'Godzilla Minus One' destroys Hollywood

No matter what suffering, loss, or devastation you go through in life, there is always something worth living for. This message is the beating heart of the latest entry in the Toho Godzilla franchise, "Godzilla Minus One."

The new film takes the iconic Kaiju back to his roots in a story set in postwar Japan, a brutal time that allows the movie to explore the resilience of the human spirit as it comes to terms with loss and regret.

It's rare to find this kind of depth in any American movie today, let alone in a masterfully crafted, crowd-pleasing action pic.

Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is kamikaze war pilot who feigns mechanical difficulties to avoid completing his suicide mission. When Godzilla attacks the repair island he lands on, he freezes, unable to shoot the monster from his plane. This results in the death of all engineers on the island but one, who pins the blame on Shikishima and his cowardice.

Guilt-ridden and shamed by his neighbors upon returning home, Shikishima tries to move on, taking in a homeless woman with a baby who was abandoned by her parents. The two agree to raise the child, and over the years they become a sort of family, despite his unwillingness to accept them as such. He serves as gunman on a minesweeper, joining a ragtag team of war vets.

What peace our hero finds is short-lived. Godzilla re-emerges twice as large and twice as strong to bring devastation to the whole of Japan. With the government unwilling to aid the people, Shikishima joins the citizens' army that has formed to take out Godzilla themselves. The franchise reaches new heights in the depiction of this battle, with scenes of beautifully staged monster mayhem. But it is Shikishima's internal struggle that elevates the film emotionally and sets it apart from its predecessors.

Can this failed kamikaze pilot learn to let go of the past and embrace a new kind of sacrifice — to honor the fallen by carrying on? It's rare to find this kind of depth in any American movie today, let alone in a masterfully crafted, crowd-pleasing action pic. And audiences have clearly been desperate for such rich entertainment instead of the usual ideologically driven remakes and feel-bad fables of racial division.

Toho Godzilla's rampage through the international and domestic box office shows how defenseless Hollywood is against any would-be conquerers. Will this spring's U.S. production "Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire" put up any fight? Not to sound unpatriotic, but humiliating defeat wouldn't be all bad. As far as wake-up calls go, you could do worse than a 20,000-ton radioactive lizard.