Simon Pegg recommends watching Godzilla Minus One – but only the subtitled version, never the dubbed version
When Shaun of the Dead star Simon Pegg first showed up on our screens back in the day, he earned a lot of fans through the fact that he was a celebrity-on-the-rise who had “geeky” interests and embraced “geek culture.” There’s a quote from him bouncing around where he said, “Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.” He even titled his memoir Nerd Do Well… But last year, he distanced himself from his past self, writing off nostalgia as a neurological disorder and telling The Guardian, “I’ve aged out of a lot of what people assume I’m about. I don’t feel like I’m that geeky guy any more, particularly. I don’t have the same interests I had when I was 35 or 40 even. I’d much rather watch Succession than some sci-fi.” But this new version of Pegg is still willing to make some time for Godzilla, and he has even taken to social media to heap praise on Godzilla Minus One, which recently dropped onto the Netflix streaming service.
As shared by Kaiju No. 14, Pegg posted a video where he said, “Godzilla Minus One is now on Netflix. So if you haven’t seen it, watch it. It’s the single best Godzilla movie since Shin Godzilla. It’s incredible. It’s a proper Godzilla movie, made by the people who sired Godzilla from their subconscious as they wrestled with the massive ramifications of what happened during the Second World War. It’s not some rock ’em, sock ’em f*cking cultural appropriation.” The next day, Pegg posted a follow-up to say, “If you are going to watch Godzilla Minus One, by the way, just as an addendum to what I was saying yesterday, watch it in Japanese. Don’t watch it auto-dubbed. Never watch anything dubbed. Never. Always have subtitles because you want to hear the original performances and the original language.“
Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, Godzilla Minus One (which won an Oscar for its special effects) sees an already devastated postwar Japan facing a new threat in the form of Godzilla. Interestingly, one of Yamazaki’s previous credits was the 2007 film Always: Sunset on Third Street 2, which features a Godzilla cameo in a fantasy sequence.
The film stars Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, and Kuranosuke Sasaki, with music by Naoki Sato.
Toho’s Koji Ueda has said, “Set in a post-war Japan, Godzilla Minus One will once again show us a Godzilla that is a terrifying and overwhelming force, which you already get a sense of from the teaser trailer and poster. The concept is that Japan, which had already been devastated by the war, faces a new threat with Godzilla, bringing the country into the ‘minus.’“
Are you a fan of Godzilla Minus One, and are you glad to see Simon Pegg recommending the film? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Originally published at https://www.joblo.com/godzilla-minus-one-simon-pegg/
