Godzilla at the movies: What does the title Minus One mean?

From January 17 to 31, the French public will be able to discover Godzilla Minus One in cinemas, a Japanese film featuring the famous kaiju created by Toho Studios in 1954. After the successful launch of the event on December 7th and 8th, the distributor of the work, Piece of Magic, decided to offer it more visibility in France.

To remind you, Minus One was shot by Takashi Yamazaki with a limited budget of around fifteen million dollars. Internationally, it’s a big hit! It has already earned 100 million GEL at the global box office. Additionally, grossing 51 million on American soil, it became the biggest success for a live-action Japanese film in the US.

The story goes back to the roots of the franchise and takes us to the end of World War II. The Land of the Rising Sun has barely recovered from this armed conflict when a giant threat appears off the coast of Tokyo. Koichi, a suicidal terrorist deserter traumatized by his first encounter with Godzilla, sees this as an opportunity to atone for his actions during the war.

Why this title, minus one?

At 50 meters tall, weighing 20,000 tons, Godzilla is absolutely no “minus”! Why is the title of the movie Minus One? To understand this, you need to look for the Latin origin of the word “minus”, which means “less”. Thus, the title can be translated as “Godzilla minus one”.

This name is a direct reference to the condition of Japan and its people in the film’s plot. After World War II and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Land of the Rising Sun was devastated. The territory destroyed by the armed conflict is going through a terrible period where it has to start from scratch. The threat of Godzilla pushes the country even further into the negative, hence the “Minus One” title.

Koji Ueda, president of Toho International, confirmed this explanation in a column for the magazine. Forbes : “The concept is that Japan, already ravaged by war, faces a new threat with Godzilla, making the country ‘lesser.’he explained.

Thus, after the atomic bomb, the population of Japan faced a new, even more devastating threat, which plunged Japan into darkness. In addition, we can compare this title to Roberto Rossellini’s masterpiece, Germany Year Zero, which takes place in 1945 in Berlin, which has become a field of rubble.