And we were always the ones called upon. It was never them. We had to do these things. And so that ties into,

[01:28:05] [SPEAKER_03] for me with this whole idea of survivor's guilt and, and, and the idea, the question of sacrifice and when is it worth it? I mean, it's all about new life. It's all about moving forward. It's all about forgetting that past and doing what you can do to survive and help others survive now. Um, and, and I really like that aspect of it. It's not, there, there's a point where they're discussing

[01:28:32] [SPEAKER_03] with the veterans group and they're like, are we going to do anything or not? And, and somebody makes the point, I forget whether it's, it's, it's, uh, I forget who it is. Maybe it was Noda where they say, you know, this isn't the unwinnable war that we, that we lost against the Americans where we were put, it wasn't us, the grunts, the soldiers, the sailors doing the work. It was the

[01:28:57] [SPEAKER_03] politicians. It was the, the, the, the leadership that put us in this unwinnable war and forced us to sacrifice ourselves for no reason. But this isn't that this is something that we can win. And if we win, then we can save Japan. Unlike we were, you know, the war where we couldn't. And, and that is a very strong theme through the whole movie.

[01:29:19] [SPEAKER_04] So this is another clip from Aisha's podcast with Yuki Miyamoto talking about the theme of minus one.

[01:29:28] [SPEAKER_00] I think it clearly shows that the things changed because the big theme of that Godzilla minus one is that you have to live. You cannot self-sacrifice. And I think that theme is that message was very strong and very strong and very right there. And especially, you know, in the nineties and to

[01:29:49] [SPEAKER_00] 21st century, this term, karoshi became an English word, which is walking so hard until you collapse, you, you die to, um, you work to die death. But I think recently that was severely criticized and people started thinking that, well, you know, you cannot self-sacrifice. So I think that message

[01:30:14] [SPEAKER_00] in Godzilla minus one is a huge change and nicely because it's a prequel to 1954 Godzilla.

[01:30:22] [SPEAKER_04] So I'm curious if that resonates with you at all. And, and what we were talking about in terms of sacrifice and working hard and all of that kind of stuff and just Japanese, uh, work culture.

[01:30:33] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, it absolutely does. And, and this is something that, you know, I tell my students to, that a movie, uh, when you watch it for historical interpretation and stuff is not only about the time that it is portraying, but it's about the time when it's being made. It's because it's being made with sensibilities and themes and ideas of, of its time of creation. Right. So I think this is an

[01:31:00] [SPEAKER_03] important point that professor Miyamoto brings up because it is talking about not sacrificing yourself. And she's right through the eighties and into the early nineties, we had this kind of image of Japan as, you know, the working to death, the dedication to the company, the idea that the Japanese, you know, never went home, that they were always working, that it was, you know, you, instead of sacrificing

[01:31:25] [SPEAKER_03] your life for the emperor, now you were sacrificing your time and your energy and your mental wellbeing for the company, right? Your corporate fuel Lord. Yes. Yes. In order to, and, and there's a history that goes to this because it was part of the reconstruction after the devastation of the war, rebuilding the Japanese economy, and then going into like the seventies and eighties, the explosion of the Japanese economy into becoming,

[01:31:52] [SPEAKER_03] you know, second only to the U S in the world with the downturn of the economy in the 1990s and the recession that Japan still really hasn't escaped since then. A lot of people questioned the whole idea of sacrificing yourself to the company. And in, especially since the two thousands and 2010s, and now into

[01:32:15] [SPEAKER_03] the 2020s, things like remaining with the same company for your entire lifetime are no longer as cherished ideals with, uh, you know, within Japanese corporate culture, you know, people move corporations. Now people move jobs. Now people refuse to, or change jobs if they feel that they're not getting enough personal time to spend with their families and so forth. So I do think that on a different level

[01:32:42] [SPEAKER_03] from what we were talking about, the very heavy things of war sacrifice and stuff like that, it does resonate with this time in the, the current Japanese mentality of why should I kill myself for the company so that stockholders can get a little bit more from their returns or, or whatever. And the fact that, Hey, you know, we do need to step back and kind of have a bit more of a work-life balance

[01:33:10] [SPEAKER_03] and, and so forth. This is, you know, obviously a different realm when we're bringing in radioactive lizards into it, but this, this does resonate, I think very well with a contemporary audience.

