Christopher Nolan Calls ‘Godzilla Minus One’ a ‘Tremendous Film’

Samantha Bergeson
·2 min read
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Christopher Nolan is heaping on the praise for Oscar-winning monster movie “Godzilla Minus One.”

The “Oppenheimer” writer/director, whose feature won Best Picture at the 2024 Academy Awards, interviewed “Godzilla Minus One” director Takashi Yamazaki ahead of the release of “Oppenheimer” in Japan.

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“I watched ‘Godzilla Minus One’ and I thought it was a tremendous film,” Nolan told Yamazaki in the below video. “I thought it was so exciting. I mean obviously it’s beautifully made, and the mechanics of it are so involving. It’s so exciting, but also I felt like it had a lot of the spirit of your earlier film, ‘The Eternal Zero.’ It had a depth around the issues surrounding the main story, even though the main story is ‘Godzilla,’ and is an entertaining and exciting one. There was also wonderful depths of the characters, and a wonderful sense of history that I really appreciated.”

While “Oppenheimer” centers on the creation of the atomic bomb, the storyline of “Godzilla Minus One” in part deals with the aftermath of the bomb dropping on Japan during WWII.

Yamazaki asked Nolan if he would be open to Yamazaki helming a film in response to “Oppenheimer” and telling the Japanese side of the historical story.

Nolan replied, “I can’t think of a better director to make a response than director Yamazaki, so I think it’s a perfect suggestion. I’m always interested to see what you will be doing in the future.”

“Godzilla Minus One” made history as the first film in the 70-year “Godzilla” franchise to be nominated for Best Visual Effects. Director Yamazaki took home the first Best Visual Effects Oscar for the country of Japan at the March 2024 ceremony. The feature reportedly had a $15 million production budget, with writer/director Yamazaki also serving as VFX supervisor.

“I’m a huge fan of the very first 1954 ‘Godzilla.’ And to me, that film was a response to nuclear warheads and where the world was heading at that point in time. So Godzilla being this metaphor for nuclear warheads, I think, was very important to return to and not forget,” Yamazaki told IndieWire. “During the production, it was both surprising and disturbing to see the state of the world unfold and reading the headlines because we were making a film about Godzilla and the subject matter it represents. And in some weird way, I feel, the timing of different Godzilla films, especially with the the context of Japan, it almost feels like this divine ritual or offering to the gods of some sort.”

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