Despite the generalized American sensibility stating that movies with subtitles are dumb and boring and might as well be in black and white or something, interest in Toho’s Godzilla Minus One has reached a fever pitch for one important reason: It looks so, so metal.
And to hear critics and audiences describe it, it is so metal. The film currently boasts a stratospheric 97% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with only two detractors: A YouTuber, and a guy from The Orlando Sentinel who gave The Flash a better review than Killers of the Flower Moon. The film takes Godzilla back to his roots in postwar Japan, serving as a reverent reimagining of the kaiju’s first appearance back in 1954. Divorced of the MonsterVerse and the fractured continuity of the previous 36 entries in the series, it stands alone, screaming and exploding Tokyo with unstoppable beams of atomic fury, artistically speaking.
All of which is to say that, while the studio has yet to announce plans for a version of Godzilla Minus One dubbed in English – or into any language besides Japanese, for that matter – you shouldn’t let that be what stops you from checking it out. By almost all accounts, the movie is a thoughtful return to form for Japanese cinema’s most enduring allegory for the dangers of the nuclear age, sloughing off decades of what amounted to luchadors in rubber suits in favor of the genuinely haunting imagery and ideas present in the original movie. Besides, the sound of a 200-foot prehistoric rage beast screaming into the sky transcends language. And in case it doesn’t, subtitles are your besties, for now.