[01:33:23] [SPEAKER_04] And it's collective action. This isn't the government doing this. This is a kind of a bottom up grassroots effort that the government turns a blind eye to and says, okay, we're going to give you some ships that are, you know, don't have any guns on them anymore and, uh, good luck and let us know how it goes, which is also an interesting commentary about collective action and community driven goals. And then when those guys in that meeting say, I don't want to do this, I want to go

[01:33:52] [SPEAKER_04] be, I need to go be with my family or, you know, I'm, I, I need to make a different choice. Nobody thinks a bad thought about those people that decide to leave. Absolutely. You, we get it. Absolutely. You got to be in this fight completely.

[01:34:09] [SPEAKER_03] Because everybody's already been through a fight. Exactly. And they totally understand when the guy next to them is like, you know what? I can't, I can't do it. I need to go protect my family

[01:34:19] [SPEAKER_04] because they didn't get those options before. And it's choice. It's about having agency and choice. And we're not going to judge you if you don't want to volunteer for this, what is probably a

[01:34:31] [SPEAKER_03] suicide mission. And there's an element of reclaiming Japan's masculinity afterwards, if we want to bring gender into this, which of course we should, um, you know, these are men who were on the losing side of a war and then, you know, are being occupied by a foreign power who they lost to emasculation. And there's an emasculation that happens after world war II. We won't go too deep

[01:34:56] [SPEAKER_03] into it, but you know, by being given the chance to redeem themselves, even if they don't think that they were the problem in the war, right? Like they're, they're clearly blaming the politicians and the leadership that made stupid decisions. This gives them a chance to kind of reclaim that agency, that masculinity in a way that isn't this useless sacrifice that they were forced into during the

[01:35:21] [SPEAKER_04] wartime period. And a brutal sack. I mean, a sacrifice that had consequences on all sides, because if you had any hesitation, that's it, right? You were, you, you are subject to punishment

[01:35:37] [SPEAKER_03] by the military establishment. Well, and as we read, so this week, my students were reading, um, uh, accounts out of, uh, an oral history called Japan at war by, uh, uh, Theodore and Haruko Cook. Uh, it was written in the early 1990s or was compiled in the early, early 1990s. It's a great book, highly recommend it to anybody who wants to read about Japanese experiences of the war,

[01:36:03] [SPEAKER_03] the average Japanese person, whether they were a civilian or a soldier or whatever. Um, but, you know, so often people have their individual experiences that they don't get any control over. And this gives them that control that gives them the ability. And for some of them, it probably gave them the ability to do something that they felt was good when after the war, they feel that what they did was bad. Right. You know, at the time, maybe they thought that they

[01:36:31] [SPEAKER_03] were doing a good thing, but then afterwards they realized, Oh no, uh, I was involved in, I mean, maybe it was, they were even involved in war crimes, you know, you don't know. So, um,

[01:36:42] [SPEAKER_04] but it's, I'm, we're, I'm in the middle of watching the Vietnam war, Ken Burns, Vietnam war documentary with my daughter. And, uh, yeah, the, this idea that you take these young, mostly men, uh, who are just sort of average and you put them into these extraordinary situations and they're pushed and pushed and the incentive structures, especially in the Vietnam war, around how do we, since there's no front line, so it's not about territory, it's about body count.

[01:37:12] [SPEAKER_04] The incentives are driven really weird. You then are in this environment where you are either pushed or, or led, and then you go along with it to enact horrible things against other human beings. Mm-hmm. And then when you, if you're lucky to survive and you come home, you have that, not only did you have maybe, and then there's the whole thing of, of survival skill, regardless of

[01:37:38] [SPEAKER_04] that, on the other side of that is what I did in the war. Well, in many ways, the American experience

[01:37:47] [SPEAKER_03] in the Vietnam war in that, in that exact manner is comparable to the Japanese experience in China, where you're an occupying force who is having difficulty sorting friend from foe. And so you make ethical decisions that in other cases, maybe you wouldn't. And I am not trying to excuse

[01:38:10] [SPEAKER_03] anything that was done by either Americans in Vietnam or Japanese in China, but you, you can see kind of the reasoning where that comes about. Um, and as horrible as it, as it is, you know, people come back and they have these memories and they try to suppress these memories and, you know, the movie shows us a way that they can redeem themselves potentially.

