WARNING: This is not, strictly speaking, a review, but it does discuss major spoilers for Godzilla Minus One, including the ending.

When Godzilla Minus One came to American theaters in late November, Toho had initially given it a one-week wide theatrical run, which basically meant that it was playing in a theater near you, but time was VERY limited. Strong box office numbers (for a non-English movie) and even stronger word of mouth have caused Toho to change their mind, and as of December 15 (more than a week after it was supposed to leave) the movie is being put in even more theaters. I know quite a few people who’ve seen it and reception has been very positive across the board. I personally think it’s the best entry in the series since the 1954 film, which means it’s the best Godzilla movie in nearly seventy years. Aside from it being just a great film, it implicitly makes the argument that Godzilla, despite his vintage and the fact that he’s been in a good deal of schlock, is still relevant.

There’s probably not a character in film history who has persisted to the same degree as Godzilla, nor one who has worn as many hats. Sure, you could say King Kong was famous back then (incidentally Kong’s 90th anniversary is this year) and remains famous now, but Kong as a film presence has only been around in little blips, getting a movie every once in a blue moon. And why not? How much can you do with an abnormally large ape? Then again, how much can you do with a giant radioactive dinosaur? This is what makes Godzilla so perplexing: his versatility. Let’s compare kaiju. Kong (at least the movies I’ve seen him in) is always a violent but ultimately tragic creature who has a touch of the human about him. Mothra is always a stand-in for Nature (capitalized), a perpetual force for good, and one of Earth’s guardians. King Ghidorah is (with one notable exception) always a tyrannical monster who came down from the stars in a ball of lightning and doom. These are monsters with multiple movies under their belts, spread across decades and realized by a variety of creative voices.

Godzilla started out as a villain, essentially, but at the same time a victim of the thing which gave him his atomic breath. The first Godzilla film was an allegory of post-war trauma, released just under a decade after the atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention the firebombing of Tokyo. Godzilla decimates a city, but he is also scarred by nuclear test bombings in the Pacific ocean and ultimately killed by a weapon of mass destruction at least as terrible as the A-bomb. Thing is, that’s not the only role he was fit for. There are quite a few entries in the series where Godzilla is a villain, but there are also cases where he plays a heroic or neutral role. In Invasion of Astro-Monster he and Rodan are brought in to stop King Ghidorah, who is clearly the bigger threat. In Son of Godzilla he’s a loving (if stern) father (never mind who the mother could be). In Godzilla vs. Hedorah he’s a Captain Planet-like figure who fights what amounts to a giant walking piece of shit. In All Monsters Attack he’s the figment of a child’s imagination; the child does not fear Godzilla but, evidently having seen Son of Godzilla, looks up to him as a role model.

Even when Godzilla plays the villain it’s often not for the same purpose. In Mothra vs. Godzilla he’s the villain because he just wants to be an asshole. In Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it) he’s the specter of imperial Japanese militarism. In The Return of Godzilla he inadvertently unites the US and Soviet Union during one of the Cold War’s hot spots. In the 1954 film, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, and most recently Minus One he’s a victim as much as he is a perpetrator; though he’s ultimately still a monster that must be stopped, there’s something deeply tragic about him in these movies. In Minus One he’s basically a deranged animal. At the beginning of the film, set in the final months of World War II, he’s a dinosaur—unusually large and not based on any real species, but also not radioactive. A nuclear bomb being dropped in the Pacific, however, transforms Godzilla into something else. Not only does he grow to the size of a building but he now has his atomic breath, which in this movie launches what may as well be mini-nukes. Thing is, Godzilla is hurt by his own power; if not for his newfound fast-regeneration ability his atomic breath would surely kill him.

