Director: Nuclear angle is key to new Godzilla film
TOKYO — Godzilla, the nightmarish, radiation-spewing monster born from nuclear weapons, has stomped through many movies, including several Hollywood remakes.
Takashi Yamazaki, the director behind the latest Godzilla movie, set for U.S. theatrical release later this year, was determined to bring out what he believes is the essentially Japanese spirituality of the 1954 original.
In that classic, directed by Ishiro Honda, a man sweated inside a rubber suit and trampled over cityscape miniatures to tell the story of a prehistoric creature mistakenly brought to life by radiation from nuclear testing in the Pacific Ocean.
The monster in Godzilla Minus One is all computer graphics.
“I love the original Godzilla, and
I felt I should stay true to that spirit, addressing the issues of war and nuclear weapons,” said Yamazaki, who also wrote the screenplay and oversaw the computerized special effects. “There is a concept in Japan called tatarigami. There are good gods, and there are bad gods. Godzilla is half-monster, but it’s also half-god.”
The world’s recent period of uncertainty fits his supernatural, “very Japanese” Godzilla, Yamazaki said at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where Godzilla Minus One is the closing film. It opens in Japanese theaters Friday.
Set right after Japan’s surrender in World War II, Yamazaki’s rendition predates the original and portrays a nation so devastated by war it’s left with nothing, let alone weapons, to fight off Godzilla.
Ryunosuke Kamiki portrays the hero, a soldier who survived the war but lost his family, only to end up confronting Godzilla.
The monster’s finely detailed depiction is the work of the Tokyo-based Shirogumi digital special-effects team, which includes Yamazaki.
A frightfully realistic-appearing Godzilla crashes into fleeing screaming crowds, its giant tail sweeping buildings in a flash, its bumpy skin glowing like irradiated embers, its growl getting right up into your face.
Some Godzilla aficionados feel Hollywood has at times incorrectly portrayed “Gojira,” as the creature is known in Japan, like an inevitably fatalistic natural disaster.
Instead, they argue, the nuclear angle is key.
Yamazaki, a friendly man with quick laughs, stressed he loves the special effects of Hollywood films, adding he is a big fan of Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla film.
That helped inspire the last Japanese Godzilla, the 2016 Shin Godzilla, directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi. Toho studios hadn’t made a Godzilla film since 2004.
Yamazaki, who has worked with famed auteur Juzo Itami, has won Japan’s equivalent of an Oscar for Always — Sunset on Third Street, a heartwarming family drama set in the 1950s, and The Eternal Zero, about Japanese fighter pilots.
What got him interested in filmmaking as a child was Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind .He was so enthralled by the film he couldn’t stop talking about it, he recalled, following his mother around for hours, even as she was cooking dinner.
Godzilla Minus One.
He is ready to make another Godzilla movie. But what he really wants to make isa Star Wars film.
“I am confident I can create a very special and unique Star Wars,” he said.