[01:38:37] [SPEAKER_04] And I think we talk about this newer concept of moral injury. It's not a new, it's the, the word moral injury is, I think something that we're using more just like PTSD and trauma and trauma informed uh, uh, uh, real visualization, all these kinds of things. We had shell shock back in, you know, earlier times. So this idea that there's a moral injury that's done to you by doing and participating

[01:39:01] [SPEAKER_04] in these acts of, of monstrosity, right. Of doing just monstrous things to other human beings. When you are just caught up as one small part, like when you think about the world war II effort and you think about the United States fighting a war on two fronts, like it was a national effort.

[01:39:22] [SPEAKER_04] The entire country was involved either, you know, at some level shape or form you were not unaffected by, uh, it's an, it's an incredible amount of infrastructure and material and human labor and capital that's involved. And so you, there's no wonder that the United States wanted to create a regional, you know, uh, uh, uh, a security apparatus that would avoid that happening ever again.

[01:39:50] [SPEAKER_04] Absolutely. So, um, anything else on your themes list here that you, we've talked about a bunch of

[01:39:57] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, no, I think, I think for all the themes, I do want to mention a couple of things. You mentioned that the, the kind of the, the plan and the way that Godzilla was chasing Shikishima in the aircraft, it didn't work for you. I'm going to mention a couple of things. Yeah. Um, number one, to stick with that, uh, Shikishima in the movie is a good enough pilot to be entrusted with this experimental fighter plane, uh, and do all these complex maneuvers to distract Godzilla and get him to go to the

[01:40:27] [SPEAKER_03] place for the plan, but he's a natural pilot in reality. Just get into any old plane and fly it. Uh, kamikaze pilots were some of the worst trained because they were, you know, as I told my students the other day, all this time and effort training them. Exactly. You only have to train them to take off. You don't have to train them to land. Um, so typically they were, they were draftees who were given minimal training in order to get them up into the sky and point them towards a ship. Um, so that's

[01:40:56] [SPEAKER_03] something that kind of bothered me, you know, just on a factual level. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but my biggest complaint is, and I know why they do it for the story, but the idea that the U S is not going to do anything when there's a giant radioactive monster attacking Tokyo during the U S occupation of Japan.

[01:41:15] [SPEAKER_04] And here's where literally using a, uh, his breath weapon detonates a atomic bomb like, you know, explosion that, I mean, that is the atomic bomb that's on the other end of his breath weapon.

[01:41:31] [SPEAKER_03] So we mentioned that, that Godzilla in one of his attacks is going through the Ginza district of Tokyo and that's where Noriko works and whatever. So I did a little looking and by, by, by looking and research, I mean, I got on Google maps and calculated the distance. It's a 12 minute walk from Ginza,

[01:41:53] [SPEAKER_03] central Ginza to the building that was MacArthur's headquarters. This is during the time of that MacArthur would have been very much in command of the allied forces occupying Japan. And so they're right there. You're going to tell me that the U S has 400,000 troops in Japan as an occupying force.

[01:42:17] [SPEAKER_03] And nothing is going to be done when there's a giant monster attacking 12 kilometer or I'm sorry, not even 12 kilometers, a 12 minute walk from MacArthur's headquarters.

[01:42:30] [SPEAKER_04] And they just give them four beat up old, uh, frigates or whatever, whatever.

[01:42:36] [SPEAKER_03] There's a little, like I, I, again, I get why they do it for the narrative purposes of the story and whatever, but that's just weak. I, I had a real problem with, with that part of it.

[01:42:47] [SPEAKER_04] What do you think about the replacement for the oxygen destroyer, uh, by surrounding him with these gas cylinders?

[01:42:52] [SPEAKER_03] Oh my gosh. That was just, so I was like, okay, so they're going to sink him down to the bottom of the bay and hope the pressure kills him when he's a monster that came from the bottom of the ocean. Yeah. And then they're going to raise him up quickly and basically give him the bends. Yeah. That's supposed to, again, Hey, it's a story. It's fiction. We're talking about a giant

[01:43:16] [SPEAKER_03] radioactive monster here. So I'm not going to be too like picky about details, but, but come on guys,

[01:43:24] [SPEAKER_04] you can put a little bit more thought into that. I think I was bumping up against some of this stuff as well. So, cause I, again, I wasn't calibrated for what the subtext of the movie was about, but I was just like, yeah. So good points. Uh, what else? Uh, shall we talk just briefly about the movie that's coming? Yeah. Minus zero. Uh, let's take another quick break and then when we come

[01:43:50] [SPEAKER_04] back, we'll, we'll do that and we're back. So now we're going to talk a little bit about minus zero, which will be out in a couple of weeks relative to when this is being recorded. Interestingly, uh, I didn't realize this until I was watching the trailers today. This is the first IMAX movie, uh, for the Japanese market or what's the, what's the deal there?

