Gojira -1.0.
At the end of WWII, failed kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima suffers a crippling combination of survivor's guilt and PTSD following his narrow escape from Gojira's attack on an island garrison of the
Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun.
Returning home to find Tokyo bombed to ruins and his parents dead, he attempts to rebuild his life in the company of an orphan baby and a young woman whose parents were also killed by the American bombings.
Nuclear experiments by the US army cause Gojira to mutate and grow prodigously, and he attacks the Ogasawara Islands for no apparent reason. Briefly repelled by a lucky blast from a sea mine, he returns later to finish off whatever's left of Tokyo.
With the US military too nervous to intervene in case Vladimir Putin drops a nuclear weapon on Times Square, and the Japanese government bizarrely deciding it's best if they just do nothing and hope Gojira goes away, Shikishima and his buddies must work with a private sector consortium to defeat the monster once and for all, using... bubbles and balloons?
I liked the retro setting, and the low-tech approach to beating Gojira. I also enjoyed this iteration of his atomic breath, which was powerful enough to vaporise an entire heavy cruiser. The effects are good too. But that's the most I can give it.
For a 2 hour movie,
Gojira -1.0 has atrocious pacing. There's too much 'human interest' material, and most of it involves humans we've been given too few reasons to be interested in. Gojira himself barely appears, and doesn't do much when he does; he's not even the main focus of the plot, he's just a plot device for a different kind of story.
I rate
Gojira -1.0 at 16.65 on the Haglee Scale, which works out as a bitterly mediocre 5/10 on IMDB.
