Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.
I’m not really a kaiju guy. I don’t actively hate them the way I hate televangelists or people who leave their shopping carts in the middle of a parking space, but I don’t generally go out of my way to watch giant monster movies. It’s not quite a “when you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all” thing, but it’s in that ballpark. Godzilla Minus One (or Gojira -1.0 if you prefer) got a lot of acclaim, though, and also won the big lizard his first Oscar, so it was hard to resist.
My ambivalence to kaiju is almost certainly related in part to early Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, which were rife with Gamera movies. Sure, it’s fun to watch a giant turtle fly through space and attack another dude in a rubber suit, but there are a bunch of them right in a row, and it gets tedious. These movies also went through a strange evolution. Godzilla, Gamera, and the rest started as giant beasts created by radiation or pollution taking out their rage on the Japanese countryside. Over time, though, they became the heroes, fighting monsters worse than they were, causing destruction like superheroes. The buildings still got knocked down, but our hero kaiju were doing it to defend Japan rather than destroy it.