[01:44:19] [SPEAKER_03] It's the first movie out of the Godzilla series. And I think maybe any Japanese movie that was shot in entirely with the idea of IMAX. Right. Um, I think I read somewhere that the movie itself is not 100% shot for IMAX, but that's a normal thing that they do. Yeah. They be, it's a,

[01:44:45] [SPEAKER_03] most things are blended, but, but, but it is shot with the intention of it being an IMAX film.

[01:44:52] [SPEAKER_04] Right. And to be released in IMAX in Japan is what I think is what I'm understanding, but I don't know. Do they, do they have IMAX theaters already in Japan?

[01:45:02] [SPEAKER_03] They do. They do. Uh, as a matter of fact, uh, well, I mean, I'm not going to go see it in Japan, but I do have my tickets for IMAX on November 5th, uh, which is technically a day early before the

[01:45:15] [SPEAKER_04] main release on the sixth. And my question is just, I don't know, I don't know enough about IMAX and like how widespread the technology is outside of the United States. I don't know what other, uh, where other, uh, IMAX theaters are, how prevalent is the technology? I mean, I'm, I,

[01:45:30] [SPEAKER_03] I'm pretty sure that they, that they have it in Japan. I, uh, again, release, uh, you know, week of November 5th or 6th, depending on your location, uh, same director and writer, Takashi Yamazaki, uh, much of the same cast. Okay. So we have the characters, I'll go by the character names, Noriko, Shikishima, uh, Noda, the professor, Mizushima, the, the ship boat crewman,

[01:45:56] [SPEAKER_03] uh, Akiko is actually played by the same little girl who was doing it in 2023 as like a very toddler. She's just, you know, a little bit older. So playing the aged up girl. So all, you know, all those characters will be the same, but the new cast, uh, member that I wanted to make sure that I pointed out is Jun Kunimura is playing, uh, Dr. Ogata who apparently treated, is the one

[01:46:22] [SPEAKER_03] who treated Noriko when she was injured in the, uh, in the blast. Okay. Uh, there's a scene in the trailer where he says that she should not have survived, which kind of gives vibes to it. Right. But I, I point out Jun Kunimura because not only is he a very prolific actor, he's been in things that, that our audience will probably know. Cause he was in Pachinko. He played Kato, the, uh, former war

[01:46:47] [SPEAKER_03] criminal who starts a dating relationship with Sunja, uh, in season two. Uh, he's been in tons of U S, Hong Kong and Korean movies as well as Japanese ones. And he will be playing a new role in the upcoming Shogun season two, uh, as a character named Goda. I have no idea what that entails, but I I'm interested to see, uh, what, what it entails, but he's been in everything from,

[01:47:17] [SPEAKER_03] you know, Black Rain, each of the killer kill bill volumes, one and two, several Godzilla movies to include Shin Godzilla that I've talked about the 2019 Midway great war of Archimedes. So he's been in a lot of things and a lot of things that American audiences would have seen. So, um, I'm excited to see what kind of role this Dr. Ogata fills in the movie. Cool. There, as you mentioned, uh,

[01:47:41] [SPEAKER_03] there's several trailers available on, uh, on the internet, whether it's YouTube or IMDB has them. And do we want to kind of go into observations from the trailers maybe?

[01:47:53] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. Yeah. So just, we don't have any insider knowledge where we just watched the trailers and, and what we got is what we got. Uh, looks like we got a much bigger monster this time around.

[01:48:03] [SPEAKER_03] Uh, it would seem so he's, he's, he's back and, and bigger and better than ever. Uh, it clearly states that it takes place two years after the events of, uh, minus one, right? Shikishima and Noriko now appeared to be married with Akiko as their adopted daughter. And now she has the eye patch. Yes. Noriko has, has the eye patch instead of, uh, the mad scientist. There's a few phrases

[01:48:30] [SPEAKER_03] going through the different trailers that, uh, allude to discussions of moral boundaries that mankind should not cross. Um, there's a line in, in one of the trailers that, uh, uh, weapons require, that require a sacrifice, which, you know, we don't know obviously what it's referring to, but the fact that Shikishima is a former kamikaze pilot is potentially foreshadowing something.