(You may be wondering why I haven’t mentioned Shin Godzilla, which after all was the last live-action Japanese entry in the series before Minus One. Well, I haven’t seen it yet; in fact it’s the only live-action Godzilla movie I’ve yet to see. I’ll get to it eventually, but don’t underestimate my capacity to spite Hideaki Anno fans. Anyway…)

Much has been made of the fact that the human narrative in Minus One is largely what it owes its success to. This is not strictly an unusual occurrence in the series; people who act like this is the first time a Godzilla movie has had a compelling human narrative since the 1954 film are in for a rude awakening. True, some of these movies have dull human scenes, but some also have a good deal of human interest and emotional depth. Godzilla vs. Biollante and Giant Monsters All-Out Attack come to mind immediately. It’s not that the human narrative in Minus One is compelling (although it is) so much as that Godzilla’s function as a character and symbol works in tandem with the plot he’s an accessory to. Yes, the film looks great (especially given it was apparently made on an EVEN LOWER budget than the alleged $15 million people have claimed), but it succeeds as a movie because it abides Theodore Sturgeon’s criteria for a good science fiction story: it’s a story with human problems and a human solution but with a science-fictional element that’s necessary for the story to work.

Consider: The story revolves around Koichi, who at the outset is a kamikaze pilot, meaning he is expected to crash his plane into the enemy. The Zero, the Japanese fighter plane during the war, did not have an eject button. While stationed on Odo Island (harking to the island of the same name in the 1954 film), Koichi and the engineers stationed there are terrorized one night by a hulking dinosaur. Koichi has the chance to at least hurt Godzilla with his plane’s guns, but his nerves buckle and he watches as the monster turns the camp to ruins, leaving only one of the engineers alive. Koichi survives the war, but as a kamikaze pilot who didn’t kill himself he is a walking disgrace, never mind he evidentally suffers from PTSD. His parents died during the war. Tokyo has become in parts a bombed-out slum. Japan is now under American occupation. Aside from the first scene this could still be a grounded drama about found family, what with Koichi helping raise a child with a young woman named Noriko (the child is not hers, but rather is implied to be a war orphan), but Our Hero™ needs something extra to make him realize his life still has value.

We would still have a movie here without Godzilla in it, but it would be a fundamentally different movie then, and probably not as exceptional. Godzilla is the destroyer here, but he’s also (not by his intention, of course) a redeemer, giving a bunch of war veterans a second chance—an opportunity for them to do right by humanity after having fought for a government that did not put much stock in human life. It’s a rather overt anti-government and anti-militarism message, and make no mistake, Minus One is a melodrama whose emotions are all in primary colors. What makes it work, though, is that Godzilla’s presence not only supports the film’s thesis but feeds into Koichi’s character arc; without Godzilla there to put Koichi’s faith in himself to the test the climax would not be as profound. And yes it helps that the scenes of kaiju action are handled with a sure touch. The sequence where Godzilla rampages through the Ginza district of Tokyo, leading to what we think is Noriko’s death, is one of the standout moments in blockbuster filmmaking from recent years. It’s moving, though, partly because of the spectacle but also the fact that Godzilla, in his current state, is the product of militarism—a walking weapon of mass destruction.

Director/writer Takashi Yamazaki has been pretty upfront about a) having wanted to make a Godzilla movie for a minute now, and b) what inspired him when making Minus One. Sure, it’s a sort of Fruedian return-to-the-womb moment for the series. Godzilla munching on a train during the Ginza rampage very much harks back to the 1954 movie. But this is not even the first time the series has gone back to its roots. The Return of Godzilla, Godzilla 2000, and Shin Godzilla are, at least on paper, back-to-basics movies, as is Minus One. When the 1954 film hit theaters Japan was only two years out of the American occupation; the memories of abject horror from the war were still fresh in the minds of those who saw that film. Minus One returns to the same well but nearly seventy years removed and tweaking things to great effect, proving that somehow, after all the hats he’s put on over the years, the film world still needs Godzilla. Some will take issue with this movie’s ending, which is a sequel hook, but not only would I like a sequel but I think that in terms of this film’s placement in the series it makes sense. While Godzilla seems to have been defeated, his regenerating and still-beating heart in the final shot tells us the end (thankfully) is not yet.