Godzilla and me, we go back to the 1960s, little more than ten years after the creature’s first appearance in “Godzilla, King of the Monsters” (the title used for the U.S. release). Back then, there were no Godzilla eras and such; it was just Godzilla, his ever-evolving rubber suit-costume, and his continually new companions and enemies. As a 6- thru 12-year-old, I would sit entranced by Godzilla’s misbehavior during the creature-feature slot that my local TV channel had in NYC from 4:30 in the afternoon to dinner time.

And now we come to this latest and almost greatest iteration, Godzilla Minus One (GMO). It is probably very much like what would have been produced as the first movie back in the 1950s, if Toho studios had had the technology and budget that existed for this version, a budget still small but not as shoestring as the very first Godzilla movie.

GMO is one of the few Godzilla movies to take audiences back to the context of the first film—post World War II Japan, recovering from the devastation of the Tokyo aerial bombings and the Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bomb explosions. In this one, the main character is a Kamikaze pilot who decides, as the war is winding down on its last legs, that smashing his plane into the enemy in suicide missions is not going to be his thing. It makes for an intriguing premise and interesting set of human characters, which is often the big flaw of monster movies (the monsters feel emotionally real but the humans seem like the ones made of rubber). That flaw extended to the recent set of Kong/Godzilla Monsterverse movies from Hollywood; the monster action was spectacular, but the human characters seemed corny and ridiculous, and a part of me just wished that the monsters would eat them all.

GMO is a movie that delivers spectacle at a fraction of the budget of those recent Hollywood movies, but adding one very important thing—drama. Real, intelligent and emotional drama that audiences get invested in.

Everything else—the cinematography, the action choreography, the effects—are great in GMO and actually better than the big budget Godzilla by Hollywood movies. I have no idea how GMO could have been created at a budget of less than $20 million (which it reportedly was).

If you’re not a monster fan, will you enjoy the movie as much as I did? Most likely, yes.

My wife is no fan of monster movies. When she was a kid growing up in the 60s and 70s like me, she thought the Godzilla movies were ridiculous, just somebody in a rubber-suit smashing miniature buildings and pretending childishly to be a fierce monster. But she actually enjoyed GMO, to her own surprise. It’s not just a monster movie, but also a film that deals with the themes of nuclear war and mutual human destruction. Ultimately, we humans are our own greatest enemy; monsters destroy us only because we empower them to do so.

• • OK for kids 10 and up.

Godzilla Minus One (2023) 90%