[01:48:59] [SPEAKER_03] There's the tagline that, that, uh, well, there's two taglines that, that are shown. One is our crime and punishment, which you had referred to in the idea of Godzilla as punishment in our- Retribution. Yeah. And retribution in our previous podcast. And we talked about the idea of the Tatarigami. Right. The, the spirit of the dead that comes back to punish the living for crimes. Uh, there's another tagline,

[01:49:27] [SPEAKER_03] uh, returning to zero is not an option. So kind of ambiguous as to what that might be referring to, given that the movie's title is zero, but maybe it's that, you know, you can't get it back to a level state. Toothpaste can't go back in. Something like that. Um, I, I found it interesting. There's one teaser that begins with English lines. Uh, you hear like a radio operator, somebody saying if their operation fails, maybe we'll finally get to use it. Hmm. What could that be? And then, uh,

[01:49:57] [SPEAKER_03] later on in that same trailer, there's abort third drop, repeat abort third drop. Okay. So clearly somebody speaking American English is involved in things. Do the Americans finally get involved? We don't know. Is there something else involved? So I was going to get to that last.

[01:50:16] [SPEAKER_04] Okay. Sorry. I was running ahead because, because there, there was something in the trailers. They were like, wait, is there something else going on here beyond? So, so don't listen if you absolutely

[01:50:31] [SPEAKER_03] want no spoilers. Yeah. You can skip to the end of you from here on out. We're not going to really do much else. Um, there's a, there's a place where, uh, Godzilla is walking past the statue of Liberty. And then we hear something in one of them. This isn't Godzilla we're talking about. Yeah. That's what I think caught me. There's an, and then if you listen closely, we, right after that, you hear a roar, but it's not Godzilla's roar. Oh, okay. I missed that. And so in, in, in one of the teasers, there's something that says a new threat approaches. Well,

[01:51:00] [SPEAKER_03] if we were talking about Godzilla, we wouldn't be a new threat. It would be an old threat. So what's going on again, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, please go ahead. If you want absolutely no spoilers, but for those of you who don't care or, or want it, I have seen chatter and I have not gone to confirm it because I am intentionally avoiding it. Right. But I've seen chatter that maybe King Ghidra shows up who is another monster, the Godzilla monsterverse.

[01:51:26] [SPEAKER_03] Okay. Right. But that's what we know. I'm looking forward to it. It'll be interesting to see

[01:51:32] [SPEAKER_04] and where it goes. Hey everybody, future editor, David here. So the conversation ends a little short there. We had a technical issue in the recording, but we were functionally done.

[01:52:01] [SPEAKER_04] So there's not much else to say. So great conversation with Nate had a lot of fun with that. I'm a little late getting the editing on this episode done. So it's coming out today, which is right around the release time for minus zero. Nate and I both have plans to see the movie in the next few days. And then sometime next week, we will get our minus zero movie review out to everyone. We'll just sort

[01:52:25] [SPEAKER_04] of do a standard lorehounds one shot on that. All right. Well, thanks for hanging out for our Godzilla coverage. Remember we have a whole channel set up on the discord called monster Island for everything related. Looks like we have some monsterverse news as well for the Apple TV show. Sounds like they're getting that show back on track. So we'll look forward to some more great shows coming out of Apple with their version of the property. In the meantime, I just want to give a

[01:52:54] [SPEAKER_04] quick shout out to all of the various community members and podcast supporters who without their help, none of this would be possible. So real quick to our community volunteers, hand to the pod, Nancy, master of the polls, captain of the poll here, I'm Peter O H keeper of the show tracker, sub zero, lore Brarian, Brian 80 63 and discord moderators, Brian 80 63, Aaron K and Audrey on. And of course,

[01:53:20] [SPEAKER_04] our discord server boosters, Aaron K, Tiller, the thriller, Doove 71, Athena, Agilea, Lestu, Nancy M, Ghost of Perdition, Radioactive Richard, and Adrian, and our top tier lore master subscribers whose support, you know, without their support, none of this could be possible. So some Martian, Michael G, Michelle E, SC, Peter O H, Nancy M, Doove 71, Brian 80 63, Frederick H,

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[01:54:12] [SPEAKER_04] Cassie K, Chumbaruni, Katila, Josh Liu, Paint and PDX, Corey G, Quinch, Jeannie L, Slavinator, Cassandra C, Sandy B, and Adrian. Thank you all so very much for all your support. Thanks to everyone who listens, and we'll see you on the next podcast.

[01:55:09] [SPEAKER_02] Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.

[01:55:17] Thanks for listening.